This case dealt with the right to choose how to live, specifically regarding the right to refuse a blood transfusion. Miss T had been raised by her mother, a Jehovah’s witness, but was never baptized into the faith and had told her boyfriend and father that she was not a Jehovah’s Witness. She was 34 …Read more

The petitioner, David Riggins, challenged his criminal convictions on the basis that his liberty and right to due process of the law, as protected by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, were violated when the State of Nevada forcibly administered him with an antipsychotic drug during his trial. In November 1987, Riggins …Read more

Roger Anderson (son of Margareta) was taken into public care on a provisional basis. When he started school, it was found that he lacked social skills and maturity. Margareta rejected suggestions made by the Social welfare authorities. Roger stopped attending school in December 1984. Margareta and Roger moved to an address unknown to the authorities …Read more

F was a 36 year old adult woman who suffered from a disability that left her with the mental capacity of a young child.  She had been a voluntary in-patient at a mental hospital since the age of 14, where she received treatment and enjoyed a great degree of freedom of movement. Although the facility …Read more

Eve was a mentally disabled young woman suffering from a condition that made it extremely difficult for her to communicate with others. She was not capable of understanding the consequential relationship between intercourse, pregnancy and birth.  Mrs. E, her mother, was concerned that Eve might innocently become pregnant, which would mean that she, an elderly …Read more

The Appellant, Ford, was convicted of murder in a Florida state court and sentenced to death in 1974. There was no suggestion that he was incompetent at the time of the offense, at trial, or at sentencing. However in 1982, Ford began to manifest gradual changes in behavior, which, based on a psychiatric examination, indicated …Read more

The applicant, a father of a mentally handicapped woman, found himself unable to institute criminal proceedings against an individual who had sexually assaulted his daughter due to a gap in the domestic criminal laws of the Netherlands, which required the victim to file the complaint herself. Although the victim was more than sixteen years of …Read more

Winterwerp brought an action against the Netherlands following his detention in a psychiatric hospital. Winterwerp was committed to a psychiatric hospital in accordance with the emergency procedure then in force under the Act on State Supervision of Mentally Ill Persons. Six weeks later, during Winterwerp’s emergency detention, his wife applied for his provisional detention at …Read more

Petitioner Rouse brought this habeas corpus action alleging that he had been unlawfully committed to a hospital for the mentally ill because he had not voluntarily and knowingly introduced the insanity defense or authorized his attorney to do so during his trial on a misdemeanor charge of carrying a weapon without a license. When he …Read more

In 1962, Appellant Rouse was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital pursuant to D.C. Code § 24-301 after being found not guilty by reason of insanity of carrying a dangerous weapon, a misdemeanor for which the maximum imprisonment was one year. Rouse challenged his commitment on grounds of habeas corpus; he had been confined for …Read more