About

Richard J. Bonnie is a faculty member at the University of Virginia School of Law with affiliations to the Program in Public Policy and Regulation, the Center for Criminal Justice, the Health Law Program, and the Family Law Center. His expertise includes mental health law and policy, as evidenced by his co-authorship of the publication 'Don’t Arm People in a Mental Health Crisis,' which discusses firearm restrictions for individuals with serious mental illness. His work focuses on legal and policy issues surrounding mental health, public safety, and civil rights, contributing to debates on firearm background checks and mental health legislation. Bonnie's scholarship emphasizes the importance of legal frameworks in addressing complex social issues related to mental health and public safety.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Nursing
• Medicine
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Extreme Risk Protection Orders as Criminal Deflection and Diversion

  INQUIRY The Journal of Health Care Organization Provision and Financing · 2025-09-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The extreme risk protection order (ERPO) was conceived initially as a civil restraining order to temporarily suspend access to firearms for individuals behaving dangerously who are not otherwise legally barred from gun possession by a felony conviction or other gun-disqualifying record. In practice, however, ERPOs in many states are being applied in a range of different kinds of cases in conjunction with discretionary criminal law enforcement and prosecution, essentially as a tool of deflection or diversion from the criminal legal system. In this article, we develop a typology of the discretionary uses of ERPOs by police officers, prosecutors, and judges, in cases where an ERPO may be initiated as an alternative to arrest, a diversion from prosecution, a mitigating intervention to soften criminal charging and sentencing (reducing incarcerations), a concurrent legal intervention, or as a complementary tool for robust law enforcement. We illustrate the typology with case vignettes from Indiana, Washington, Virginia, and Florida. Although many ERPO petitions are initiated in response to suicide threats, with or without the presence of public risk, the article invites the question of whether, in some cases, ERPOs can serve effectively as a mechanism of deflection or diversion from the criminal legal system and suggests that future research should carefully examine both the process and outcome of ERPOs used in this way.

  PublisherDOI

• Brain Death/Death by Neurologic Criteria Guidance on Communication, Objections, Pregnancy, and Public Trust

  Neurology · 2025-11-04 · 1 citations

  article

  This position statement provides updated member guidance from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) regarding (1) communication with surrogate decision makers about brain death/death by neurologic criteria (BD/DNC), (2) management of surrogate decision-maker objections to BD/DNC, (3) the ethical considerations associated with BD/DNC determination in a pregnant person, and (4) enhancing public trust in BD/DNC. This position statement is intended to complement recommendations in the 2023 "Pediatric and Adult Brain Death/Death by Neurologic Criteria Consensus Guideline" published by the AAN, American Academy of Pediatrics, Child Neurology Society, and Society of Critical Care Medicine, as well as the 2021 AAN Code of Professional Conduct. It replaces the 2019 AAN position statement, "Brain death, the determination of brain death, and member guidance for brain death accommodation requests."

  PublisherDOI

• 4 Capital Sentencing and Mental Illness

  New York University Press eBooks · 2025-06-06

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Seizures, Driver Licensure, and Medical Reporting Update

  Neurology · 2025-03-12 · 5 citations

  articleSenior author

  This consensus position statement of the American Academy of Neurology, American Epilepsy Society, and Epilepsy Foundation of America updates prior 1994 and 2007 position statements on seizures, driver licensure, and medical reporting. Key consensus positions include the following: (1) in the United States, national driving standards promulgated through a system such as the Uniform Law Commission would reduce confusion and improve adherence with state driving standards; (2) state licensing criteria for medical conditions should be promulgated by regulations and guidelines based on enabling legislation rather than in statutes themselves and should be developed by medical advisory boards working in collaboration with departments of motor vehicles; (3) licensing criteria should be equitable, nondiscriminatory, objective, and compatible with comparable risks in other populations; (4) a minimum seizure-free interval of 3 months should ordinarily be required before driving in all cases and should be extended in individual cases based on review of favorable and unfavorable features by medical advisory boards; (5) individuals with exclusively provoked seizures attributable to provoking factors that are unlikely to reoccur in the future may not require a seizure-free interval before resuming driving; (6) individuals with previously well-controlled epilepsy who experience seizures due to short-term interruptions of antiseizure medications in the setting of hospitalization or practitioner-directed medication-titration may not require a seizure-free interval before driving once previously effective levels of antiseizure medications have been resumed; (7) patients and practitioners should pause driving during tapering and following discontinuation of an antiseizure medication if another such medication is not introduced; (8) individuals whose cognition or coordination is impaired due to medications used to prevent seizures should refrain from driving; (9) health care practitioners should be allowed but not mandated to report drivers who pose an elevated risk; but (10) neither a decision to report a patient suspected of being at elevated risk nor a decision declining to report a patient suspected of being at elevated risk should be subject to legal liability; (11) nations, states, and municipalities should provide alternative methods of transportation and accommodations for individuals whose driving privileges are restricted due to medical conditions.

  PublisherDOI

• Decriminalizing the Marijuana User: A Drafter's Guide

  University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The article does not discuss the arguments in favor of decriminalization, a matter which the author' and others have covered elsewhere. Nor does the article consider the even more difficult questions involved in a legislative decision to legalize the drug and authorize its distribution for nonmedical uses. International obligations, federal law, and current political realities preclude enactment of a regulatory approach toward the availability of marijuana, including any variant of the so-called alcohol model. Although a state conceivably could repeal its laws against cultivation and distribution of marijuana, including only the federal prohibitions in effect, such an overt departure from prevailing national sentiment seems unlikely. One must assume, for present purposes, that commercial activities will remain prohibited by state law.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Firearm Disqualification and Rights Restoration Among Adults with Mental Illness in Virginia.

  PubMed · 2025-09-03

  articleSenior author

  = 261) who lost and regained firearm eligibility, 14.6 percent had a subsequent arrest for a violent crime, 1.5 percent for a gun-involved crime. Regarding suicide, 1.5 percent of the restored group died of intentional self-inflicted injuries, half of those involving a firearm. The study provides evidence that firearm prohibitions were partially effective, especially when disqualifying records were reported to the background check database. Study findings give cause for modest concern for the safety consequences of gun rights restoration as practiced in one state.

  PublisherDOI

• A medico-legal perspective on postictal violence: A case study and systematic review of postictal delirium

  Epilepsy Research · 2024-07-02 · 1 citations

  review
  PublisherDOI

• The First Two Years of Virginia’s Substantial Risk Order

  Research Square · 2023-07-14

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Background. Gun violence is a public health crisis in the United States. Extreme risk protection orders, called substantial risk orders in Virginia, are a prevention tool that temporarily remove firearms from individuals at risk of harm to self or others. To date, no peer-reviewed papers have explored the use of substantial risk orders in Virginia. Methods. We reviewed risk order data from Virginia from July 1, 2020, to June 30, 2022. The risk order data included in this study was obtained from the Virginia State Police Criminal Justice Information Services Division. We calculated descriptive statistics for the number and type of risk order (in total and by locality), demographic variables (sex, race, and age), and incidence rates. Results. There were 281 emergency risk orders and 173 final risk orders between July 2020 and June 2022. Most risk order respondents were white males in their mid-to-late 30s. Fifty-eight of the 133 localities in our study reported at least one risk order. However, the ten localities that issued the greatest numbers of risk orders issued 73% of all emergency risk orders and 67.6% of all final risk orders. Across the 58 localities in our dataset, the average incidence of emergency risk orders was 3 per 100,000 people per year and the average incidence of final risk orders was 2 per 100,000 people per year. Conclusions. The risk order is a relatively new law in Virginia. Though many of the descriptive statistics we calculated in Virginia are similar to what we see in other states with this law, more time is needed to examine its impact on gun violence.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Gun violence among young adults with a juvenile crime record in North Carolina: Implications for firearm restrictions based on age and risk

  Preventive Medicine · 2022-09-30 · 6 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The University of Virginia’s Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2021-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter describes the collaboration between the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy at the University of Virginia and the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services in the Commonwealth. It is the longest running of the collaborations described in this book, having been in operation for nearly 50 years, and it involves activities in the areas of consultation on policy development, forensic training (including fellowships and other specialized training), public and professional education in mental health law, and the operation of a forensic assessment clinic. It serves as a national model, and many of the current leaders in mental health law and forensic psychiatry and psychology have received or provided training as part of this collaboration.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Matthew P. Kirschen

  305 shared

• Leon G. Epstein

  Lurie Children's Hospital

  268 shared

• Michael Rubin

  VA Salt Lake City Healthcare System

  246 shared

• Winston Chiong

  University Memory and Aging Center

  182 shared

• Ariane Lewis

  New York University

  133 shared

• Salvador Cruz‐Flores

  Texas Tech University

  126 shared

• Katharina M. Busl

  Florida College

  126 shared

• Daniel G. Larriviere

  Seattle University

  121 shared

Awards & honors

• Isaac Ray Award (1998) for contributions to forensic psychia…
• Thomas Jefferson Award (2007) from the University of Virgini…