Additionally, expert testimony about pathological intoxication should be barred because it is unreliable even under the more liberal standards articulated in Daubert v. This Note argues that the current legal conception of "pathological intoxication" should be abandoned because the notion of excusing defendants for being pathologically intoxicated is inconsistent with basic principles of criminal law. (12) Additionally, courts allow expert psychiatric evidence of pathological intoxication despite the psychiatric community's skepticism and the unreliability of the diagnosis. Pathological intoxication is still treated as a legitimate defense to a crime despite the fact that such evidence should be barred under longstanding principles of criminal law. These developments in the psychiatric world have had little impact in the criminal law's treatment of pathological intoxication.
#Pathological intoxication manual
(10) The growing criticism and the lack of concrete evidence of pathological intoxication led the editors of the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) to recommend that the diagnosis of pathological intoxication be dropped entirely from the DSM. Time when psychiatry was less advanced (9) and that the term is used as a catch-all for a number of reactions to alcohol that are attributable to different diseases. (8) Critics argue that it was developed during a Meanwhile, members of the psychiatric (7) community have heavily criticized the concept of pathological intoxication.
(5) Today, the issue of pathological intoxication continues to be raised regularly as a defense to criminal offenses. (4) Its inclusion in the Model Penal Code gave the defense credibility and changed the way that courts perceived evidence of pathological intoxication.
#Pathological intoxication how to
Since the early twentieth century, courts have struggled to determine how to treat a "pathological intoxication defense." (3) The uniqueness of the concept and the difficulty in fitting it within the existing criminal law framework led the American Legal Institute to create a special pathological intoxication defense in the Model Penal Code. (2) Pathological intoxication raises difficult questions for criminal law because it has aspects of mental illness and intoxication. Few concepts in the criminal law sound as ominous or mysterious as "pathological intoxication." (1) Pathological intoxication describes an aggressive and often violent state triggered in some individuals by only a small amount of alcohol.
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