Yesterday TruTV’s InSession anchor Jamie Floyd engaged legal reporter Beth Karas in an interesting discussion of the insanity defense as it is being used in the Michelle Kehoe murder trial. Among the issues that caught my attention were whether the various standards applied by state courts were aligned with modern psychiatry and psychology and whether psychiatric patients ought to have the right to refuse treatment.

Since I have argued in this blog that the legal standard of “insanity” is outmoded, I hope that soon the courts will bring some sanity to the law.

But while I believe the courts ought to be able to order certain people into a type of protective custody (such as elderly people with dementia), I certainly do not believe that psychiatrists ought to be able to force their patients to take drugs or undergo electric shock treatments.

The issue of self-determination is critical to democracy. Before we decide to permit anyone, even judges, to order a person to involuntarily submit to commitment to a hospital (in other words, incarceration) or to submit to any form of treatment (especially physically invasive treatments), we had better know what we’re getting into. Any of us could suddenly find a government agent injecting something into our veins.