Despite rapid advances in medical technology, the criminal justice system refuses to accept the truth for two reasons:

1. Political predators write our laws. They are elected based upon lies and partial truths about crime. Their re-election strategy is simple: demonize every single person charged with a crime by using the worst case they can find and then using that to make voters angry enough to vote for harsh punishments.
2. Right wing authoritarians routinely demonize mental health for religious reasons: campaign case and re-election. Political predators do this every two years.

So, why discuss politics? Simply because there is nothing more important when it comes to criminal law. The law is written by political predators in order to make sure criminal defendants lose their cases.

In a recent case, a judge flat out said that he was discarding mental health reduction of sentence issues at a sentencing hearing because “those things are pretty common nowadays”.

Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to two mental disabilities in particular: depression and attention deficit disorders. The judge simply reflects Northwest Florida culture where trolling the “libs”, people who are not white, women, and people with mental health disabilities. If this sounds cruel this is because it is.

ADHD, depression and other disabilities can seriously compromise judgment, especially when someone is given the wrong dose, wrong medication, wrong sub-class and family of a particular drug or simply will not take their medication.

If the person is military of former military and has PTSD, it may be a different story. We see veterans get favorable consideration in criminal court every day because they have PTSD. We also see active duty military service members get punished before guilt is established, so this cuts both ways.

Nevertheless, ADHD, ADD, PTSD, bipolar disorder and multiple other brain conditions can be used in three scenarios: competency, Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity and Mitigation (reduction) of sentence.

In our “Criminal law” practice areas section we cover the specifics of this in more detail under the heading Mental Health.