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MODULE 1

I chose the Billy Bezerk case simply because cased involving murder where the accused may be acquited due to reason of insanity is thrilling , its a nail biter when watching  both parties present their reasoning for why and why the accused is not guilty of said crime . With both of my current  degrees being in criminal justice, anything law and crime related is intriguing to me.  Watching the accused attorneys fight to prove innocence and seeing the tactics , evidence presented and confidence that they can get their client off keeps me very intrigued when watching court cases such as these when the accused defense is  NOT GUILTY due to reason of insanity. 

In the case I selected, the accused is Billy Bezert is on trial for murdering his family with an ax. His attorneys then decides to hire a psychologist to test his client to determine that he was mentally incompetent or  showed signs of "insanity" during the time that he comitted the crime against his family . The psychologist did find that the attorneys  client suffered from  major thought disorder, poor impulse control, and considerable unmodulated anger and frequently expressed paranoid ideation.

The central ethical conflict with this case is whether a client is actually "insane" at the time that that the offense was committed doesn't actually fall within the realm of psychological questioning due to the fact that being insane is determined by law and not by behavior science (koocher 2016).. I also would like to point out that, since testing was done AFTER the crime was already comitted , how are we to know for sure, if the client was indeed in an insane state at the time of the actual crime. I question , what type of accurate testing can be done after the fact, can deem one not guilty of the accused crime AFTER the fact of being committed . In short, the testing that iscompleted by the law and the testing done by psychologist differ since only one determines the guilt by reason of insanity . 

Reference

Koocher, G. P., & Keith-Spiegel, P. (2015). Ethics in Psychology and the Mental Health Professions (4th ed.). Oxford University Press Academic US.  https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9780199957705