Thesis on "Define and Discuss Criminal Commitment and Insanity During the Commission of a Crime"

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criminal commitment and insanity during the commission of a crime.

Criminal commitment and insanity

When a defendant is found not guilty by reason of insanity, the public often cries out in outrage. However, some people are found guilty and not criminally insane, despite the fact they commit barbarous actions that only an apparently insane individual would commit. The reason for this apparent contradiction is that the legal definition of insanity is different from either the colloquial definition of insanity (as in: 'you're crazy!') and the clinical, psychological definition of insanity. A person can be mentally unbalanced, yet still able to differentiate from right and wrong, and thus legally sane. Although it can be difficult to determine criminal insanity in a justice system "largely designed to weigh facts and evidence," the insanity defense is largely considered a necessary mercy (Martin 1998). State of mind is a factor when considering many crimes and punishments. Additionally, a criminal punishment is an ineffective deterrent for an individual unable to discern right from wrong. If someone believes that they have killed a devil, for example, or a terrorist, because they are insane, jail time will not cause them to repent of the errors of their ways. The nature of the defendant and his or her state of mind and character is always questioned in criminal cases, even on a basic level of humanity "a child who accidentally starts a fire shouldn't be treated as an arsonist," for example (Martin 1998).

The insanity defense is "a plea that defendants are not guilty because they lacked the mental capacity to realize that they committed a wrong or appreciate why it was wrong" (Martin 1998). It is different than the question of whether a defendant is competent to stand trial. The insanity defense concerns the defendant's state of mind when he or she was committing the crime: for example, a woman could have committed a crime while suffering from postpartum psychosis but because she has recovered, she is competent to stand trial, yet is pleading the insanity defense. In contrast, a Mafia boss could be incompetent to stand trial because of dementia, but not plead insanity as a defense regarding the criminal activity he allegedly directed in his mentally competent youth (Martin 1998).

The definition of criminal insanity originated in British common law. In 1843, Daniel M'Naghten, a woodworker, believed he was the target of a conspiracy involving the Pope and British Prime Minister Robert Peel. "M'Naghten traveled to 10 Downing Street to ambush Peel, but mistakenly shot and killed Peel's secretary. During the ensuing trial, several psychiatrists testified M'Naghten was delusional. A jury agreed, declaring him not guilty by reason of insanity. The public howled in outrage and, a year later, a panel of British judges set forth the legal standard that has been used for 150 years...The M'Naghten rule says defendants may be acquitted only if they labored 'under such defect of reason from disease of the mind' as to not realize what they were doing or why it was a crime. Some call it the 'right-wrong' test (Martin 1998). For example, a mother might she was insane because she believed that she was saving her children by killing them, as a result of post-partum psychosis.

Attempts have been made to refine the M'Naghten rule. The Durham rule was a precedent established to refine M'Naghten and held that "an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease," and was a looser test designed to incorporate more scientific knowledge about the basis of mental illness (Durham rule, 2009, Law Dictionary). But as a result of difficulties of interpretation and drawing a line of causality between an act as a product of a mental illness, "the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously rejected the Durham rule, " and "replaced it with a standard developed by the American Law Institute: A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a… READ MORE

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