Send us a textMark Mahoney reveals his groundbreaking work as possibly the only attorney in North America exclusively dedicated to defending individuals with autism spectrum disorder who face criminal charges. Through years of specialized practice, he shares crucial insights about how the criminal justice system fundamentally misunderstands autism.• Autism directly affects social understanding and learning of unwritten rules• People with autism often commit crimes without understanding they're doing anything wrong• Most prosecutors, judges, and attorneys lack basic knowledge about autism• Many clients have normal or high IQs but social skills equivalent to a 3-year-old• The criminal justice system treats autism cases as standard situations despite DOJ guidelines• Organizations meant to advocate for autism often avoid addressing criminalization issues• Prevention through explicit teaching of social and sexual boundaries is crucial• Careful selection of attorneys who understand autism is essential for families• Mahoney's cases show 40% success at keeping clients off sex offender registry• Zero percent recidivism among his nearly 200 clients demonstrates these are not typical offendersIf you know anyone who would like to share their story, send them to TonyMantor.com. Tell everyone everywhere about Why Not Me, The World, because you are not alone in this world.https://tonymantor.comhttps://Facebook.com/tonymantorhttps://instagram.com/tonymantorhttps://twitter.com/tonymantorhttps://youtube.com/tonymantormusicintro/outro music bed written by T. WildWhy Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Chapter 1: What is the main focus of Mark Mahoney's legal practice?
He is currently the only lawyer in North America and possibly worldwide, who dedicates his practice almost exclusively to represent individuals with autism spectrum disorder. He possesses a vast knowledge of information to share with us today. It's both an honor and a pleasure to have him here. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, it's an interesting project you've got there. I appreciate that.
If you would, give us a little information about your practice.
Chapter 2: How did Mark Mahoney become an advocate for autism in the legal system?
Where I am, doing this almost exclusively about a decade ago, the thing that has always struck me, I started getting calls from people all over the country. I was surprised there weren't any other lawyers doing what I'm doing, certainly not to the extent that I'm doing it. There are some who say that they... handle these cases, but when you track it down, they're not really doing a lot of it.
Or it's hard to find people doing more than one case. And there's some who say that they have a practice involving this, but I've reached out to some of these people and they're not really telling me anything about what they do, actually. Because I'd like to liaison with people. I'd like to know I could refer cases to people because I am just overwhelmed with this.
You've been in this business for a long time. How did you become an advocate for autism and mental health within your practice?
I had a basic criminal, somewhat normal criminal practice. I had some very large cases. Starting out early in my career, I did a lot of homicides and I got involved in a serial killer case when I was only like four years out of law school. I've had cases where trial lasts six months.
And then what happened is that back in 2007, I got a call from a very well-known lawyer in New York City asking for my help on a case involving somebody who was charged with child pornography. in Rochester, New York, which is in our federal district.
I actually had written a lot about scientific issues and had a lot of cases that had scientific and mental health questions and things, a lot of syndromal behavior kind of issues, battered spouse syndrome, battered child syndrome, neonaticide, which is the dumpster baby kind of syndrome. So I had actually done an unusual amount of cases that involved
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Chapter 3: What challenges do individuals with autism face in the criminal justice system?
something that was basically called syndromal, which has a very special thinking that comes into play when you have something that reflects a known pattern of behavior because it gives you some very powerful tools in figuring out how to handle those cases. Anyway, I didn't know anything about Asperger's syndrome, really, when I first got this, because the lawyer said it was Asperger's syndrome.
But what happened is I started researching this, and there wasn't that much on this at the time. There were some articles in the research literature where clinicians were talking about raising this sort of question. Was there a connection between autism and crime? And then they would recite some cases where somebody had autism. It might be an arson case or a threat case or a stalking case.
And then they'd say, more research has to be done on whether there's a connection between autism and crime. And you got a lot of cases like that where people were putting their hats in the ring and touching on this. And some people who were forensic psychiatrists and psychologists offering ideas about how autism may relate to competence or criminal responsibility or insanity.
But nobody really was saying, how do you defend these people? What's involved in defending these individuals? I find that rather dissatisfying. So the first paper I did to explain what a lawyer really needs to do, what kinds of things you need to do in these cases. One was published, a book that Fred Volkmar edited, and Fred was head of the Yale Child Study Center.
He edited this book called The Handbook of Autism Spectrum Disorders and the Law, and had several authors in this book. That was in 2021. There I really outlined in a way that any lawyer should be able to understand the kinds of components there are to defending these cases.
And I've been lecturing on this, but I'm still, I gotta say, I'm really quite surprised that I haven't found anybody that really wants to dig into this and make this something that they want to spend more time on. The whole
problem as being so outrageous and the resistance that I would see by a lot of prosecutors and the ignorance about autism and disabilities in general, but especially autism in the entire system from the police to prosecutors to defense attorneys to probation officers and judges and the derelict way these individuals are treated in prison. There's absolutely nothing being done.
for them in federal prisons or state prisons, except there's a movement in Pennsylvania where they had a facility where they really tried to have it address people with disabilities. So I guess that's a long answer above how I got into it, but also why I can't get out of it, because this is a fascinating area.
What do you think can be done? to get the judges, the DAs, and the defense attorneys all on the same page. I've talked with judges. I've talked with lawyers. I've talked with therapists. I've talked with so many people within this business. They all have their ideas. How can we get everyone to put their heads together to make this a better system for everyone?
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Chapter 4: What can be done to improve understanding of autism among legal professionals?
This is all about the internet.
Right.
In almost every area where we see people with autism charged with crimes, people say that it's common for people with autism to be charged with arson. I've never had one of those cases. But we know there's inappropriate touching that can happen or stalking that can happen.
We have this whole situation where there's this whole internet experience that these individuals are exposing them to all these influences or temptations or things of interest, but they approach it without any social judgment. And again, I should say, we don't say that everybody with autism is going to be committing a crime.
We don't say that everybody who has autism doesn't understand these things. But there's a significant percentage of individuals on the spectrum who, because of a very particular aspect that is very common to everybody with autism, which is this problem with what's called social visual engagement.
This is this problem that actually you really don't see too many people really understanding when they start talking about crimes. And certainly forensic psychiatrists and psychologists don't seem to really understand this research. But typically developed people learn about the social world and its rules and its boundaries and its taboos is through social interaction starting in infancy.
where we learn to understand other people by looking at their faces and their eyes and their expressions and body language. And we learn not just about things they say, but the hidden meaning behind words, the things that people say that they don't, the things they mean when they don't say it. That's the way typically developed people learn, but they don't understand that's how they learned it.
People think that they know right and wrong because somehow it's hardwired in our brain, where they're really learning it in culture and they're learning it in social interaction.
You've got a whole group of cohort of individuals who are on the autism spectrum who have their brain directing their attention away from the eyes and faces and the social elements of the world who don't learn these rules that everybody knows. So the problem with autism is that it's counterintuitive for typically developed people.
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Chapter 5: How successful is Mark Mahoney in defending clients with autism?
They can't imagine why somebody who might be bright, or maybe they've gone to high school or college, have a graduate degree, or they can drive a car, or they were able to maintain a job. How is it possible that they don't understand these rules and boundaries that everybody knows? Simon Baron Cohen, who's a very well-known world expert who wrote the book Mind Blindness,
Early on, back in the late 90s, I think, and early 2000s, edited three volumes of essays under the global title of Understanding Other Minds.
You bring up the word global. I speak with people all over the world on my podcast. Everyone has the same issues, no matter where they are in the world.
It's a very big problem. Autism globally, we have this tension between is there a medical model? Is there a social model? How do we talk about autism? And we have obviously autism self-advocates and questions of what language we use, person first, identity first, and so on.
Common denominator for me, whatever kind of construct you have, what I'm concerned about is the hundreds of people with autism who are in prison or convicted of crimes because there are boundaries out there that they just don't understand intuitively and nobody has told them. That's the beginning of the answer to your question about what do we do?
We need to get people to really understand that this population can have somebody who can look normal. They can talk like a professor. They can have skills that are terrific, yet they may appear to lack empathy. It's often a very misunderstood question. They're not lacking in empathy as far as caring, but there's something called cognitive empathy.
which is perceiving, looking at somebody and understanding their mental state. Or as Udo Frith, the very famous German autism expert would say, cognitive empathy is you laugh, so I laugh. But that doesn't mean you understand really what's going on in your state of mind. What do you think is needed? We need to have people learn that this is a brain difference.
That people with autism may do things that appear to be deviant, but without the deviant mindset that Congress or legislators expect on the part of people doing these crimes. They assume that everybody knows these rules, so they don't make it a requirement in, say, sex offenses that somebody know it's wrong.
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Chapter 6: Why is autism different from other conditions in legal contexts?
How do we change this mindset so that it gets better for everyone?
There's a lot of education that needs to happen. Now, interestingly, the Department of Justice back in 2016 and 2017, the Civil Rights Division under Vinita Gupta, who was the head of the Civil Rights Division, issued a number of policy directives saying to prosecutors, look, you have an obligation to take disabilities into account.
And that diversion from the criminal process and avoiding unnecessary incarceration is of individuals who are disabled is something that would be an appropriate accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
A year and a half ago, Merrick Garland hosted a conference in Washington where Bryan Stevenson, a famous civil rights lawyer and death penalty lawyer, spoke about the need to avoid criminalization of disabilities. So we have this top level recognition, at least on the civil side of the Department of Justice. which says, look, disabilities are different. We have to treat them differently.
And in fact, by treating them the same as other people, that's really discrimination. Having done now close to 200 cases of people with autism charged with crimes in state and federal court, I have never seen a prosecutor who is aware of these pronouncements. There's no trickle down of this. On the other hand, we have this very hydraulically pressured system in state and federal court.
They'll call anybody that looks at child pornography a child predator. Prosecutors will campaign on, they'll have press releases every time some person is arrested with child pornography and they'll talk about child predators. We put them on the sex offender registry, which is complete annihilation of that individual. It's the civil death penalty.
And it has very little benefit in terms of preventing any kind of offenses, especially, say, child pornography offenses. What good does it do to have somebody on the registry? How does that prevent them from looking at images on their computer? So there are these things that make people feel good.
Punishments, putting people in jail for a long period of time, shaming them on the registry, driving them out of apartment complexes, that sort of thing makes people feel good. But what good does it do
How do we get past the feel-good part of it and into the doing something about it part?
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