Hillside Strangler
THE HILLSIDE STRANGLER:
Easy Way out with an Insanity Defense
By: Brian Gomez
PSY 370
Professor Kucharski
In much of the history of court cases there has been faults where criminals will try just about anything to get out of a murder charge or any other type of charge so they won’t serve time in jail or face the death penalty. Indeed making up an insanity defense requires a person to not break out of it in the eyes of court officials, judges, and even lawyers. In doing this, a criminal could indeed go insane for real if they keep it up long enough. A persons mind will be susceptible in trying to believe there crazy just so the test psychologists or lawyers place on the suspect would show that they are not lying and they wouldn’t be able to be competent to stand trial. Malingerers manipulate the jury’s view of the law making it impossible to send a criminal away for their actions and also implementing a door to make an insanity defense a reliable one in the eyes of freedom. A case that is well known for an insanity defense is the Kenneth Bianchi case, a.k.a Hillside strangler. The case was about Kenneth having strangled and killed various women over a period of five months from 1977 to 1978. When he was finally caught he had acted as he did nothing wrong and that he wasn’t aware of his actions. This would be the start of a defense that he will try to use to manipulate the courts into believing that he wasn’t aware of his actions. In the court case many tests are being ran on Kenneth to see if any correlation of insanity isn’t persistent with his personality. The MMPI-2 is a test that is used in courts that use it to draw out rare symptoms, symptom severity; the obvious and subtle symptoms of insanity (Rogers, 2003) with these methods psychologists would use this while observing the person being treated as insane. When a symptom doesn’t follow up with its disorder than the person is lying about their defense in trying to not be competent for trial. The
Easy Way out with an Insanity Defense
By: Brian Gomez
PSY 370
Professor Kucharski
In much of the history of court cases there has been faults where criminals will try just about anything to get out of a murder charge or any other type of charge so they won’t serve time in jail or face the death penalty. Indeed making up an insanity defense requires a person to not break out of it in the eyes of court officials, judges, and even lawyers. In doing this, a criminal could indeed go insane for real if they keep it up long enough. A persons mind will be susceptible in trying to believe there crazy just so the test psychologists or lawyers place on the suspect would show that they are not lying and they wouldn’t be able to be competent to stand trial. Malingerers manipulate the jury’s view of the law making it impossible to send a criminal away for their actions and also implementing a door to make an insanity defense a reliable one in the eyes of freedom. A case that is well known for an insanity defense is the Kenneth Bianchi case, a.k.a Hillside strangler. The case was about Kenneth having strangled and killed various women over a period of five months from 1977 to 1978. When he was finally caught he had acted as he did nothing wrong and that he wasn’t aware of his actions. This would be the start of a defense that he will try to use to manipulate the courts into believing that he wasn’t aware of his actions. In the court case many tests are being ran on Kenneth to see if any correlation of insanity isn’t persistent with his personality. The MMPI-2 is a test that is used in courts that use it to draw out rare symptoms, symptom severity; the obvious and subtle symptoms of insanity (Rogers, 2003) with these methods psychologists would use this while observing the person being treated as insane. When a symptom doesn’t follow up with its disorder than the person is lying about their defense in trying to not be competent for trial. The
Bibliography: Costanzo, M. (2012). Chapter 9. Forensic and legal psychology (pp. 204-205). New York: Worth Publishers. Kucharski, L., Toomey, J.P., Fila, K., & Duncan, S. (2007). Detection of malingering of psychiatric disorder with the Personality Assesment Inventory: An investigation of criminal defendants. Journal of Personality Assesment, 88(1), 2532. Hilden, J. (n.d.). 925 F.2d 305: Kenneth A. Bianchi, Petitioner-appellant, v. James Blodgett, Superintendent, Washington Statepenitentiary; Department of Corrections of Thestate of Washington; Department Ofcorrections of the State Ofcalifornia,respondents-appellees :: US Court of Appeals Cases :: Justia. US Law, Case Law, Codes, Statutes & Regulations :: Justia Law. Retrieved March 1, 2013, from http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/925/305/366341/