Inquiry into a defendant’s competence to stand trial has been termed “the most significant mental health inquiry pursued in the system of criminal law.” As a result, competency to stand trial is one of the most widely debated concepts in criminal jurisprudence. Proposals for upheaval and revision of the doctrine of competence to stand trial pervade legal literature. Among the most frequent contention is that competency is misunderstood within the legal process, leading many scholars to advocate for a greater understanding of the basic doctrine. One commentator even believes the doctrine may be doing more harm than good, and has thus suggested a defendant should be granted limited rights to waive competency inquiries.
This debate has spilled into pretrial commitment of incompetent defendants. Once a defendant is deemed incompetent to stand trial, courts typically remand the defendant to the care of state hospitals and/or mental health professionals. This process has spawned tales of defendants faced with extended pretrial commitment for alleged crimes, prompting revisionary proposals to protect defendants from court-sanctioned injustice. The debate is particularly contentious, however, because within this pretrial commitment process stands a trifecta of competing interests. While the state and public as a whole deserve protection and justice, a defendant equally deserves due process and a fair trial. Thus, a collision course is charted, with a defendant’s constitutional rights squaring off against the deep-rooted motivations of criminal jurisprudence—offering victims closure and justice while ensuring respect for the law.
This Note enters the debate over pretrial commitment for defendants deemed incompetent to stand trial, arguing that revisions are needed to remedy an insufficient patchwork of state statutory provisions providing for such commitment. Part I features an overview of the competency doctrine. Part II addresses the durational limitations on pretrial commitment of defendants deemed incompetent to stand trial set forth in the 1972 Supreme Court decision Jackson v. Indiana. Part III investigates statutory provisions in all fifty states and the District of Columbia to determine how states have responded to Jackson’s durational limitations. Finding wild variations among these state provisions, Part IV turns to social science literature to decipher what such durational limits should be. Finding a need for revision within states and for further research to propel these revisions, Part V proposes establishment of a cross-disciplinary group of experts tasked with conducting targeted research and crafting a model statute in hopes of providing states with a legislative solution to meeting Jackson’s mandate.