State v. June Gorthy(075009)

When a criminal defendant is found competent to stand trial under N.J.S.A. 2C:4-4, he or she has the autonomy to make strategic decisions at trial, with the advice of counsel. Among those decisions is the choice whether or not to assert the insanity defense, which absolves a defendant of criminal responsibility for his or her conduct, if at the time of such conduct the defendant “was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing was wrong.” N.J.S.A.…