Dissociative Identity Disorder in the Courtroom: A Guide to Forensic Testimony

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a rare disease for what general practitioners have “no code.” It however has a heavy weight in forensic research. Experts are divided on whether DID warrants an acquittal for "not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity" (NGRI) or 'guilty except mentally ill" (GEMI) defenses. Over the past century, the DID has been claimed to defend a variety of offenses, from a parking ticket to the first degree murder, or to manipulate with the civil suits for monetary relief. Applying traditional rules of criminal culpability or civil liability to these cases poses a significant challenge. The concepts of personhood and identity create a havoc in determining the insanity. Diagnostic exclusions are scarce, with exceptions of the explicit memory transfer to be the key to deny the dissociated identity, whereas the absence of implicit memory transfer helps to think of personality dissociation. Retrograde amnesia comes to be a central symptom and with its variations it helps to differentiate the alters of identity from the alters of personality. There is currently no consensus within the USA legal system as to the extent to which individuals with DID can or should be held responsible for their actions. Courts that are receptive to the DID diagnostic construct have used one of three approaches to assess criminal responsibility in such cases: (1) alter-in-control approach, (2) each-alter approach, and (3) host-approach. Amidst the above complexity, the legal system must also deal with potentially conflicting psychiatric expert testimony, especially given enduring controversies about the DID diagnosis. DID challenges the Model Penal Code's mens rea hierarchy (purpose, knowledge, recklessness, negligence), the concept of evidence, material facts, and estoppel of duress. From the Frye test, witness categories (educating, reporting, interpreting), types of evidence (bolstering, attacking, rehabilitating), hearsay, to the outcomes of adjudications, this book presents a value-adding comprehensive guide on the court-visited criminal and civil cases when one of the parties claim for suffering a DID. Stemmed of 153 references, it also provides with an exhaustive analysis of 21 adjudications. Presented cases are free for the public access under the U.S. Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA), assigned provisions by the holding Courts, the 14th Amendment Due Process Clause, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). IMPACT: This book has been used in James Cameron's motion picture, "The Crowded Room" (2016) - where Leonardo DiCaprio casts Billy Milligan (source, http://newsdidmpd.blogspot.com/2015/03/what-i-know-about-multiplicity-today.html) Read more