Not Guilty by Reason of Mental Illness

The law of Wisconsin changed. James Shellow changed it. For a hundred years a defendant in Wisconsin could only succeed in showing that his mental illness caused him to commit a crime if he could convince a jury that at the time of its commission he did not know the difference between right and wrong and would have committed the crime even though a policeman was standing at his side. This criterion ignored major advances in psychology and psychiatry. In a landmark case James Shellow convinced the Wisconsin Supreme Court to change this standard, and in a subsequent appeal of the same case, convinced the Supreme Court that a defendant who claimed mental illness as a defense retained his Fifth Amendment right not to be examined by a prosecution psychiatrist. Forty years later, in a prosecution which charged a father with sexually assaulting one of his children and who had been examined by a psychologist, prepared to testify that the father did not exhibit the character traits of a pedophile, James Shellow convinced the Wisconsin Supreme Court that the father also retained his Fifth Amendment right not be examined by a prosecution expert.

James Shellow completed his course work and doctoral prelims for a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Chicago and has co-chaired seminars at the Medical College of Wisconsin for psychiatrists and psychologists at which he explored the cross-examination of such experts. James Shellow holds a faculty appointment as Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health Sciences at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

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