Good reading skills require the students to exact the difference between fact, opinion, and fiction. Using novels then using cases students can provide strategies required to understand the difference.
The following case of Joy Baker is based on the reader provided by Ian Shapiro for Politics of the Criminal Justice System, 2000. The case of Joy Baker is transcript of the actual dialogue used in court. Students have the opportunity to role play, Joy Baker, the attorney, the psychiatrist, and judge and jury.
The case of Joy Baker is a transcript from the trial and is written in a question and answer form providing students the opportunity to read the case aloud. Students can easily take a role in the attorney defendant dialogue. There is background information providing knowledge of Joy Bakers personal history. In addition the is question and answers from an attorney to a expert witness, a psychiatrist. The psychiatrists interview raises the question of reality testing and declares the relative nature, contextual nature of reality. From Joy Baker’s history of experience was her reality accurate or distorted?
The case of Joy Baker provides a good demonstration of the application of the M’Nagten test that is used to decided if a defendant has mental defect. The application of the M’Nagten test to the case of Joy Baker asks the following questions about Joy Baker’s reasoning to establish what she was like at the time the crime was committed. (Shapiro)
Applying the M’Nagten test students are challenged to reconstruct the “knowledge” of Joy Baker at the time the defendant committed the crime.
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Did Joy Baker understand the nature and severity of the crime she committed?
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Did Joy Baker know what she was doing was wrong?
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Did Joy Baker understand the morality of wrong?
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Did Joy Baker lack emotional appreciation, and understand the meaning of her actions?
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Did Joy know what actions are prohibited by law?
The M’Nagten formulation places an emphasis on the affective meaning of knowledge. Applying the control test to Joy Baker the question is asked, Did Joy Baker have and irresistible impulse?
The control test as applied to a psychotic defendant, and the question is ”did the defendant have the self-control to control motives that were intra psychic”. The validity of the control test can be debated as well as whether or not the insanity plea should be allowed at all.
After completing the reading of Joy Baker and the novels, students can be organized into teams to debate whether or not insanity should be allowed as a defense in a trial.