However, in true cases where a true mental impairment existed, a plea of temporary insanity provides the opportunity for someone who otherwise would not have committed a crime to receive rehabilitative treatment rather than more severe penalties of incarceration.
In the event that a plea of temporary insanity has been accepted, the court will rule that the defendant be placed in a mental institution for evaluation and treatment. On the surface, it might seem that this is a better option that incarceration. However, a judge does not determine the length of treatment. Instead, how long a person remains in the mental facility is determined by progress and periodic reviews.
In some cases, the amount of time that a person spends in the treatment facility is longer than the sentence they would have received. The temporary insanity defense is not designed to be used as a get out of jail free card. For more information on affirmative defenses in general, see Affirmative Defenses in Criminal Cases.
The insanity defense has been around for centuries. A English court referred to insane people as "the witless, who do not have reason whereby they can choose the good from the evil. Many criminal acts seemingly result from distorted mental processes.
The criminal justice system continues to struggle for a method to distinguish offenders whose mental illness is so severe that society should deem them not morally responsible for their behavior, from offenders whose actions, while perhaps objectively irrational, nevertheless merit punishment. Many states define legal insanity according to the M'Naghten Test, developed in an English case. An offender is insane under this test if mental illness prevents the offender from knowing the difference between right and wrong.
Under this test, defendants are insane if, because of mental disease or defect, they lack the substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of their actions or to conform their behavior to legal requirements. Some states supplement the M'Naughten or Brawner test with the irresistible impulse rule, under which offenders are insane if a mental disorder prevents them from resisting the commission of an illegal act that they know is wrong.
Manion hurries inside and finds his wife Laura lying on the floor, raped and beaten by Quill. Manion picks up a gun, walks to Quill's place of employment, shoots and kills him, then calls the police. A defense psychiatrist testifies that Laura's injuries caused Manion to suffer a sudden psychic shock called dissociative reaction, and that dissociative reaction creates an unbearable tension that people may try to alleviate by taking immediate and often violent action.
The psychiatrist's testimony supports a conclusion that Manion was legally insane under the irresistible impulse test. This example is loosely based on the classic film, Anatomy of a Murder. How the insanity defense plays out in court can be a bit confusing. However, the prosecutor still has a job to do. They must try to prove you are guilty of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Only if the jury finds you are guilty of the crime does it then move on to determine whether you can sufficiently prove your insanity.
If the prosecutor did not meet their burden, you are simply found innocent. It is essential that you understand a successful insanity defense does not win you freedom. In most circumstances, a defendant found not guilty by reason of insanity is committed to a hospital or institution for mental health treatment.
You could be confined to this facility for a great deal of time, even longer than a prison sentence would have been for the crime. Consequently, the evaluating the veracity of a defendant's claim becomes more difficult in the absence of unequivocal scientific findings.
Moreover, the "Irresistible Impulse" test may be over-inclusive. Defendants laboring under psychological conditions, which, while genuine, do not completely inhibit self-control, may be exonerated of criminal liability. Monte Durham was a year-old who had been in and out of prison and mental institutions since he was He was convicted for housebreaking in , and his attorney appealed. Although the district court judge had ruled that Durham's attorneys had failed to prove he didn't know the difference between right and wrong, the federal appellate judge chose to use the case to reform the M'Naghten rule.
Citing leading psychiatrists and jurists of the day, the appellate judge stated that the M'Naghten rule was based on "an entirely obsolete and misleading conception of the nature of insanity. The Durham rule states "that an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect. The implementation of this test was initially seen as a progressive development.
Specifically, the Durham rule moved away from legal formalisms and emphasized scientific psychological evaluations and evidence.
This approach emphasized expert testimony and largely left the jury to follow the professional opinions provided. So long as a professional concluded that the defendant was subject to a mental disease, a finding of insanity likely followed. Problems quickly emerged, however, and the Durham test fell out of favor. First, the test revealed itself to be frequently conclusory and deprived the jury of their decision-making role. A finding of insanity was left to the discretionary findings of trained professionals who were largely unrestricted in their methodological approach.
The lack of any clear definition for essential terms like "mental disease or defect" exacerbated this issue and led to inconsistency as different professionals came to disparate conclusions.
Moreover, the test proved over-inclusive. Under the "product" approach, defendants could be found not guilty by reason of insanity even where they understood and had control over their actions at the time of the offense. For these individuals, punishment may be more appropriate as its deterrent effect remains intact.
Consequently, the same D. New Hampshire is now the only jurisdiction that employs a test similar to the Durham rule. In , in an attempt to modernize the legal standard for insanity, the American Law Institute, a panel of legal experts, developed a new rule for insanity as part of the Model Penal Code.
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