Attorneys Emily Taylor and Leslie Cross of the Armed Attorneys YouTube channel open their recent video with a point TV rarely gets right: competency to stand trial and not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) are separate legal questions. As Taylor and Cross explain, competency is about the defendant now – do they understand the judge’s role, the prosecutor’s role, their lawyer’s role, and can they assist in their defense?
NGRI is about the defendant then – their mental state at the time of the offense. You can be insane at the moment of the crime yet fully competent to go to trial years later, or vice versa. Most public confusion starts right here; we flatten two distinct safeguards into one catch-all “crazy” defense and then wonder why outcomes seem inconsistent.
Competency: A Low Bar, but a Necessary One
According to Leslie Cross, the legal threshold for competency (they speak from Texas practice) is intentionally low. A doctor evaluates the defendant; if found incompetent, the court pursues “competency restoration” – think education and treatment – to bring them back to a minimal ability to understand and participate.
Cross describes real-world encounters, like the defendant who signed a plea “Jesus Christ,” prompting a competency evaluation. Emily Taylor adds that competency can be reassessed yearly in serious cases; the moment doctors say a defendant is back to baseline, a trial gets set fast. That may feel cold, but the system’s logic is simple: you can’t fairly try someone who can’t grasp what’s going on.
The Insanity Defense: What the Law Actually Requires
For NGRI, Emily Taylor points to the Model Penal Code § 4.01 test, or close state variants: (1) the defendant suffered from a mental disease or defect at the time of the offense, and (2) that condition made them unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of their conduct or unable to conform their conduct to the law. That’s miles away from “I wasn’t myself” or “I lost my temper.” It’s about a mind so disordered that moral understanding or lawful self-control was nonfunctional at the crucial moment. The standard is narrower, and tougher, than pop culture suggests. Rage, intoxication, and bad character aren’t insanity.
A Concrete Example: The “Aliens in the Car” Case
To make it real, Taylor recalls a defendant wearing a tinfoil hat, brandishing a knife, and insisting aliens sat beside him in the car. Prosecutors, defense, and police all recognized he had no idea his threats were wrong because his hallucination defined his reality. Under Taylor’s analysis, that’s a classic NGRI: a bona fide psychotic episode obliterating the capacity to appreciate wrongfulness or conform behavior. It’s exactly for these rare, extreme cases that the insanity defense exists – to keep criminal punishment tied to meaningful culpability, not mere outcome.
What NGRI Is Not: Drugs, Panic, and Post-Hoc Excuses
Cross tried a case where the defense floated insanity, but evidence suggested the behavior stemmed from LSD, not psychosis. The jury convicted. The lesson, as Cross and Emily Taylor emphasize, is that voluntary intoxication is not insanity. Nor is garden-variety impulsivity, depression, or personality disorder. Courts look for a qualifying mental disease or defect that truly wrecked the person’s grasp of right and wrong or ability to act lawfully. My take: this is why “everyone claims insanity and walks” is a myth – many juries are highly skeptical, and most claims fail.
What Happens After an NGRI Verdict
The toughest misconception is what comes after NGRI. Taylor explains you don’t just “walk.” A judge must decide (1) was the offense violent and (2) is the person currently mentally ill. In Texas (and similarly elsewhere), violent NGRI defendants who remain mentally ill are committed – often to a secure hospital – sometimes for years. Cross underscores that courts can commit only up to the maximum term the offense carried in prison; a 10-year max crime can yield up to 10 years of commitment. I share Taylor’s instinctive discomfort here: inpatient treatment is not punishment, yet public safety fears don’t vanish because the label is civil. The time cap can feel mismatched to risk in very serious cases.
The Kentucky Flashpoint and Public Outrage
Emily Taylor references a widely reported Kentucky case in which a man found NGRI in the killing of a child was later categorized nonviolent and released after roughly a decade, sparking outrage and calls from commentators like Matt Walsh to overhaul NGRI. Taylor and Cross don’t sensationalize it; they use it to show how post-verdict procedures vary and why communities feel betrayed when someone involved in a horrific act reenters society. The anguish is understandable. It’s also exactly why transparent, risk-focused release criteria – and ongoing supervision – matter as much as the verdict.
Judges, Experts, and Oddities of Procedure
One of the more eyebrow-raising details from Cross and Taylor: judges can sometimes overrule experts on competency – an odd power given the medical stakes. And when insanity is pled, hearsay doors fly open; experts can testify to what family members reported, what the defendant said, and more, because the defendant’s mental state is the central fact to be proved. To laypeople, that can feel like two different court systems. My view: it’s an uncomfortable quirk, but mental-state defenses live and die on context; the rules stretch to let juries see the full picture.
Reform Talk: Indefinite Commitment and Modern Asylums
Pressed by Emily Taylor on reform, Leslie Cross leans toward allowing indefinite commitment for truly dangerous, persistently ill individuals; she even nods to calls – once voiced by political figures – for more psychiatric beds and modern, humane asylums. Taylor shares the core worry: someone capable of catastrophic violence during psychosis shouldn’t simply “time out” and reappear without airtight clinical clearance. I agree: any credible reform should be risk-based, treatment-driven, and review-heavy, with due-process protections but no arbitrary clocks.
Why the Defense Still Matters
It’s tempting, after hard cases, to say “abolish NGRI.” Taylor and Cross resist that. The insanity defense marks a moral line: we punish the culpable, not the incoherent. A person who cannot comprehend wrongfulness or conform conduct because of true mental disease is not the legal equivalent of a calculating offender. My take: keep NGRI, but strengthen everything around it – independent evaluations, periodic risk reviews, community notification where appropriate, and victim participation in release hearings – so safety and legitimacy rise together.
Practical Truths Juries (and Viewers) Should Remember
Pulling together Emily Taylor’s and Leslie Cross’ insights, three truths deserve more airtime than any courtroom drama gives them. First, competency ≠ insanity; one is about today, the other about then. Second, NGRI is rare and demanding; juries don’t give it out like candy. Third, NGRI usually means treatment and supervision, not sunshine and sidewalks – though yes, some systems impose caps that feel out of step with public safety. The path forward isn’t to nix a centuries-old safeguard, but to align it with modern risk science, invest in forensic mental health, and ensure transparent oversight so the public’s sense of justice isn’t left behind.
A Defense Narrower Than Its Reputation
Emily Taylor and Leslie Cross offer a sober, practitioner’s tour of a defense many people only know from TV. They show it’s narrower than its reputation, harder to win than critics assume, and followed by far more structure than headlines suggest. And they highlight where policy is fraying: release standards, time limits, and capacity in our mental-health system. Keep the safeguard. Fix the scaffolding. That’s how you honor both the law’s moral core and the community’s rightful demand for safety.
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Ed spent his childhood in the backwoods of Maine, where harsh winters taught him the value of survival skills. With a background in bushcraft and off-grid living, Ed has honed his expertise in fire-making, hunting, and wild foraging. He writes from personal experience, sharing practical tips and hands-on techniques to thrive in any outdoor environment. Whether it’s primitive camping or full-scale survival, Ed’s advice is grounded in real-life challenges.