DALLAS, May 7 (UPI) -- A recent series of high-profile criminal cases have caused Texas lawmakers to examine what happens to defendants after they are found not guilty by reason of insanity.
In April, a Tyler jury acquitted Deanna Laney on those grounds after she said she killed her two boys on instructions from God. She was assigned to a state mental hospital subject to a later evaluation by the trial judge before her release.
Last month, Kenneth Pierott was charged in Beaumont with putting his girlfriend's 6-year-old son in an oven and leaving him to die from asphyxiation. He had been acquitted by reason of insanity in the 1998 beating death of his sister and released from a state mental hospital after four months.
Although the use of the insanity defense is extremely rare in the United States and in Texas, those cases and others involving the defense prompted the Senate Jurisprudence Committee to hear testimony Thursday in Austin as it opened a review of the law.
"Our current laws governing how we deal with the criminally insane have failed," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott testified. "They have failed because they do not give prosecutors and mental-health professionals the tools they need to keep the dangerously insane off the streets. The cost of this failure has been high."
Abbott pointed to these cases and others to show that changes need to be made in the Texas system. He said the public is "justifiability suspect" about a system that allows an insane killer to go free after only a few months under supervision.
Abbott proposed several measures that would demand stricter monitoring, including a mandatory evaluation by the judge before the release that would include all interested parties in an open hearing with an independent, outside mental evaluation.
The attorney general also supported a proposal from Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal to change the criteria for release to make sure persons on medication are continually observed on an outpatient basis.
"For many, the difference between sanity and insanity is a few pills a day," Abbott said. "It only makes sense that we ensure that insane killers are taking their medication before we release them back into the public."
Even those hospitalized after an insanity ruling who do not require medication should be first released only on an outpatient basis before they are unconditionally released, Abbott said, to ensure they complete their treatment for mental illness.
There are currently 68 people in the state mental hospital because they were acquitted by reason of insanity, according to Joe Lovelace, executive director of the Texas chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
"It is true, and everyone agrees, that our current 'not guilty by reason of insanity' statute does not have adequate structure around which people are released after they have been treated," he said.
Lovelace said that is a state problem, but since 2001 the Legislature has made major strides in addressing the issue, which was lost in Abbott's presentation. He said some of the attorney general's language was "inflammatory."
Texas is working toward a "21st century mental-health system that can engage the mentally ill," he said, but sometimes there are people like Laney and Andrea Yates who are not reached in time. They are psychotic, not criminally insane, he said.
Yates was the focus of another high-profile Texas case involving the insanity defense. She was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. Her lawyers failed to convince a jury that she was insane when she drowned her five children at their Houston home.
Lovelace said there are actually very few cases where persons acquitted by reason of insanity and treated at the state mental hospital actually return to society and commit violent crimes.
"People in Texas would be very surprised to know that there are people with mental illness in their community right now, who have broken the law and are currently serving out conditions of probation, under supervision, who take their medication, who work and live with them," he said. "These (recent cases) are anomalies, but they literally take your breath away."
Lovelace's group also wants to change the Texas "not guilty by reason of insanity" standard because it says it is old and hard for juries to understand, contending that a more effective standard would be "guilty except for mental illness," which is used in Oregon.
Most states have some form of insanity defense, although a few have abolished it. Although it's often controversial, the defense is seldom used in the United States, according to William Bridge, a professor of law at Southern Methodist University.
"There always has been some concern that when someone is found not guilty by insanity that they just go home, but in 99.9 percent of the cases of people found not guilty by insanity they go to a mental hospital and stay there for a long time," he said.
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