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Diminished responsibility in Scotland: new technology and old legal definitions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Mary Stewart*
Affiliation:
Whyteman's Brae, Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy KY2 5AH
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The following recent murder trial at a Scottish High Court raises some points of interest to all UK psychiatrists in relation to the use of brain imaging test results as psychiatric evidence and their relevance to the question of diminished responsibility. It should be noted that in Scotland diminished responsibility has a much narrower scope than that encountered in the England and Wales (Chiswick, 1991) and is dependent upon the presence of a “mental disorder or a mental illness or disease” (Connelly v HMA 1990).

Type
Psychiatry and the law
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 1993

References

Chiswick, D. (1991) Chapter IV:10. Criminal Responsibility in Scotland. In Principles and Practice of Forensic Psychiatry, p 313318. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.Google Scholar
Gane, C. H. W. & Stoddard, C. N. (1988) A Casebook on Scottish Criminal Law. Edinburgh: Green.Google Scholar
Matthews, R. (1992) It was the lobes, m'lud. Sunday Telegraph Review, Aug. 9, viii.Google Scholar
Cases referred to:Google Scholar
R v Byrne 1960 Criminal Appeal Reports 44 p 246255.Google Scholar
HM Advocate v Savage 1923 (Lord Justice-Clerk Alness) JC 49; 1923 Scots Law Times p 659661.Google Scholar
Carracher v HMA 1946 (Appeal) Lord Justice-General Normand JC108; 1946 Scots Law Times p 225227.Google Scholar
Connelly v HMA 1990 (Appeal) Lord Justice-General Hope Scottish Criminal Case Reports p 504510.Google Scholar
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