I have recently came upon a completely new reason for a neuropsychological assessment - an application for a permanent stay in criminal proceedings. This apparently happens when there is a long delay between the alleged offence and the trial. We are talking quite a few decades, usually.
As the accused is usually quite elderly at this point, one of the important arguments lawyers use is the inadequate mental capacity of the accused to cope with the trial and to remember the circumstances of the matters alleged against him.
Interestingly there is a precedent (case of Littler), that says that the person does not have to have an impairment compared to age peers. They just need to experience a substantial difficulty, which can be entirely due to age.
That is an unusual twist to our usual assessments. I ended up comparing the person first to age peers, and then, in a separate results section, to an average younger adult. Fortunately, the patterns of results made the conclusion not too tricky, with no marked impairment in either case.
I'd be interested in how others would approach this assessment.
Cheers,
Izabela
