MENTALLY-ILL AND NON-MENTALLY ILL DEFENDANTS ABILITIES TO UNDERSTAND INFORMATION RELEVANT TO ADJUDICATION - A PRELIMINARY-STUDY

The legal construct of competence to stand trial, or ''adjudicative co mpetence,'' is based on the premise that some mentally disordered defe ndants have impaired abilities when compared with most defendants and that adjudication should be barred if these competence-related abiliti es are significantly impaired. Where the line is drawn between suffici ent and insufficient abilities has important consequences: as a result of being adjudicated incompetent, defendants may be detained and trea ted involuntarily and their trials will be delayed. However, no studie s have systematically compared the capacities of relevant groups of de fendants. In this study, 84 criminal defendants-42 of whom were hospit alized as incompetent and 42 of whom were regarded as unquestionably c ompetent-were administered three instruments measuring capacity to und erstand legally relevant information. Incompetent defendants performed more poorly on all measures of understanding. Twenty-eight incompeten t defendants were administered the measures a second time, after resto ration to competence. Restored defendants improved their performance o n all measures of understanding and their performance was similar to t hat of normal, competent defendants.