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Committee holds HB 476 to study restoring narrow insanity defense; members cite capacity, public‑safety concerns
Summary
The House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee held HB 476, a bill to restore a narrowly tailored insanity defense for certain first‑degree felonies, and added it as an interim study item to address state hospital capacity and procedural questions.
Representative Carol Spackman Moss on Tuesday presented House Bill 476, a narrowly drawn proposal to restore a not‑guilty‑by‑reason‑of‑insanity defense for some defendants charged with first‑degree felonies, telling the committee the measure grew out of a local case in which a seriously mentally ill neighbor killed his parents while psychotic.
Mark Moffett of the Defense Lawyers Association co‑presented the bill and said it would expand Utah’s current mens rea‑only approach to include the classic inability to understand the nature and quality of an act or the wrongfulness of the act (a M'Naghten‑style standard). He described several limiting features: eligibility only for first‑degree felonies; diagnosis‑level limits to psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar I with psychotic features and PTSD with psychotic features; exclusion of…
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