Christopher Slobogin of the University of Florida’s Law School has written a new book about the state’s legal authority to deprive people with mental disabilities of life or liberty. The book discusses a number of well known cases such as that of John Hinckley and Andrea Yates. It also includes discussion of laws dealing with the insanity defense, the death penalty, commitment of sexual predators, and hospitalization of people considered unable to make rational decisions. The book advances new ways of thinking and calls for a complete revamping of the insanity defense, the abolition of the guilty but mentally ill verdict, and a prohibition on execution of people with mental disability.
(“Minding Justice: Laws that Deprive People with Mental Disability of Life and Liberty,” Harvard Univ. Press 2006). See Mental Illness and Books.
