Originally posted by curious4
View Post
Regarding the likely outcome of a fitness to plead hearing. The decision, of course, would be made by the jury. I therefore wonder if, say, a Whitechapel jury were confronted by someone they believed to be the Ripper, they would be prepared to allow him to escape the hangmans noose, however deranged he may have appeared, by declaring him unfit to plead.
A modern comparator is the R v Sutcliffe case, where the jury , somewhat controversially, refused to allow Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, to use the diminished responsibility defence. This was despite the fact that the medical opinion was unanimous that he was schizophrenic!
Comment