Trial of love| Taennie

22.

Black pumps walked across the floor as Jennie confidentially walked into the lecture hall, oozing with charisma and aura. She stood out for all the right reasons.

Many knew her in this university, the famous law student from New Zealand with a presidential award.

People's heads turned as she walked in and took her stand on the podium.

Students lined the seats. No one wanted to miss the legendary college lecture by a student, not even a professor.

Today, Jennie was leading a seminar, an optional attendance one of course, but the whole hall was completely full.

She stood there as she faced the crowd, a stoic expression over her own.

The lights shut off as the stage light and the projector was turned on, as the seminar was signalled to begin.

"Hello everyone, it's nice to see so many of you. I'm Jennie, Kim Jennie and I will be leading today's seminar" her voice echoed through the hall as she had to wear a small mic to make sure everyone could here.

"Now, for those of you at the back who can't see the words on the slides, don't worry, it's just images. They will be quite large as well, and all you need to focus on is my words" Jennie voiced out as she walked away from the podium with a laser pointer in her hand.

"All right, let's start" she slightly nodded to Jungkook and Sama who were operating the presentation.

She faced back to the crowd and pointed a laser at one of the images.

"'Memory and the law' that is today's topic. I'm excited about this topic, because I get to give yet another one of my lawyerly "it depends" answers." She said with a smile, finally showing any sort of expression.

"When we people who have no memory about a conviction, many have argued that those people should be left, and many argue they should not. But if we were to take a legal approach, this is what happens." She began, noticing how students were scrambling to take notes.

"When you talk about avoiding prison, that typically means that an individual is found to be not guilty by reason of insanity, or legally lacking in capacity to be responsible for one's crimes. In such cases, a defendant is not sent to prison for their crimes because at the time the crime was committed, the defendant lacked the requisite mental state to commit a criminal act." She explained, walking forward

"An otherwise sane and minimally intelligent person who committed a criminal act but suffered a head injury after  would be unlikely to be successful in arguing that he or she cannot be found responsible for his or her acts, because there would be no dispute that at the time the criminal acts were committed, the accused understood the nature of his/her acts.

A subsequent head injury would not create an issue of the accused's mental state at the time the crimes were committed.

Therefore, only real legal issue for the accused would be one of competency to stand trial, which is a distinct concept from insanity/capacity.

See The Difference Between "Competency" and "Sanity" . There is some variation between jurisdictions, but in the United States, the case of Dusky v. United States, 362 U.S. 402 (1960), serves as the modern baseline.

Dusky concerned a man who was plainly mentally ill, and was suffering from uncontrolled schizophrenia at the time of his trial for kidnapping and rape.

He was convicted and sentenced to 45 years, but sought to have his conviction reversed on the grounds that due to his schizophrenia, he could not assist with his own defense, and was therefore not competent to stand trial at the time of his original proceeding.