Criminal Defense: The Sleepwalking Defense

Sleep can be simply defined as "a reversible behavioral state of perceptual disengagement from and unresponsiveness to the environment" (Kryger, Roth & Dement). As far as the sleeping disorders are concerned, they involve the difficulties that are associated to sleeping. When an individual has difficulty in falling or staying asleep, falling asleep at wrong times, falling asleep unnecessarily, or shows other abnormal sleep behaviors, he/she is said to have a sleep disorder.

When a defendant is convicted of a crime, arrested, and stand trial there are multiple ways that they can defend themselves. The criminal justice system has a variety of types of criminal defenses that one should be familiar with, if ever in the position of being charged with an offense. Within this paper, I will be talking about seven different types of criminal defenses, starting with: insanity, automatism, duress, self defense, intoxication, necessity/ lesser harm, and mistake of fact.

The "Stand Your Ground" statute states that “a person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony” (Sherman). Many people will say that the “Stand your Ground” law is a great law that has diminished the crime rate, made people feel safer in their neighborhood and has given the people back the power to protect themselves and their loved ones from fatal danger. I would have to

To begin, what is the “Stand Your Ground Law”? Well many states such as: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia have stand your ground laws which state that individuals do not have to retreat before using force in a self- defense situation or many states have laws that are remarkably similar to stand your ground laws. Stand Your Ground laws started in 2005 when Florida was the first state that passed the stand your ground law which basically allowed individuals to stand their ground instead of fleeing or retreating if they believed

In 2012, Marissa Alexander went to trial for firing a warning shot against her abusive boyfriend. A year later, George Zimmerman went to trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin. Both Alexander and Zimmerman violated the “Stand Your Ground” law and they both were prosecuted by Angela Corey. Although Alexander did not kill anyone, she was found guilty and served three of her sixty-year sentence, while Zimmerman walked free. Was there racial discrimination in the ruling of these cases? It can be determined that race played a role in the ruling of these cases.

Credibility Statement: Having a sleep disorder, myself, I know how important it is to get the recommended sleep each night. According to Alina Bradford in the article "Sleep Paralysis: Causes, Symptoms & Treatment"(2017), Sleep Paralysis is described as the inability to move or speak immediately after waking up.

Cite and explain criminal defenses. How do the various defenses attack the prosecutor’s case? Criminal defenses are strategic arguments that attempt to challenge the prosecutor’s evidence. Each type of defense attacks a specific portion of the case and aims to have the evidence thrown dismissed. A very common defense used currently is the Affirmative Criminal defense, but that is not the only one.

In our modern society, many African American citizens have been suffering from racial oppression. The difficulties of blacks trying to undergo justice is overall, halting their lives and character as blacks. Understandably, many citizens have committed crimes to where a white citizen(s) or police officer have to intervene and take charge. Unquestionably, the stand your ground law is by far disregarded when trying to cultivate equity. The idea of abolishing race, the warrant of racism, remains illicit in our sociological imagination. Racial oppression is seen as a contribution to such difficulties, leaning toward the struggles of black youth. It seems as though, the actual physical death or the disintegration of one’s personal dignity plays a very big part in social issues such as stereotyping and racism.

I think the sleepwalker statue should be removed from the campus. The lifelike statue is an amazing artwork, but should not be on any college campus. The statue does not look presentable or appropriate for where it is now. The statue should have never been allowed to stay on the campus as long as it has; the creator of the statue did not ask for permission to place his statue on the campus. The statue should have been removed from the campus or sent to an art museum after students expressed they were uncomfortable with the statue. A petition was signed by more than 500 supporters to help the students’ argument to get rid of the “sleepwalker”. The statue might have been more acceptable at a college with both women and men.

In our county, state and federal correctional institutions across the United States, inmates are being imprisoned for awaiting trial, during trial or convicted for some crime. According to the Bureau of Justice (BJS, 2006), Fifty-six percent of inmates in a state prison and forty-five percent of inmates in a federal prison, suffer from or had a past of mental illness. In our American society, individuals who suffer from mental illness seem to be publicly perceived as a nuisance. This can be due to the fact that the media over the years consecutively scrutinized individuals who use the insanity defense in criminal trials. The insanity plea is negatively publicized if the defendant is using it in a high profiled case which their actions resulted in severe harm or death to another individual. In addition, the public perceives the use of this plea as a scapegoat for the defendant to avoid serving punishment in a penal environment. Mentally ill individuals, who are being civilly committed or charged with all levels of crimes, are being heavily prosecuted and sentenced into correctional facilities rather than psychiatric hospitals. This leads me to discuss the lack of treatment for patients in Bridgewater State Hospital (BSH) located in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. This three hundred and fifty bed facility houses Massachusetts most criminally insane. This facility is also use to evaluate patients/inmates for competency to stand trial and for those who get civilly

Sleepwalking can be very dangerous for the people sleeping and the people around them. There have been several cases of murder while sleepwalking that have gone to trial according to Murderous Dreams. Let us discuss whether sleepwalking is a valid defense for murder.

The typical sleepwalking episode begins about three hours after the individual has fallen deeply asleep and it will usually last about five to twenty minutes. During one of these episodes the sleepwalker's eyes are generally open. However, we don't think they can see their surroundings because they always seem to be completely unaware of the environment around them. They manage to show keen ability to navigate through their surroundings without serious harm. Less often than not you can expectt a sleepwalker to dress themselves, open doors, make a sandwich, or go to the bathroom without any problems. Unfortunately there is always the

Sleepwalking occurs during stages 3 and 4 of the sleep cycle, the deepest levels of sleep. This slow-wave sleep is normally characterized by synchronized EEG activity (4). This indicates that mental activity is very low during these stages of sleep. However researchers have shown that the EEG of a sleepwalker has diffuse, rhythmic, high-voltage bursts of delta activity associated with abrupt motor activity (1). This is very different from the EEG activity normally associated with slow-wave sleep. In addition to the EEG results, they found that there is a decrease in regional cerebral blood flow in the frontopariental cortices during sleepwalking (1). This indicates that sleepwalking is a dissociated state consisting of motor arousal and persisting mind sleep, which seems to arise from the selective activation of thalamocingulate circuits and the persisting inhibition of other thalamocortical arousal systems (3).

Sleepwalking is a sleep disorder effecting an estimated 10 percent of all humans at least once in their lives (1). This widespread phenomenon varies in its intensity and frequency. While most sleepwalking incidents are short and not dangerous, some can involve self-injury and are much more dangerous for the sleeper. Also, most interestingly, the disorder seems to stem from many different sources, not from one definable cause such as a chemical imbalance. While it is predominantly pre-adolescents who suffer from somnambulism, it is also observed in adults, although the frequency and severity of incidents increase with age. The source of the disorder was once thought to be entirely psychological and an extension of

Night terrors, nightmares, and sleepwalking are all cases that fall into sleep disorders called parasomnias. Parasomnias are disruptive sleep disorders that can occur during arousal from either rapid eye movement or even non-rapid eye movement. Children from the age’s four to twelve of ages experience night terrors.