Case Number
CrimA 3854/02
Date Decided
1-22-2003
Decision Type
Appellate
Document Type
Full Opinion
Abstract
Facts: The Treatment of the Mentally Ill Law-1991 provides that, when a court is of the opinion that one accused of a criminal offence is unfit to stand trial, the accused may be hospitalized. The District Psychiatric Board is responsible to review the case of such a mentally ill accused person, and it can order the accused’s release from the hospital. This petition concerns the amount of time a mentally ill accused person may be hospitalized on the authority of the initial judicially issued criminal hospitalization order.
Held: The Supreme Court held that the treatment of the psychiatric patient must balance between the patients’ rights, on the one hand, and the public interest, on the other. Forced hospitalization of an incompetent criminal defendant infringes his constitutional rights, including his liberty, his dignity, his autonomy and his self image, by imposing a stigma upon the accused long after his release from commitment. Nevertheless, the court stated, these constitutional rights are not absolute. Opposite them stand the interests of protecting public peace and safety from the accused, as well as the public interest in treating the accused and protecting him from himself. Pursuant to these general principles, the Court held that a mentally ill accused person could not be held indefinitely pursuant to an initial criminal hospitalization order. As such, the Court ordered the court that had issued the original criminal hospitalization order to review the case in order o determine whether forced criminal hospitalization pursuant to the original order had become unreasonable. The Court noted that no explicit statutory provisions governed the reexamination of such criminal hospitalization orders. As such, until the Knesset examined the matter, the Court set out guidelines for the examination of such cases in the future.
Keywords
Administrative Law -- Discretion, Criminal Law -- Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law -- Right to fair trial
