The Specificity of Evaluations of Competency to Proceed

Abstract

The legal system's expectation of forensic experts evaluating criminal defendants for competency to proceed to trial is that their reports will offer global and conclusive opinions on whether defendants are competent. Competency evaluations involve estimates of defendants’ capacities to do a variety of acts, and the evaluator is seldom in a position to anticipate which of those acts a defendant will actually be required to perform. The authors argue that, except in cases in which the defendant is so impaired that he could not be expected to perform any of the required acts, a competency report should not offer global opinions on competency, but rather address the defendant's apparent capacity to perform each of the acts which he might be called upon to perform.