MENTAL ACCOUNTABILITY UNDER MILITARY LAW
ABNER E. LIPSCOMB J. A. G. D.
In conclusion and to answer more particularly the questions listed at the beginning of this article, it should be observed that military justice in determining the issue of mental accountability is not controlled by any conventional, legal or medical definition of sanity and that certainly it is not restricted to the concepts of the English law of one hundred years ago. On the contrary, military justice has evolved a unique standard of mental accountability which includes not only the concepts involved in the traditional so-called right and wrong test but also the more liberal and humane concept of moral justice involved in the so-called irresistible impulse test. In incorporating this latter concept into its standard of mental accountability, military justice has recognized the scientific truth that the capacity to feel remorse and to distinguish between right and wrong does not necessarily imply power to control conduct. It has thus compromised the law's traditional arbitrary concept that all persons within certain categories possess absolute freedom of will and that all persons within other categories possess none. It has repudiated the conventional legal position as stated in Holloway v. United States, supra, that, "For the purposes of conviction there is no twilight zone between abnormality and insanity. An offender is wholly sane or wholly insane." In other words, the military justice standard of mental accountability represents a compromise between law and medical science, a compromise between the concept of sanity and justice of the ordinary man and the concept of justice and sanity of the modern psychiatrist. It admits that a man may walk and talk rationally and yet not be medically, morally or legally responsible for his conduct.
Athough it has not been entirely satisfactory to the lawyer or to the psychiatrist, it possesses distinct merit. It is based upon the fundamental principle of criminal justice that a crime has not been committed unless the accused, at the time of the particular offense complained of, possessed the necessary mental intent or attitude. Obviously, without a knowledge of the rightness or wrongness of an act, an accused could not have a criminal mind. Likewise, if the accused, because of mental illness, is deprived of the power of choice or of volition he does not possess the mental attitude essential to criminal responsibility. Moreover, the military justice standard is not a test of sanity or insanity as those words are generally understood. It employs neither word and it does not require a determination as to the existence of either condition. Since the standard is free from the restraints of dogma and from inflexible legal and medical definitions, it should remain useful despite changing views as to the nature and scope of mental diseases. Regardless, however, of its merits the problem of its just application is a difficult one and one which calls for intellectual humility and painstaking effort on the part of all concerned.
