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HB 1505

Prosecution of Defendants

2026 Regular Session Introduced by Meg Weinberger

Florida allows mental illness as a limited defense and treatment-based sentencing options, within the lowest permissible sentence, plus new malingering assessments in competence ev

Died in Criminal Justice Subcommittee
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Bill Summary · HB 1505

Summary of HB 1505 (2026) – Prosecution of Defendants (Florida)

Purpose and intent

  • The bill revises Florida’s framework for how mental illness or mental defect factors into criminal prosecutions and sentencing.
  • It shifts emphasis toward treating mental disease or defect as potential mitigation or a defense under specific circumstances, while clarifying that mental illness is not a blanket defense to prosecution.
  • It also modernizes assessments of mental competence and introduces explicit use of a “malingering” evaluation in competence determinations.
  • The bill creates a pathway to incorporate certain mental health treatment into a defendant’s sentence, while preserving the court’s ability to impose the lowest permissible sentence.

Key provisions and changes

1) Insanity defense and culpable mental state (amends s. 775.027)
- Establishes that:
- It can be a defense to a prosecution that, due to mental disease or defect, the defendant lacked the culpable mental state required for the charged offense.
- Mental disease or defect is not otherwise a defense to prosecution (i.e., no blanket insanity defense beyond the specified defense).
- Insanity is defined as:
- Having a mental infirmity, disease, or defect; and
- Resulting in either not knowing the act or its consequences, or not knowing that the act was wrong.
- Burden of proof for insanity remains on the defendant and must be proven by clear and convincing evidence.

2) Competence to proceed – mental health evaluations (amends s. 916.12)
- When evaluating competence, the examining expert must:
- Specifically address the defendant’s capacity to understand charges, understand penalties, and understand the adversarial process.
- Assess the ability to disclose pertinent facts, display appropriate courtroom behavior, and testify relevantly.
- Administer a clinically recognized instrument to determine malingering and include those results in the report, along with other relevant factors.

3) Mitigating circumstances – departure from lowest permissible sentence (amends s. 921.0026)
- Expands or clarifies that certain mitigating circumstances include the defendant’s need for treatment for a mental disorder (unrelated to substance abuse or physical disability) and the defendant’s amenability to treatment.
- This affects when a court can depart from the lowest permissible sentence under the Criminal Punishment Code, allowing consideration of mental-health-related treatment needs as a mitigating factor.

4) Mental health treatment for convicted defendants (new s. 921.245)
- Authorizes incorporating specialized mental health treatment into a convicted defendant’s sentence if the defendant needs such treatment and is amenable to it.
- However, this treatment cannot be used as a basis to depart from the lowest permissible sentence.
- The court may still consider the defendant’s mental disease or defect when imposing a sentence within the permissible range.

5) Effective date
- The act is set to take effect on October 1, 2026.

Who/what would be affected

  • Criminal defendants in Florida, particularly those with mental illness or defects involved in the criminal process.
  • Courts and prosecutors, which would apply the updated standards for insanity defenses, competence evaluations, and sentencing considerations.
  • Defense attorneys and experts who perform mental-health evaluations and provide reports, given the requirement to assess malingering and related factors.
  • For sentencing, those eligible for treatment-based enhancements or mitigation under the updated statutory framework.

Procedural and timeline notes

  • Effective date: October 1, 2026.
  • The bill would alter how insanity defenses are raised and proven, how competence is evaluated (including malingering assessment), and how mental health treatment can factor into sentencing within the existing permissible range.
  • The act does not permit departures from the lowest sentence solely on the basis of treatment, but allows treatment to be incorporated within the sentence and considered as a mitigating factor within the permissible range.

Overall impact

  • The bill clarifies and expands the role of mental health considerations in prosecution and sentencing, while tightening the traditional insanity framework by requiring clear evidence and limiting its scope to specific circumstances.
  • It emphasizes clinically recognized malingering assessment in competence evaluations.
  • It creates a procedural path to provide mental health treatment as part of sentencing without allowing it to automatically increase or decrease the severity beyond the lowest permissible sentence.

Compiled from official sources — confirm details with the bill’s official record.

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