Insanity defense Essays

required to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The most common criminal defenses fall under two categories, excuse and justification. An excuse is when a person admits to committing a criminal act but believes that he or she can’t be held responsible because there was no criminal content. Some excuses used in court today are; mental disorder, infancy (age), mistake of fact, mistake of law and automatism. In justification defenses, the accused admits to wrongdoing but argues that he or she should be

The Insanity Defense Christian Hopkins Intro to the Legal Process 1020 L01 Leo Rowe March 15th, 2017 The insanity defense is used by criminals who plead that they are mentally insane to avoid a more serious sentence. In most of the insanity defense cases, the defendant typically has some sort of mental issue during the time of the crime that caused them to commit the crime. “A criminal defendant who is found to have been legally insane when he or she committed a crime may be found not guilty

A case can be changed due to the call of the insanity plea. Nevertheless, This may cause a possible difference to the charge of the defence. In a court case dealing with murder such as the issue with the Clutter family, the Insanity plea was brought into thought to test if Perry and Dick were mentally stable during that time. By definition, the insanity plea is an argument stating the defense was not responsible for their actions due to a psychiatric disease at the time of the act, consequently,

The 1984 Insanity Defense Reform Act was passed by Congress after an infamous trial that shocked the United States. United States v. Hinckley was notorious because it was one of the rare cases where the insanity defense worked and the defendant was found not guilty by reason of insanity. The result of this case caused a huge public outcry against the insanity defense. Debate began to form over how to amend the insanity defense. This paper will critically analyze three scholarly journals. Each journal

The Insanity Defense Overused? Back in the year 1993, six people were killed and nineteen injured. In 1996, a man named Colin Ferguson was convicted of this mass shooting. While his attorney believed he was mentally incompetent to stand trial, he felt he could be his own attorney and decided to not go through with the insanity defense in favor of a story that somebody else did the mass shooting instead, leaving him there. This is probably one of the more known cases when the insanity defense is

Insanity Defense: villain or victim? A University of Florida law professor and former prosecutor, Bob Dekle, states, “In general, insanity is a desperation defense. You haven’t gotten anything else, so you act crazy.” He claims this after Eddie Ray Routh from Stephenville, Texas commits a murder while having a psychotic episode. Within two hours of checking through his trial, the jury found Routh guilty. This stirred up a collection of arguments whether people should return as guilty but mentally

The insanity defense gives the judge and jury to decide if the defendants are not criminally responsible. It is kind of like a child who accidentally started a fire, they don’t know any better and should not be treated as an arsonist. It originated in 1843 when Daniel McNaughton planned to kill the British prime minister at the time, Robert Peel. He did not succeed but ended up killing Peel’s secretary. McNaughton believed that the government was out to get him and a panel of judges came up with

centuries, the liability of the insane for crime has always been one of the most controversial questions in the Criminal Law. In fact, it is very controversial because insanity itself is difficult to define, and the circumstances in which insanity can be used as exculpatory evidence are difficult to characterize. Insanity defense appeared before so many centuries, and according to California Law review, Crotty (1924) stated “The insane offender has been dealt with from the earliest times in English

may use mental illness as a defense. This is called an insanity plea or insanity defense. What the insanity defense does is try to give the alleged perpetrator a fair trial. At least in extreme cases, society agrees with this principle.The Insanity defense is probably one of the most controversial of all criminal defense strategies, and at the same time is one of the least used. In many cases when it has been used it has tended to cause public debate. The insanity defense confirms that the criminal

As a type of defenses of excuse that completely exonerates a defendant from conviction, insanity defense argues that defendant is not responsible for their actions due to the presence of psychiatric disorders that influence the normal functions of judgment and cognition. However, the prerequisite of the insanity defense, the insanity is hard to prove in criminal cases because the definition of psychiatric disorders is tricky, elusive and vague. To prevent its abuse, the successful exoneration based

Today in the United States, the insanity defense is recognized as an affirmative defense, meaning that the defendant provides a reason or excuse behind why they have committed a crime. The criminal in question must supply supporting proof in a trial. If the defendant proves their case by proving evidence, the verdict usually is changed from "guilty" to "not guilty by reason of insanity". This change in verdict will usually also result in a less harsh punishment because they have been found convicted

of this essay is to critically analyze the current status of the use of insanity as a defense within a court of law. In order to do so this essay will do the following ****. This essay will attempt to draw a conclusion as to whether or not the current legislation in place is sufficient to ensure that society is protected. In the recent decades within Ireland it had been called that the laws governing the defense of insanity were to be reformed. The factors that have led to the slowness are low

Insanity Defense in Criminal Courts When the criminally accused are set for trial, they must begin by choosing a plea at their arraignment. At the arraignment, the information and the indictment are read to the criminal defendant. After the information and indictment have been read, then the criminal defendant is asked for their plea. Defendants have four options to choose from for their plea: guilty, not guilty, nolo contendere, and not guilty by reason of insanity. Common Pleas The first and most

mental health law and the insanity defense. In the courts of the State of Massachusetts, "a person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality [wrongfulness] of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law." Commonwealth v. McHoul, 352 Mass. 544,546-547) In the courts of the State of Texas, “a criminal defendant asserting insanity defense must prove that mental

The insanity defense proves defendants not guilty by arguing that at the time of the crime they lacked the mental capacity to realize that they were committing a crime. This defense is currently used in 46 states, some of which allow defendants to argue that they had no control over their actions even if they realized that what they were doing was unlawful (Mental Health America). The insanity defense was created to impose a moral check on the judicial system; many people argued that if children

definition of insanity refers to “the legal concept referring to the criminal’s state of mind at the time of the crime was committed. It requires that, due to a mental illness, a defendant lacks moral responsibility and culpability for the crime, and therefore should not be punished” (Costanzo, M., & Krauss, D. Forensic and legal psychology: Psychological science applied to law) There where overwhelming cases about defendant that tried to use the insanity defense. The role that the insanity defense played

Conclusion In conclusion, insanity should be regarded as a mental condition that describes the lack of some mental capacity, rather than an avenue to be exploited to escape responsibility or punishment. Undoubtedly, the insanity defense is a multipart kind of case in proving that a person does not understand the nature of the unlawful act he/she was involved. It has developed considerably from being a mitigating factor in criminal cases to being a defense through the development of various tests

states have banned the use of the insanity defense. It is misused to escape prison and extends the trial due to how difficult it is to prove. The insanity defense states that the person who has committed the crime was or is unable to differentiate between right or wrong. It is believed that the mentally ill cannot be deterred by punishment and that it will protect society if they are treated rather than imprisoned. Many people are suspicious that the insanity defense is easily abused and manipulated

The insanity defense allows people with mental illness to avoid being imprisoned for a crime on the assumption that he or she was not capable of distinguishing right from wrong (law.com). Sometimes, will consist in a psychiatric treatment instead of jail time. The insanity defense should be abolished. The legal system should not fail to enforced laws because of unprovable beliefs and statements, like someone is insane and therefore there is not responsibility of their actions. It is important to

The insanity plea also referred to as the insanity defense is a form of criminal defense used by suspects to reduce liability in criminal court. In the US, it is appraised that one percent of criminal defense cases assert that they are mentally ill as a way of defense. Arguably, about twenty percent of such cases succeed. Thus, about one of every four criminals mitigate severe jail sentence because they succeed in insanity plea. When a defendant uses insanity plea, they argue they cannot be held