House Judiciary hears proposal to narrow 'guilty except for insanity' standard after Oregon Supreme Court ruling

The Oregon House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday heard public testimony on House Bill 2471, a proposal to tighten the state's "guilty except for insanity" (GEI) standard by requiring that the qualifying mental disorder be independently sufficient to cause the defendant's incapacity.

Prosecutors said the bill would reverse a June 2024 Oregon Supreme Court interpretation and prevent defendants with co-occurring nonqualifying disorders from accessing GEI. Melissa Marrero, senior deputy district attorney from Multnomah County, testifying for the Oregon District Attorneys Association, told the committee: "Without a change, the guilty except for insanity defense is gonna be blown wide open and widely available where it otherwise would not be." She said the Mizer decision has allowed any contribution from a qualifying disorder to suffice for GEI and that the ODAA's red-line would return Oregon to the prior independent-sufficiency standard.

Defense and mental-health advocates urged more caution. Maylee Browning, legislative director for the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, summarized Mizer 4 and the court's reasoning: "The lack of capacity must be a result of the mental disease or defect...the mental disease or defect may combine with another condition to cause the lack of capacity and the mental disease or defect need not be sufficient on its own to cause the lack of capacity." Lisonbee Knight, lead mental-health attorney at the Public Defender's Office in Eugene, said the psychiatric-security model provides guaranteed access to care for some defendants and called the state's mental-health system "in crisis," warning that narrowing GEI could cut people off from treatment: "The PSRB demonstrates extreme success, considering that their recidivism rate is less than 1 percent."

Proponents argued independent sufficiency is administrable for evaluators and preserves public safety by ensuring the Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB) and Oregon State Hospital are not overburdened with persons whose primary impairment is a nonqualifying condition. Marrero said forensic evaluators are familiar with the term "independent sufficiency" and that the proposed language is easier to apply than attempting to apportion percentage contributions among co-occurring disorders.

Opponents countered that independent sufficiency is a legal, not clinical, test and that clinical evaluators cannot reliably apportion causation between overlapping disorders. Knight said adopting that test would effectively exclude people with co-occurring personality or substance-use disorders even when they have a qualifying disorder: "If we adopt this test of independent sufficiency, then we are effectively excluding every person with a co-occurring personality disorder or or substance use disorder from being able to raise a GEI." Browning asked the committee to convene broader subject-matter experts, including forensic evaluators, before altering the statutory standard.

The committee took public testimony and did not vote on the bill. Committee Chair Cropp closed the hearing on House Bill 2471 and moved to the next item on the agenda.

The record of the hearing includes written red-line language supplied by the Oregon District Attorneys Association and written testimony for multiple witnesses; no committee action was taken at the hearing.