The Insanity Pleas: How Insane Is The Insanity Plea

How Insane is the Insanity Plea
In 1941, two brothers sat in court smashing their heads on the desks until they bled, barking like dogs, and crying sporadically. They weren’t insane, but that was exactly what the men wanted the jury to think. Anthony and William Esposito were being charged for robbing a payroll truck and shooting someone in the process. The jury was still skeptical until, ten months before the sentence, the Esposito brothers began to refuse any and all food they were offered. Almost a year later, the men were taken, in their almost dead state, to the electric chair and were executed. This is only one of the many examples of the insanity defense being abused. In this case, the criminals did not succeed in getting out of punishment, but there have been many successful cases that are being questioned too late. Although the insanity plea is important to those who have medical record of a psychological disorder, our “perfect” law needs to fine-tune the defense to prevent people from using it to escape going to jail or being executed.
For those that don’t know, the insanity plea, as defined by Cornell Law, is based on the fact that a person accused of a crime can acknowledge that he/she committed the crime, but argue that he/she is not responsible for it because of his or her mental illness, by pleading “not guilty by reason of insanity”. This first became a problem in 1843. Daniel M’Naughten was trialed for shooting the secretary of the Prime Minister in attempt to assassinate the Prime Minister himself. It was said that M’Naughten thought the Prime Minister was the person behind all his personal and financial problems. The jury ruled him “not guilty by reason of insanity”. The reason for the verdict was M’Naughten...

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...eople that went to jail because of the confusion with the insanity defense and the law has become unfavorable towards the insanity defense. As the New York Times says,” Congress barred federal courts from finding defendants legally insane “merely” because they were too mentally ill to have avoided committing the crime.” This means that mentally unstable people are going to jail untreated. The insanity defense has come to questioning our morals. When someone is mentally unstable, do they deserve to be endure the sometimes harsh punishments of our law or should they be treated for their illness in a psychiatric hospital?
This argument has been made in courts everywhere and there is still no concrete answer. Doctors and lawyers argue if the insanity defense should be legally judged or medically judged. Lawyers argue that the insanity plea should be done away with