Ohio Court Denies Appeal Despite Claims of Mental Illness
Recent Cases in Law and Neuroscience, Curated by the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior and the Shen Neurolaw Lab with support from the Dana Foundation
On December 10, 2020, an Ohio appellate court denied Deshawn Maines’ appeal of his six-year sentence. Maines suffers from mental illness and contended that his background did not support the length of his sentence.
Maines was sentenced to six years after pleading guilty to a 2018 burglary. Maines’ case was initially assigned to the mental health docket, but Maines’ sanity evaluator found that although he “was suffering from a severe mental disease” that “may have added an impulsive quality to his behavior,” the mental illness did not prevent him from understanding the wrongfulness of his actions. Maines accepted the state’s plea offer.
During the sentencing hearing, the prosecution pointed to his criminal record, and a detective stated that he was “clearly was not a mental person in crisis.” The defense noted that Maines had been physically and sexually abused as a child and had suffered from mental health issues throughout his life. The trial court sentenced him to six years, saying, “Your mental illness is not an excuse. It’s not.”
Maines asserted that his sentence was not supported by the law and should be modified to probation. He contended that the sentence was unlawful because the court was aware of his background and mental illness prior to sentencing but informed him that it was “still considering probation.”
On appeal, the reviewing court upheld the sentence, finding it to be reasonably calculated and within the range of the law.
One judge concurred in the judgement but wrote a separate opinion to voice her concerns about the treatment of prisoners with mental illnesses. “Putting him in jail without properly addressing his mental health care is unbelievable. In this day and age, we know more about the brain and its control over behavior than ever before. Just because the justice system is weak in its understanding of the brain and its cognitive function does not mean that information is not available.” The concurring judge also cited brain science, saying, “brain science can scan the brain and determine damage to the executive function part of the brain, the limbic emotional part of the brain, and the primitive brain. We really can determine with today’s science that a person does not know the difference between right and wrong, if the executive function part of the brain is damaged.”
Citation: State v. Maines, 2020 WL 7252838
Key words: mental health, Ohio, executive function, mental illness
This post is the 69th post as part of an ongoing Center for Law, Brain & Behavior (CLBB) series tracking the latest developments in law and neuroscience cases. To see previous posts about recent cases, see the full case archive on the CLBB website. To see updates on legal scholarship, see the Neurolaw News, hosted by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. This project is made possible through support of the Dana Foundation.
