I recently tried a defendant for aggravated robbery, and he put on evidence of his bi-polar disorder ("it's no excuse, but...."). The jury gave him 50 years in prison.

Meanwhile, I have noticed numerous cases in the newspapers around Texas in which defendants are presenting evidence of bi-polar disorder as, presumably, mitigating evidence.

Have you had such a case? How do you counter it? How has your jury responded?

One person you will want to talk to is Howard Blackmon out of Dallas County. The defense raised that issue in Punishment phase of a high profile Capital case his office is currently trying where a man murdered his two children - Bataglia. From the little I have heard over the news the State's expert in rebuttal agreed he was bi-polar but testified that the condition was not the reason he murdered his kids. Defendant received the punishment he deserved.

[This message was edited by Richard Alpert on 05-01-02 at .]

Here is a link to the Dallas Morning News story on the capital murder case:

http://www.dallasnews.com/latestnews/stories/043002dnmetbattaglia.3927742a.html

The State's expert is Dr. Richard Coons (who has an Austin office). I used him in my aggravated robbery trial here in Georgetown a couple of weeks ago. The jury found his explanation of bi-polar disorder very helpful in distancing that mental problem from the defendant's bigger problem: a defective conscience.

As Dr. Coons explained, there are a couple of million people with diagnosed bi-polar disorder. Most of them don't commit crimes. Sometimes people commit crimes just because they are bad.

It's cases like this one and Andrea Yates that make me think that our definition of insanity and its standard of the defendant knowing whether the conduct was wrong is right on, no matter how uncomfortable it gets to litigate.

Bi-polar disorder is no fun, no doubt about it. I've seen someone close to me battle it for years, and I'm sympathetic to the struggles of coping under the weight of mental illness. I don't doubt that post-partum depression is also excruciating. But I think our system has it right in that it's not enough for the defendant's actions just to be influenced by the mental defect -- it has to take over the defendant's ability to have recognized that what he did was wrong in the first place.

The jury found no mitigation requiring a life sentence. For a summary of the verdict:

http://www.dallasnews.com/latestnews/stories/050102dnmetbattaglia.3927742a.html