Mental disorders and criminal responsibility in the Spanish Supreme Court

Abstract

Background: The criminal responsibility of a person with a mental disorder can be modified if their cognitive and/or volitional capacities are altered. The aim is to ascertain the repercussions that mental disorders have on the determination of imputability in current Spanish jurisprudence. Method: A retrospective descriptive study is presented through the review of 360 sentences of the Supreme Court from 2015 to 2019. Results: The results show that responsibility was modified in 37.9% of the cases: 5.1% complete exemptions, 13.3% incomplete exemptions, and 81.3% mitigating circumstances. The most represented disorders among the complete exemption cases were those on the schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders, and personality disorders were the most represented for incomplete exemption. Substance-related and addictive disorders were the ones most represented in responsibility attenuation. Conclusion: The diagnosis of the same mental disorder can lead to different degrees of imputability. The adoption of therapeutic measures is the exception, not the rule.