Replication Data for: Punishing Personality: Irresistible Insanity

An estimated eighty to eighty-five percent of criminal defendants have personality disorders. Yet American criminal law generally excludes personality disorders as a basis for a defense of insanity. This exclusion is rooted in a misunderstanding or ignorance of the contemporary scientific understanding of personality disorders—that personality disorders are trait-level dysfunctions or character failings lacking a neural basis. In recent decades, however, researchers in psychiatry and neuroscience have disproven this assumption. This Article bridges the gap between the science and the law by synthesizing relevant scientific advances in our understanding of personality disorders with the legal treatment of insanity pleas. It argues that personality disorders should not be excluded from the scope of insanity as a criminal legal category. Employing an original empirical study of 134 borderline personality disorder cases and 210 antisocial personality disorder cases spanning seven decades, this Article illustrates that such categorical exclusion is myopic, arbitrary, and inconsistent with the science. This Article recommends in particular that states adopt an approach to the insanity defense with demonstrated success in the Netherlands that assesses gradations of sanity, rather than preserving the black-and-white—sane-or-insane—status quo.