Legal competency

DEFINITION: Capacity to understand the nature and purposes of legal rights, obligations, and proceedings. The authority of a person to take specific actions as provided by law is dependent on legal competency.

SIGNIFICANCE: People who are not legally competent cannot make decisions or take actions that concern legal rights. In the United States, the civil and criminal justice systems rely on forensic experts to make determinations of legal competency to ensure that accused persons who are not competent are not wrongly convicted.

Competency, as a legal doctrine, derives from seventeenth century English common law. The concept of legal competency is related to concerns for fairness and the need for due process in protecting people’s liberties and rights. It is important that people making decisions or taking actions that may be binding on them, or on others whom they represent, are competent—that is, it is important that they understand the legal implications and effects of what they are doing. Decisions regarding a person’s competency may be based on capacity requirements as set forth in state and federal laws. In the context of criminal law, the issue of competency usually concerns mental defects that impair a person’s ability to understand.

Capacity

Legal competency requires capacity. Adults are deemed to be competent unless proven otherwise by factual ethat a person is suffering from a mental disorder that affects understanding. Adults remain legally competent until they are declared incompetent by a court of law. A court may, however, decide that a previously declared incompetent person has recovered and is again competent to make decisions affecting legal rights. When a person is declared legally incompetent, the court may also appoint a guardian or conservator to make decisions on the incompetent person’s behalf.

Legal competency also involves presumptions set forth in statutes. For example, statutory law provides that those under the age of eighteen lack the necessary cognitive development, and thus the capacity, to act in certain matters, such as executing or witnessing legal documents. In addition, people who are intoxicated or affected by drugs usually lack capacity to enter into legal transactions or to take actions that involve legal rights. However, persons who once lacked capacity may affirm legal transactions if they are later deemed competent.

When Competency Is Necessary

In civil law legal, competency must exist when people execute legal documents such as contracts, wills, trusts, and powers of attorney to appoint others to act on their behalf. In addition, people must be competent to testify as witnesses in lawsuits, serve on juries, or participate as parties to civil matters. Competency is also necessary when people act on behalf of others, such as serving as guardians over children or incapacitated adults, as conservators over the property of others, as executors or administrators of estates, or as attorneys-in-fact who can make legal and medical decisions on behalf of other persons.

In the criminal justice context, competency is required at all stages of legal proceedings. The term “competency to stand trial,” as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Dusky v. United States (1960), consists of two conditions that defendants must satisfy. First, defendants not only must have the capacity to understand the proceedings but also must demonstrate that their decisions are voluntary and knowing because they understand the facts, the nature of the charges, and the criminal process in which they are involved. Second, defendants must be able to participate in the criminal process by developing strategies and defenses and by assisting their attorneys, if they have not waived their right to an attorney. This rational understanding and ability to function must be present throughout the criminal proceedings.

The criminal justice process involves three main stages: pretrial, trial, and post-trial. At the pretrial stage, arrestees must be competent and understand that they can waive their Miranda rights, which include the right to remain silent rather than confess and the right to an attorney. In addition, prior to arrest, people must be competent to give consent to allow a search for evidence. If consent is not voluntarily given, the search could be declared unconstitutional, in which case evidence found during the search would be excluded from the trial.

Competency is also necessary during arraignment, in which defendants must understand the charges against them, the constitutional rights they are forfeiting, and the consequences of their pleas. Defendants must make their pleas—usually guilty or not guilty—voluntarily and knowingly. Defendants who plead not guilty by reason of insanity must understand that involuntary commitment to a mental health facility is a possible outcome of an insanity acquittal. Finally, when a defendant accepts a plea bargain offered during the criminal trial process, the judge will ask the defendant questions to determine competency and ensure that the defendant is making decisions voluntarily and understands the legal consequences of such decisions.

At the trial stage, defendants must be able to participate meaningfully in the proceedings and assist their attorneys in mounting effective defenses in order to avoid wrongful convictions. Defendants may refuse assistance of counsel as long as they understand the implications of rejecting this constitutional right. Defendants must also be competent when waiving the right to a trial, in challenging prospective jurors, in deciding whether to testify, and when testifying as witnesses.

A significant issue regarding competency to stand trial concerns the use of psychotropic drugs or other medications to enable defendants to reach a competent state of understanding. Laws throughout the United States do not agree; some jurisdictions allow the use of drugs for this purpose, whereas others require defendants to demonstrate the ability to understand without medication to avoid an infringement of their constitutional right of privacy. The result is that some defendants never become sufficiently competent to stand trial and may be involuntarily committed to mental health facilities, where, by law, they must undergo periodic reviews to determine whether their competency status has changed.

Post-trial issues of competency generally concern the right of a state or the federal government to carry out a death sentence if the prisoner is not competent. Convicted criminals sentenced to death must have the mental capacity to understand the nature and purpose of the death penalty and appreciate why they are being put to death. Persons who are sentenced to death but are found to be incompetent must be held until it is determined that they have the capacity to understand. Some jurisdictions allow the use of drugs to achieve a state of competency in a death-penalty prisoner in order to carry out the death sentence.

Forensic Experts and Competency Evaluations

Courts rely on forensic clinicians to perform evaluations when the competency of particular persons is at issue. Except for legal presumptions of competency, such as age, laws do not usually prescribe any particular evaluation techniques to be used in determining competency. Forensic experts thus usually focus on prior medical evidence and the present mental capacity and psychological status of the persons whose competency is of interest. Irrational behavior and conduct during criminal proceedings may also be considered. Statutory law provides for competency hearings to assess individuals’ competency to stand trial.

Forensic professionals called upon to evaluate competency in criminal defendants must also consider whether the defendants are malingering—that is, faking mental illness or psychological symptoms to delay negative outcomes, such as a trial or imposition of the death penalty. Specific tests and tools have been developed for experts’ use in assessing competency to stand trial and malingering, which can be difficult to detect. These modern techniques have proven reliable and have received acceptance by the scientific community.

Bibliography

Bardwell, Mark C., and Bruce A. Arrigo. Criminal Competency on Trial: The Case of Colin Ferguson. Carolina Academic Press, 2002.

Grisso, Thomas. Evaluating Competencies: Forensic Assessments and Instruments. 2d ed. Springer. 2002.

Rogers, Richard, and Daniel W. Shuman. Fundamentals of Criminal Practice: Mental Health and Criminal Law. Springer, 2005.

Tabak, Ronald J. “Executing People with Mental Disabilities: How We Can Mitigate an Aggravating Situation.” St. Louis University Public Law Review, vol. 25, no. 2, article 5, pp. 283-301, scholarship.law.slu.edu/plr/vol25/iss2/5 283-301. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.

Yant, Martin. Presumed Guilty: When Innocent People Are Wrongly Convicted. Prometheus Books, 1991.