Under Pennsylvania law, a sexually violent predator is someone convicted of a sexually violent offense who has "a mental abnormality or personality disorder" that makes the person likely to engage in predatory sexually violent offenses.
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" BILL COSBY IS MENTALLY PREPARING HIMSELF FOR PRISON Under Pennsylvania law, "a sexually violent predator is a person who has a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes the person likely to engage in predatory sexually violent offenses.
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That typically requires prosecutors to demonstrate to either a judge or jury that the individual has a "mental abnormality" or personality disorder that impairs their ability to control themselves, and that they would therefore be likely to engage in violent acts if released.
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And yet she is eager to testify for Regan's confinement, as New York makes its case that he has what the state calls a "mental abnormality" that strongly predisposes him not only to sexually assault others but also to be unable to control that urge.
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His superiors thought him bright, hard-working and alert. The psychiatrists who examined him found no evidence of mental abnormality, but did mention he had a tendency towards acting before thinking.
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The jury decided that they qualified as sexually violent predators. Since pedophilia is defined as a mental abnormality under the Act, the court ordered that Hendricks be civilly committed. Hendricks appealed the validity of his commitment as well as claiming that the state was unconstitutionally using ex post facto and double jeopardy law, to the State Supreme Court. The court ruled that the Act was invalid on the grounds that the condition of "mental abnormality" did not satisfy the "substantive" due process requirement that involuntary civil commitment must be based on the finding of the presence of a "mental illness".
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Kansas v. Hendricks, 521 U.S. 346 (1997), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court set forth procedures for the indefinite civil commitment of prisoners convicted of a sex offense whom the state deems dangerous due to a mental abnormality.
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Stewart v Stewart 1914 SLT 310 To found a divorce on the behaviour of the defender the behaviour must be such as a reasonable person could not be expected to live with the defender.Stair, Child and Family Law (Reissue), para. 606 (Online) Retrieved 2012-02-29 The behaviour can be from one event, though showing a pattern is more likely to convince the court, and it is irrelevant if the behaviour is passive or active or caused by a mental abnormality.
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Stewart v Stewart 1914 SLT 310 To found a divorce on the behaviour of the defender the behaviour must be such as a reasonable person could not be expected to live with the defender.Stair, Child and Family Law (Reissue), para. 606 (Online) Retrieved 2012-02-29 The behaviour can be from one event, though showing a pattern is more likely to convince the court, and it is irrelevant if the behaviour is passive or active or caused by a mental abnormality.
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Sturm showed no regrets, mocking his victims, refusing to apologize to the bereaved and threatening to kill the prosecutor. He was sentenced on November 23, 1978 by the Wuppertal assizes for threefold murder to life imprisonment. Despite a noted severe mental abnormality, he was found to be fully culpable. In custody, he brutally injured two fellow prisoners perilously and was therefore transferred to the high-security wings in the Cologne Prison, where he spent most of his time in solitary confinement.
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Set in the year 2117, the story presents District A-3, a newly built suburb of San Francisco, and the world's first community to be built entirely using Doors, a method of travel via teleportation. When the Door that transfers him from home to school fails, Richard "Dickie" Hanshaw takes a dislike to the method and starts to wander outside in the unfamiliar open, exposed to the elements. When he catches a cold, Mrs. Hanshaw is horrified and takes him to see Dr. Sloane, a psychiatrist, afraid that her son's wanderings are signs of a mental abnormality.
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The results were published in the 1921 report entitled Mental Hygiene Survey of the Province of Alberta. The report notes that those who suffer from a mental defect or mental disorder are rightly regarded as social liability and recommends careful screening of immigrants and the use of sexual sterilization to control the abnormal population. Dr. Hincks's committee describes a causal link between mental abnormality and immorality (illegitimacy, criminality, prostitution, dependency). The suggestion that bad behaviour and sexual immorality were directly related to mental deficiency gave rise to concern by the public and politicians that these individuals posed a threat to society.
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In addition, the committee assumed that mental abnormality could be detected early in life with various test instruments. In the course of their examination, they also reviewed student behaviour at the elementary level by administering intelligence quotient tests to children who had been described by their teachers as “troublesome, mischief-makers or general disturbers.” According to the committee, the tests revealed that such troublesome children were more prone to possess low I.Q. Further, the children were interviewed and a conclusion was reached that these same troublesome children also possessed less sound moral values. It wasn't until much later that the I.Q. tests would be recognized as culturally biased.
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Howard first talked of his own death in 1928 when his dog Patch was dying. When Novalyne Price was admitted to hospital in 1935, her doctor, a friend of Howard's father, asked her if Howard had ever talked about not wanting to live after his mother died. Regarding Howard's suicide, Gramlich believes it was nothing to do with any long-term mental abnormality; it was a common reaction to the strain he was under at the time. While Howard did talk of suicide during his life, statistics show that one out of three teenagers contemplate suicide and the details of Howard's are normal (white, single, from the south of the United States, with a gun).
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Under Kansas's Sexually Violent Predator Act (Act), any person who, due to "mental abnormality" or "personality disorder", is likely to engage in "predatory acts of sexual violence" can be indefinitely confined.. Leroy Hendricks and Tim Quinn had extensive histories of sexually molesting children. When they were due to be released from prison, Kansas filed a petition under the Act in state court to involuntarily commit Hendricks and Quinn. Hendricks and Quinn challenged the constitutionality of the Act and requested a trial by jury which the court granted. Hendricks and Quinn testified during the trial that they agreed with the diagnosis by the state psychiatrist that Hendricks and Quinn suffer from pedophilia and admitted that they continued to experience uncontrollable sexual desires for children when under extreme stress.
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The Supreme Court ruled against Hendricks in a 5–4 decision. It agreed with the Act's procedures and the definition of a "mental abnormality" as a "congenital or acquired condition affecting the emotional or volitional capacity which predisposes the person to commit sexually violent offenses to the degree that such person is a menace to the health and safety of others." It agreed with Kansas that the Act limits persons eligible for confinement to persons who are not able to control their dangerousness. Further, the court decided the Act does not violate the Constitution's double jeopardy prohibition nor the ban on ex post-facto law because the Act does not establish criminal proceedings and therefore involuntary confinement under it is not punishment.
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Psychiatrist R. Nagulendran argued that Took was schizophrenic, as some of his behaviour, such as frequently smiling to himself and talking of spirits, was inappropriate and he had no motive for the murder – Nagulendran also called Took's story about the three Chinese men a delusion. On 27 August 2005, Justice Lai ruled that Took was guilty of murder and sentenced him to death. In his judgement, Justice Lai noted that Took had no history of mental abnormality, the behaviour the defence cited was "not necessarily abnormal" and the murder was "clearly the product of a cold and calculating mind". Justice Lai also said it was unnecessary to determine the motive for the murder or whether a sexual assault had taken place.
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He also questioned the usefulness of paraphilias in general when the real issue may be criminal behaviors or stigmatization of unusual but benign sexual acts. Of hebephilia in civil commitment, Prentky and Barbaree wrote, "Hence, for self-serving reasons, it is applauded by those who generally work for the prosecution and criticized by those who generally work for the defense. This is an admittedly cynical, if unfortunately accurate, commentary on the influence of adversarial litigation on clinical deliberation." Psychologist Douglas Tucker and lawyer Samuel Brakel stated that civil commitment as a sexually violent predator does not require a DSM diagnosis, so long as the clinicians who testify in courts do so in good faith and they identify a conceptually and empirically meaningful mental abnormality that is predictive of future sexual violence, irrespective of the term used.
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The workers' compensation fraud unit prosecutes fraud or misconduct involving workers' compensation, and the Medicaid fraud control unit prosecutes cases involving fraud of the state Medicaid program by health professionals, or abuse or neglect of Medicaid recipients by caregivers. The division's high technology and computer crime unit assists local law enforcement with investigations and prosecutions of computer and Internet crime cases. The sexually violent predator unit seeks the civil commitment of sexual predators who suffer from a mental abnormality making them more likely than not to commit additional predatory acts of sexual violence. Attorneys in the division also serve as legal counsel for the Department of Public Safety, the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the Missouri State Water Patrol and other state law enforcement agencies, and represent those agencies in all civil litigation in which they are a party.
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In 1953 the Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment(1953) Cmd 8932 took the view that mental abnormality which resulted in a diminished responsibility, was relatively common and potentially of importance to a wide range of offences. The Commission therefore asserted that a "radical" amendment to the existing law would not be justified for the "limited" purpose of enabling the courts to avoid imposing the death sentence. Parliament was not impressed and section 2 of the Act now provides that diminished responsibility is available as a defence where the accused was, at the time of the offence, suffering from an "abnormality of the mind" which substantially impaired his mental responsibility for his acts or omissions resulting in murder. The burden of proof is on the accused to show that she/he was suffering from diminished responsibility.
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The biological model of abnormality (the only model not based on psychological principles) is based on the assumptions that if the brain, neuroanatomy and related biochemicals are all physical entities and work together to mediate psychological processes, then treating any mental abnormality must be physical/biological. Part of this theory stems from much research into the major neurotransmitter, serotonin, which seems to show that major psychological illnesses such as bipolar disorder and anorexia nervosa are caused by abnormally reduced levels of Serotonin in the brain.(1) The model also suggests that psychological illness could and should be treated like any physical illness (being caused by chemical imbalance, microbes or physical stress) and hence can be treated with surgery or drugs. Electroconvulsive therapy has also proved to be a successful short-term treatment for depressive symptoms of bipolar disorder and related illnesses, although the reasons for its success are almost completely unknown.
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The court's finding that preventative long-term confinement of mentally disordered persons has previously been justified on the grounds that some people's behavior cannot be prevented, and it does not violate their rights to confine them to deter antisocial behavior. However, it has also been argued that upholding the Act expands involuntary civil commitment to people with personality disorders, possibly allowing for the commitment of large numbers of criminals if the proof of the likelihood of re-offending required is sufficiently inclusive, which could happen if the requirement of dangerousness is not limited to those with a mental illness, and that if mental abnormality (rather than mental illness) can be the basis for sex offender commitment, there is a danger that it may expand the basis for traditional civil commitment to personality disorders as well. In the subsequent Kansas v. Crane (2002), this decision was upheld for an individual that suffered from exhibitionism and antisocial personality disorder.
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Any marriage can be voidable and may be annulled on the following grounds: the marriage has not been consummated due to impotency, may be complete or partial impotency (for example conditions such as impotence quoad hoc), contravention of the valid consent mental illness condition specified in Section 5, or that the respondent at the time of the marriage was pregnant by someone other than the petitioner. Divorce can be sought by husband or wife on certain grounds, including: continuous period of desertion for two or more years, conversion to a religion other than Hindu, mental abnormality, venereal disease, and leprosy. A wife can also present a petition for the dissolution of marriage on the ground of if the husband marries again after the commencement of his first marriage or if the husband has been guilty of rape, sodomy, or bestiality. Newly married couples cannot file a petition for divorce within one year of marriage.
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The defence counsel, Ivan Lawrence QC, argued that Nilsen suffered from diminished responsibility, rendering him incapable of forming the intention to commit murder, and should therefore be convicted only of manslaughter. The prosecution counsel opened the case for the Crown by describing the events of February 1983 leading to the identification of human remains in the drains at Cranley Gardens and Nilsen's subsequent arrest, the discovery of three dismembered bodies in Nilsen's property, his detailed confession, his leading investigators to the charred bone fragments of 12 further victims killed at Melrose Avenue, and the efforts he had taken to conceal his crimes. In a tactful reference to the primary dispute between opposing counsel at the trial, Green closed his opening speech with an answer Nilsen had given to police in response to a question as to whether he needed to kill: "At the precise moment of the act [of murder], I believe I am right in doing the act". To counteract this argument, Green added: "The Crown says that even if there was mental abnormality, that was not sufficient to diminish substantially his responsibility for these killings".
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