Insanity defense
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Template:CrimDef In a criminal trial, the insanity defenses are possible defenses by excuse, via which defendants may argue that they should not be held criminally liable for breaking the law, as they were mentally ill at the time of their allegedly "criminal" actions. It is important to note that the legal definition of "insane" is quite different from the psychiatric definition of "mentally ill." Also, the definition of insanity varies among jurisdictions.
The insanity defense is still in use in the United States, while most Commonwealth countries have moved to a mental disorder defence.
The insanity defense is available in most jurisdictions that respect human rights and have a rule of law, though the extent to which it can or should be applied may differ widely between jurisdictions, e.g. as in cases involving the battered woman syndrome where self-defense is not available, a defendant may be forced to choose between an insanity defense and provocation.
This defense is based on a principle that punishment is only reasonable if the defendant is capable of distinguishing right and wrong. A defendant making this argument might be said to be pleading "not guilty by reason of insanity" (NGRI).
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Psychiatric treatment
Those found to have been not guilty by reason of insanity are generally then required to undergo psychiatric treatment; except in the case of temporary insanity (see below). Defendants found not guilty by reason of insanity are generally placed in a mental institution. Unlike defendants who are found guilty of a crime, they are not institutionalized for a fixed period, but rather they are held within the institution until authorities determine that they are no longer a threat. Authorities making this decision tend to be cautious; as a result, defendants can often spend more time there than they would have in prison (had they been convicted). In Foucha v. Louisiana (1992) the Supreme Court ruled that a person could not be held "indefinitely".
Psychosis
In practice, a finding of "not guilty by reason of insanity" almost always requires that the defendant have been in a state of active psychosis (at the time the law was broken) and usually such findings involve a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, but may even involve bi-polar disorder, particularly where the bi-polar disorder is accompanied by psychotic features. The use of the insanity defense in cases of psychopathy (anti-social personality disorder)is generally available only if the defendant has a co-occurring DSM-IV Axis I diagnosis, and then it becomes a difficult task for the forensic psychiatrist to determine whether the criminal act was the result of anti-social personality disorder or the Axis I diagsis.
Incompetency, intoxication, and mental illness
An important distinction is the difference between competency and criminal responsibility. Competency deals with whether a defendant is able to adequately assist his attorney in preparing a defense, make knowing decisions concerning trial strategy and whether or not to plead guilty or accept a plea agreement. Criminal responsibility deals with whether a defendant can be geld legally responsible for his criminal behavior. Thus, competency deals with the defendant's present condition, while criminal responsibility deals with the defendant's state of mind when he committed the crime.
In the United States, a trial in which the insanity defense is invoked typically involves the testimony of psychiatrists who will argue that the defendant is or is not insane. If there is agreement between the prosecution and defense that the defendant is insane then typically a jury trial is waived and a trial occurs in front of a judge in which evidence is presented and a judgment rendered. If there is disagreement between the prosecution and defense, each will typically present expert witnesses to a jury which will decide whose witnesses to believe.
The legal concept of insanity is different from the psychiatric concept of mental illness. Frequently, a person whose mental illness is not under dispute will be determined sane as the court will argue that despite a "mental illness" the defendant should still be held responsible; such a ruling is known as either a Guilty but Mentally Ill (GBMI) or a Guilty but Insane verdict. Michigan (1975) was the first state to create a GBMI verdict. Sometimes a person without mental illness can be found to be insane; for example, a person who is acting under the influence of a drug that was involuntarily administered (though voluntary intoxication has been rejected by most jurisdictions as a defence to crime). (See: involuntary intoxication)
History of the insanity defense
The concept of defense by insanity has existed since ancient Greece and Rome. Edward II, under English Common law, declared that a person was insane if their mental capacity was no more than that of a "Wild Beast". The first complete transcript of an insanity trial dates to 1724. The fate of insane defendants was uncertain in the United Kingdom until the Criminal Lunatics Act 1800, following the acquittal of James Hadfield, provided for their indefinite detention.
However, in the United States, the pioneer in the insanity defense could be credited to New Hampshire Chief Justice, Charles Cogswell Doe. In Ford v. Wainwright 477 U.S. 399 (1986), the US Supreme Court ruled that insane prisoners cannot be executed. The insanity plea was legalized in the United States with the M'Naghten Rules, which came as a direct result of the attempted assassination of British Prime Minister Robert Peel in 1843. The insanity plea can be used if "at the time of the commission of the acts constituting the offense, the defendant as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, was unable to appreciate the nature and quality of the wrongfulness of his acts." The key is that the defendant could not appreciate the nature of his actions during the commission of the crime, not before or after.
Controversy over the insanity defense
There are many different interpretations of "insane" and many different notions of how to deal with insane individuals.
In the U.S. (1982), the insanity defense came under increasing criticism following the acquittal of John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Reagan. Critics of the defense argue that it relies too much on opinion and/or "permits" behavior by one group which is forbidden to another. “If you commit a big crime then you are crazy, and the more heinous the crime, the crazier you must be. Therefore you are not responsible, and nothing is your fault.”
Some opponents of the insanity defense, including Thomas Szasz, believe that psychiatry itself emerged as a way to justify mercy, of making persons "exceptional" and thus not deserving of the harsh punishment we would as a society wish to dole out to people who had extremely selfish or widely shared rationales for their actions. Since extreme selfishness ("self-absorption") or broadly shared resentments (e.g. envy of the rich, hatred of another ethnic group) are somewhat infectious behaviors, some argue that schizophrenia and other "mental illness" were defined into existence to protect those whose motives and behaviors were not so infectious, and whose offenses were thus unlikely to be repeated by others. The cost of this system of mercy, however, was to classify the psychiatrist and patient in an ongoing unequal-power relationship. (See myth of mental illness and antipsychiatry).
In ancient Rome, Latin tribes held various religious beliefs that included considering the insane to be divinely blessed, and therefore beyond the reach of human jurisdiction. It is alleged that insanity as an excuse was introduced in the ancient Roman legal system based upon this tradition. Some modern critics claim that this precedent precludes the insanity defense's validity in a modern secular state like the United States with a Constitutional doctrine of Separation of church and state.
The public tends to believe that the insanity defense is used more often than it actually is, possibly because insanity-defense cases tend to be of a high-profile nature. The insanity plea is used in the U.S Criminal Justice System in less than 1% of all criminal cases, and only one fourth of those defendants are found "not guilty by reason of insanity". 60-70% of all insanity pleas are not in murder cases.
Some U.S. courts have begun to ban the use of the insanity defense and a 1994 Supreme Court ruling upheld the right of Montana to do so. Idaho and Utah have also banned this defense.
One novel use of the insanity defense occurred in the case of Lee Boyd Malvo, who plead not guilty by reason of insanity in the autumn 2003 Beltway sniper shootings. Many legal experts believe Template:Fact that the purpose of raising the defense was not to gain an acquittal but to allow the defense to introduce otherwise inadmissible evidence about Malvo's upbringing, his relationship with John Allen Muhammad, and his mental state. This evidence was intended to gain the jury's sympathy so that they would not invoke the death penalty, and was successful at doing so.
Rules of appreciation
In this section, various rules applied in United States jurisdiction with respect to insanity defenses are discussed.
The M'Naghten Rules
The M'Naghten Rules (1843) 10 C & F 200, state, inter alia, that a person may be "insane" if "...at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, arising from a 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." These rules are, as of 2005, in force in the majority of common law jurisdictions.
The irresistible impulse
There is also an idea of an irresistible impulse, which argues that a person may have known an act was illegal; but, because of a mental impairment, they couldn't control their actions. In 1994, Lorena Bobbitt was found not guilty of the felony of "malicious wounding" (the equivalent of mayhem), when her defense argued that an irresistible impulse led her to cut off her husband's penis. In the late nineteenth century some states and federal courts in the United States, dissatisfied with the M'Naghten rule, adopted the irrestible impulse test. This test, which had first been used in Ohio in 1834, emphasized the inablility to control one's actions. A person who committed a crime during an uncontrollable "fit of passion" was considered insane and not guility under this test.
The Durham rule
The Durham Rule or "product test" was set forth by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1954 and states that "... an accused is not criminally responsible if her unlawful act was the product of mental disease or defect". After the 1970s, US jurisdictions have tended to not recognize this argument as it places emphasis on "mental disease or defect" and thus on testimony by psychiatrists and is argued to be somewhat ambiguous.
The Insanity Defense Reform Act (US)
The Insanity Defense Reform Act, enacted by Congress in 1984 in response to the verdict in the Hinckley trial, and codified at Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 17, states that a person accused of a crime can be adjudged not guilty by reason of insanity if "the defendant, as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, was unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of her acts."
The Substantial Capacity Test
The Substantial Capacity Test was defined by the American Law Institute, in its Model Penal Code. This argues that insanity should be defined as a lack of substantial capacity to control one's behavior. Substantial capacity is defined as: "the mental capacity needed to understand the wrongfulness of [an] act, or to conform...behavior to the...law." This is related to the M'Naghten Rule and the idea of 'irresistible impulse'.
The Brawner rule
The Brawner Rule (1972) argues that insanity should be decided by a jury. Under this proposal, juries are allowed to decide the "insanity question" as they see fit.
Temporary insanity
The notion of temporary insanity argues that a defendant was insane, but is now sane. A defendant found to have been temporarily insane will often be released without any requirements of psychiatric treatment. This defense was first used by U.S. Congressman Daniel Sickles of New York in 1859 after he had killed his wife's lover, Philip Barton Key, but was most used during the 1940s and 1950s. Since then, it has not been as successful.
Scottish law
The Scottish Law Commission in its Discussion Paper No 122 on Insanity and Diminished Responsibility (2003) [1] pp.16/18 confirms that the law has not substantially changed from the position stated in Hume's Commentaries:
- We may next attend to the case of those unfortunate persons, who have plead the miserable defence of idiocy or insanity. Which condition, if it is not an assumed or imperfect, but a genuine and thorough insanity, and is proved by the testimony of intelligent witnesses, makes the act like that of an infant, and equally bestows the privilege of an entire exemption from any manner of pain; Cum alterum innocentia concilii tuetur, alterum fati infelicitas excusat. I say, where the insanity is absolute, and is duly proved: For if reason and humanity enforce the plea in these circumstances, it is no less necessary to observe a caution and reserve in applying the law, as shall hinder it from being understood, that there is any privilege in a case of mere weakness of intellect, or a strange and moody humour, or a crazy and capricious or irritable temper. In none of these situations does or can the law excuse the offender. Because such constitutions are not exclusive of a competent understanding of the true state of the circumstances in which the deed is done, nor of the subsistence of some steady and evil passion, grounded in those circumstances, and directed to a certain object. To serve the purpose of a defence in law, the disorder must therefore amount to an absolute alienation of reason, ut continua mentis alienatione, omni intellectu careat - such a disease as deprives the patient of the knowledge of the true aspect and position of things about him - hinders him from distinguishing friend from foe - and gives him up to the impulse of his own distempered fancy.
The phrase "absolute alienation of reason" is still regarded as at the core of the defence in the modern law (see HM Advocate v Kidd 1960 JC 61 and Brennan v HM Advocate (1977) JC 38).
External links
- The Temporary Insanity Defense in California
- Cultural and medical considerations in the concept of insanity defense
- The Insanity Defense: A Closer Look
References
- Bienstock, Mothers Who Kill Their Children and Postpartum Psychosis, (2003) Vol. 32, No. 3 Southwestern University Law Review, 451.
- Dressler, Joshua, Reaffirming the Moral Legitimacy of the Doctrine of Diminished Capacity: A Brief Reply to Professor Morse, (1984) Vol. 75 Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 953.
- Keram, The Insanity Defense and Game Theory: Reflections on Texas v.Yates, (2002) Vol. 30, No. 4 Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 470.
- Schopp, Robert F. (1991) Automatism, Insanity, and the Psychology of Criminal Responsibility, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 052140150X.
- Schopp, Robert F. (2001) Competence, Condemnation, and Commitment: An Integrated Theory of Mental Health Law, American Psychological Assn., ISBN 1557987459.
- Slobogin, An End to Insanity: Recasting the Role of Mental Disability in Criminal Cases, (2000) Vol. 86 Virginia Law Review, 1199.