Jacqueline is diagnosed with epilepsy two years after receiving her driver's license. While driving to a concert, Jacqueline suffers an epileptic seizure and crashes into another vehicle, injuring both of its occupants. Can Jacqueline be convicted of a crime in this situation?

Being convicted or not will depend on what the expert can determine.

Explanation:

It is a necessity that jurisprudence attributes to the individualization of each case in order to assess how the disease has influenced the psychism of the person, since two cases can occur:

-The crises have occurred with a frequency such that over time they have modified the personality in the sense of irritability or violence, so that the ability to know and understand are completely annulled or affected. Given this, the situation of transient mental disorder would not be applicable, since the requirements requested by the jurisprudence would not be fulfilled and that of psychic alteration that would prevent knowing the illegality of the fact or acting in accordance with that understanding based on the fact that it is a question of a persistent disease and that the alteration of the personality or the cognitive damage, in case of ensuing, will be hardly reversible.

-In the case of an epilepsy clearly diagnosed and once credited that the infraction has been made in the interparoxistic period, this has not produced any alteration in any of the psychic spheres of the person. In such a case, some modification can hardly be necessary unless a medical incident was reported in favor of care.

In any case, not only will the psychiatric examination be important, but the use of complementary testological, personality, intelligence and organic tests, as well as neurophysiological and imaging studies.

In conclusion, although it is a disease of a persistent nature, initially, the epileptic is able to govern by itself, that is, to govern its person. Now, we will be at the individualized case and proceed to the study of how the disease has influenced over the years, assess whether the repetition of the crisis has caused a disintegration of the personality, or a cognitive problem, so that the The patient has lost the ability to know the scope and significance of the civil acts performed. Therefore, he is a patient who only in exceptional cases should be civilly disabled.