英文摘要 |
The kinds of mental disorders were complicated and various. If the defendant was diagnosed with psychiatric disorders so as to be unable, less able, or even obviously reduced in the ability of judgement or control, the capacity for criminal responsibility, litigation, and testimony were all under the influence. In recent years, there were many serious and sensational murder cases in the society, and most of the defendants took mental disturbance as defense, which manifested the importance of psychiatric disorders in judiciary proceedings. However, there were few articles about expert examination in current criminal judiciary proceedings, and the incompleteness resulted in controversial problems in real practice. For the qualifications of expert witness of forensic psychiatry assessment, there was no law concerned with it. In real practice, forensic psychiatry assessment was carried out by psychiatrists, but even psychiatrists could not finish it without difficulties, for they were trained for diagnosing or curing diseases, instead of expert examinations. As for the retention of expert witness, only the court or public prosecutor's office was entitled to entrust for expert examinations, which had no consistent standards in fact. Thus, the retention of expert witness was very likely to be manipulated by the court or public prosecutor’s office willfully and unscrupulously. Especially, giving defendants the right to reject an expert examination was a negative and insufficient act; instead, endowing defendants with the right to apply for an expert examination was a positive act to guarantee the objective and neutral of the expert witness. The defender of the defendant, at least, should be allowed to accompany with the expert during the examination. As for the methods and SOP of the expert examination, there were no standards, neither. Originally, the reason for entrusting an expert examination with psychiatrists should be limited to “physical reasons”, such as mental disturbance or defects. In other words, it was the comprehensive judgments only made by the judge whether the “mental consequences” like unable, less able, or even obviously reduced in the ability of judgement or control were directly caused by the “physical reasons”. Yet, the physical reasons and the cause and effect between physical reasons and mental consequences were both examined by psychiatrists in real practice. Besides, the methods and standards of an expert examination were merely revealed in the examination report. “Mental consequences” concerned with whether the defendant was unable, less able, or even obviously reduced in the ability of judgement or control were all judged by guideline of criminal responsibility, but whether this guideline was equal to foreign legislative examples like M’Naghten rule and Durham rule (product rule) was still unknown. In real practice, people who had schizophrenia were probably deemed as mental disturbance whereas people who had neurotic disorders, antisocial personality disorder, and multiple personality disorder were all hard to be deemed as mental disturbance. Given that it had entrusted expert witness for expert examination to judge whether the defendant had “physical reasons” like mental disturbance or defects, the judge was restricted to the examination report and was unable to make an opposite evaluation of evidence through inner conviction unless the examination report went against rule with experience, rule of logic, or the judge formed evaluation of evidence through inner conviction with facts except the expert examination. Due to the uncertainty of Medicine and the fluidity of the process of healthy and illness, psychiatry assessment usually went with talks between expert witness and the defendant. However, the psychiatric status of the defendant changed as therapies or time went by. Under the circumstances that the talks were unrepeatable and the examination report had to be verified, a psychiatry assessment and the examined methods for being used as an evaluated evidence should be in accordance with the rule of general acceptance, the rule of scientific effectiveness, and the rule of absolute verifiability. Therefore, there was room for questioning the admissibility and the credibility of evidence. Only by solving these problems could the trust effect on the usage of the evidence of psychiatry assessment get improved. |