Unfitness to Plead Consultation Responses - Law Commission ...

Pearson was detained for three months. It was three months too long, according
to last week's conference… Mr Pearson's case is especially unusual, because he
was born the victim of the strict nature of the Act as well as being a member of a
minority within a minority; of the 295 total cases, Mr Pearson was one of the only
seven deaf mutes who were declared unfit to plead in the past eight years.”
From the perspective of our client group, it is essential to appreciate that the CP in
relation to unfitness to plead acts to preserve the integrity of the English legal system.
The unfairness created by the present legal test is due primarily to its emphasis on
cognitive deficiency, rather than the full spectrum of mental disorders and disabilities. In
this context despite the confines of the law, the importance the role of the judiciary in
administering fairness must not be dismissed. Professor Robert Fox writes in the
correspondence section of the British Journal of Psychiatry with the following case study
extracted from Bluglass & Bowden (1990) 8 :
“Sir: The law on fitness to plead is generally held to be highly unsatisfactory……It
is good to know that British Justice can have a human face – and in the Crown
Court… Case report – Mr X, a man in his 30s, was arrested as a result of erratic
behaviour culminating in a car chase during which several police vehicles were
damaged and officers has to be treated in hospital. He faced eleven charges of
ABH, theft, reckless driving and property damage, but was allowed bail.
[Following this Mr X was sectioned and it became clear that he had been a law
abiding citizen but following an episode he had become] increasingly
unpredictable with unrealistic plans of the most grandiose kind. Although
unemployed he claimed he to have made £6 million profit, for which reason
8 Correspondence. Fitness to plead. R Fox. BJ PSYCH, 159, 6, 887a
[http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/citation/159/6/887a]
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