Facts about Insanity
The rule was lauded by the mental health community as progressive because it allowed psychologists and psychiatrists to contribute to the judicial understanding of insanity.
Competency does not address the guilt or innocence of a party, and so competency to stand trial should not be confused with the insanity defense.
When insanity is used, the person may still receive a hospital order.
In 1964, the American Law Institute (ALI) began to reassess the insanity defense in the course of promoting a new Model Penal Code.
Insanity suggests that a person did not fully appreciate the nature of right and wrong in their actions.
The notion of temporary insanity argues that a defendant was insane, but is now sane.
In civil law, insanity renders a person unfit for entering contracts or other legal obligations.
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.
Many states enacted a combination of the M'Naghten rule supplemented with an irresistible impulse defense, thereby covering both cognitive and volitional insanity.
The concept of defense by insanity has existed since ancient Greece and Rome.
The legal concept of insanity is different from the psychiatric concept of mental illness.
The insanity defense is an excuse, a reason why the person should not be held criminally liable for their actions, based on the argument that they did not understand that their acts were wrong.
Insanity or madness, is a general term for a semi-permanent, severe mental disorder.
When Malvo went on trial for the October shooting of Linda Franklin, one of the ten people murdered, he pled not guilty by reason of insanity.
Defendants found not guilty by reason of insanity are generally placed in a mental institution.
Through the first half of the twentieth century, the insanity defense was expanded again.
Hinckley was prosecuted and acquitted of all charges by reason of insanity, and a resulting public outcry prompted Congress to enact legislation on the issue.
Today it is most commonly encountered as a generic informal term, or in the more narrow legal context of criminal insanity.
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 act established the 40th parallel north as the dividing line between the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.
The legislatures of these states modified and limited the insanity defense in many and varied ways.
In 1843, an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Peel by Daniel M'Naghten brought the idea of insanity back to the fore front in civil law.
In 2006, the Supreme Court decided Clark v. Arizona, reaffirming the prerogative of the states to deviate from or even totally abolish the insanity defense.
So strong was the public backlash at this result that Parliament hastily sought to craft a new rule on insanity in courts.
The ALI version of the insanity defense was adopted by more than half the states and all but one federal circuit.
The ruling, based on M’Naghten’s case, essentially stated the definition of the insanity defense.
Under this proposal, juries are allowed to decide the "insanity question" as they see fit.
M'Naghten was declared psychotic by medical personnel, and he was acquitted by the court by reason of insanity.
Where the self-defense defense is not available, a defendant may be forced to choose between an insanity defense and provocation.