The Forensic Psychiatric Expertise in Romania: The Legal Medicine Implications
The Forensic Psychiatric Expertise in Romania: The Legal Medicine Implications

Author(s): Cristina Gabriela Șchiopu
Subject(s): Criminal Law, Criminology
Published by: Scientia Moralitas Research Institute
Keywords: discernment; dissimulation; expertise;
Summary/Abstract: The Penal Code of Romania, describes a list of paragraphs about the criminal offences made by people with unknown or acute mental illness or in circumstances that can affect the judgment of the one directly involved. In these cases, the only way to investigate the state of mind of a criminal in the moment that he produced that offence, is by analysing his mental capacity, his reactions in those circumstances, to investigate his social and family history and by interviewing him in front of the medico-legal psychiatric committee after a clinical and paraclinical assessment. The felon is brought by a police or a prosecutor order in front of the committee, after the investigations demonstrated that he or she is for sure the criminal offender and there are no longer suspicions about the identity of the felon. The offender can be brought for forensic psychiatric examination if he is already known with a mental illness or if, during the investigations, the police observes suspect changes of the behavior. There are also some crimes, the severe ones, that are mandatory to be investigated psychiatrically. The procedure is very complex but the investigations often depend entirely on the conclusions of the medico-legal psychiatric expertise.

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