Like many who anticipated Joker: Folie à Deux, I was intrigued by the concept behind its title, which is French for “madness of two”. Folie à Deux refers to a rare mental disorder where delusions are “transmitted” from one individual to another. Another definition is “the presence of the same or similar delusional ideas in two persons closely associated with one another”. This suggests that folie à deux occurs between two close individuals, like a couple or siblings, in the case of the Papin sisters.
Born in Northwestern France, Christine and Léa Papin murdered their employer’s wife and daughter. While on trial for their crime, both sisters lived in constant worry of the other while separated and this caused Christine to become distressed when separated from Léa. The court was inclined to sentence the siblings to death, but after looking at the facts and circumstances of the case, it found that both sisters were suffering from folie à deux.
Christine’s dominant personality had influenced Léa’s passivity, leading to shared delusions and criminal conduct. Further research on this subject matter revealed a plethora of international case laws and judicial precedents relating to folie à deux. As curious and fascinating as this may be, it poses a central question: what would happen if this crime occurred under Nigeria’s criminal system?
In Nigeria, it is very rare for any criminal relying on defenses based on mental disorders to succeed. This is because the legal facilities to make this happen are the country’s retrograde and harsh correctional facilities where mental conditions deteriorate unchecked.
Take, for example, a 2015 study of individuals in correctional facilities in Port-Harcourt, which showed that 37% of inmates were suffering from depression. This correlates with a similar study carried out by Osasona and Koleoso (2015) in a correctional facility in Benin City where the authors found that 72.6% of the inmates were depressed.
Part of the problem lies in the outdated terminology like “unsound mind” to describe persons suffering from mental health disorders, as contained in most legislations in Nigeria that guide criminal proceedings, trivialising the very idea of mental health and highlights the impossibility of a case of folie à deux being judiciously adjudicated upon.
This point is bolstered by the first paragraph of Section 28 of the Criminal Code of 1916 and Section 51 of the Penal Code of 1960, the primary legislations that govern criminal proceedings in the Southern and Northern parts of Nigeria respectively and form the basis of determining criminal responsibility. These provisions only exempt offenders where mental illness deprives them of understanding, control, or awareness of their actus reus (guilty act) and mens rea (guilty mind). Both provisions presuppose that the highest form of mental health disorder a person may suffer from is insanity, which, according to Black’s Law Dictionary, is defined as “Any mental disorder severe enough that it prevents a person from having legal capacity and excuses the person from criminal or civil responsibility”.
Particularly, the second paragraph of Section 28, which is not provided for in the Penal Code, states that “A person whose mind, at the time of his doing or omitting to do an act, is affected by delusions on some specific matter or matters, but who is not otherwise entitled to the benefit of the foregoing provisions of this section, is criminally responsible for the act or omission to the same extent as if the real state of things had been such as the delusion induced him to believe to exist.” The summary of the provision is that where a criminally accused is found, by the court, to be delusional when committing the offence, the defence of insanity would not avail him of his offence, and such a person faces the full wrath of the law.
This framework severely limits the possibility of folie à deux as seen in the case of Guobadia v. State (2004) 6 NWLR (pt. 869) pg. 360, where the Supreme Court held that “evidence of insanity tendered by an accused person himself is suspect and is not usually taken seriously.”This is re-echoed in R v. Eriyamremu (1959) W.R.N.L.R. 270, where the court rejected the defence of insanity and held that the defendant was not suffering from any mental illness and that it was induced by the defendant’s worship of juju and witchcraft.
Furthermore, in Edoho v. State, where the court rejected the defence of insanity pleaded by the defendant, the court remarked that “…if the belief in witchcraft or juju produces a state of insanity or delusion, then, the criminal responsibility of the accused person will be measured not by the tenets of his belief, but by the objective standard of the law relating to such defence viz insanity, delusion or provocation as the case may be.”
These cases and statutes show that under current Nigerian law, persons suffering from folie à deux are likely to be treated as insane, and both parties would likely be held equally criminally responsible, as Nigerian courts are steeped in the binary logic of sane versus insane. Worse still, the delusional state of the passive party, whose mental faculties is weakened, would not qualify as insanity unless it fits the narrow legal test. Here, the law risks punishing individuals who may not be fully culpable.
Beyond the law, most Nigerians view mental health disorders, including delusions, to be a symptom of metaphysical attacks on a person and this can lead to underdiagnosis or misdiagnosis of the peculiar symptoms of folie à deux which, according to Dewhurst and Todd, are “(i) definite evidence that the partners had been in intimate association; (ii) a high degree of commonality in the content of delusion, although the formal psychosis may differ; and (iii) unequivocal evidence that the partners share, support, and accept each other’s delusions.”
Two things stand in the way of the admissibility of folie à deux in Nigeria’s courts: a judge being convinced that two people can suffer from the same delusion, which caused them to commit a crime, and not sum up their condition as insanity, AND the lack of adequate resources to finance and bolster mental health care in Nigeria. The latter is exemplified by Section 7 of the National Mental Health Act (2021), an Act to establish the mental health services department to provide for the enhancement and regulation of mental health services in Nigeria.
It provides that the coffers of Mental Health Fund is made up of “(a) voluntary contributions to the Fund from individuals, organisations and the private sector ; (b) money approved by National Assembly for payment into the Fund ; (c) grants from bilateral and multilateral sources; and (d) money from any other source approved by the Ministry responsible for Finance.” As admirable as these provisions are, the ambiguity of the proviso is appalling, as a thorough perusal of the Act would show that the procedure of filling up the Fund is not made known, meaning that it is subject to the whims and devices of the government. More than this, subsection B provides that money earmarked by the National Assembly forms a source of money for the Fund. However, since 2001, the National Budget has always allocated less than 7% of the total budget to health.
Though the 2023 National Budget is evidence of the country’s commitment to the health sector by its ₦1.16trillion, this only amounted to a 5.31% allocation of the 2023 budget to health, betraying the country’s stance under the Abuja Declaration to further the growth of the country’s health sector.
Though rare in Nigeria, a lack of provision for criminal acts committed by delusions, shared or otherwise, is evidence of the insufficiency and inadequacy of our criminal system to navigate the intersection of law, psychiatry, and culture. To move forward, it is strongly recommended that the first point of reform is funding to hire forensic psychiatric experts who can help with conducting pre-trial assessments to test fitness to stand trial and criminal responsibility, instead of relying on general psychiatrists.
Additionally, the lack of codified standards to evaluate the psychiatric states, like folie à deux, in criminal proceedings means that folie à deux, if recognised, can be used as a means to avoid criminal responsibility. Where symptoms of folie à deux are suspected, assessments like relational analysis, examining the dynamics between the accused persons, and a clear, procedural framework for when and how psychiatric evaluations should be triggered during such criminal trials would be very helpful.
Judicial training programs that focus on the fundamentals of psychiatric diagnosis, important to criminal law, interpretation of psychiatric reports, and the cultural and relational context in which a psychiatric disorder like folie à deux may arise, may prove useful in closing the vulnerability that comes with over-medicalising and under-recognising psychiatric realities such as folie à deux.
These would apply to both judges, whose duty of adjudication must be discharged effectively, and the lawyers of persons suffering from folie à deux. Ultimately, Nigeria can’t continue in its ignorance and punishment of what it does not understand. As global research on mental disorders continues to reveal a lot of factors that form criminal intent, Nigerian criminal law needs to respond to protect society and preserve justice.
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