Murder and the McNaghten Rules: The Importance of Adequate Medical Investigation†
| Author | Colin Brewer |
| Published date | 01 June 1971 |
| Date | 01 June 1971 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/000486587100400205 |
94 AUST. &N.Z. JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY (June, 1971): 4, 2
Murder
and
the McNaghten Rules:
The Importance
of
Adequate
Medical Investigation t
CO'LIN
BREWER
*
THE
psychiatrist
in
court
probably faces amore difficult
task
than
any
other
medical witness,
and
for several reasons.
Human
behaviour
and
the
human
brain
are
at
once more complex
and
less understood
than
any
other
field
of medical enquiry. Predictions
and
statements
must
generally be
made
with
extreme
caution
and
many
qualifications,
and
while
it
is
rare
for
juries
or counsel to
regard
themselves as
amateur
surgeons or
amateur
dermatologists,
it
is quite common for
them
to
feel-or
even to be
told-that
they
know as
much
psychiatry
as
the
psychiatrist, if
not
more.
It
would doubtless
make
life
much
easier if
psychiatrists
could produce
solid evidence of
the
kind used by
other
doctors -X-rays, blood
tests,
photographs
and
so forth.
This
hardly
ever
happens,
but
the
reason
is
not
so
much
that
such
tests
do
not
exist, as
that
they
do exist
but
are
used
too rarely.
It
seems reasonable to assert, in
1971,
that
the
brain
is
the
organ
of
mind;
it
follows from
this
-
and
it
has
been
repeatedly
proved to be
true
-
that
any
damage
to or disease of
the
brain,
whether
localised or diffuse,
may
result in disorders or
disturbances
or deviations in behaviour. "Disturbed"
or
"abnormal"
behaviour -including
verbal
behaviour, i.e., speech - is
what
we
mean
when we
talk
about
"mental
illness", "madness", "neurosis",
"psychopathy", etc.
Psychiatric
classification is
almost
entirely adescrip-
tion of
certain
types of
"abnormal"
behaviour.
Not
all
mental
illness is necessarily a
manifestation
of
brain
disease.
Indeed,
most
people who
consult
psychiatrists probably do
not
suffer
from
any
brain
disease,
and
their
"undesirable" behaviour is
most
likely
the
result
of some deficiency or
misfortune
in
their
upbringing or
current
environ-
ment,
the
inappropriateness
of
their
attitudes,
or
their
failure to
learn
from
experience.
In
these
cases,
the
psychiatrist
can
expect little help from
the
laboratory
or
the
X-ray
machine.
Psychological
tests
of personality
are
t
When
this article
was
written a
murder
trial (R v
Cogley)
took
place before Gowans,
J., in
the
Supreme
Court
in Melbourne
(II-14th
May, 1971)
where
C. successfully
raised
the
defence of insanity. The claim of legal
insanity
was
based upon cerebral
atrophy
producing adementia as
the
"disease of
the
mind". The defence
case
rested
upon
the
evidence of a neurologist who produced an abnormal electro-
encephalographic recording
and
the
air
encephalograms; apsychologist
who
pro-
duced his psychological
test
results,
and
two
psychiatrists. The
air
encephalograms
demonstrated
marked dilation of
the
lateral ventricles (Ed.)
*M.B.(Lond.),M.R.C.S.(Eng.),D.P.M.,M.A.N.Z.C.P.
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