The Law and Insanity Defense

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Recommended: Mental illness and the insanity defense

The insanity defense has been around for a very long time, the idea behind it is that a person who is incapable of telling right from wrong should not be held responsible for his or her actions at the time. Insanity is different from youth, and mental retardation in the fact that the person is capable on a regular basis of understanding right from wrong. The insanity defense is not something that can just be used at will, and instantly believed. Insanity must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that at the time the crime was committed, the offender was incapable of discerning right from wrong.

However, there is another use for the insanity defense, and that is for the defendant to escape trial all together. If a person is deemed insane, and incapable of standing trial in their own defense their attorney can enter a plea of insanity. This means that the person, if put on trial would not be able to avoid making their self look guilty. Thusly causing an unfair trial which the constitution's 6th amendment guarantees against.

Consequently, over time since the first clearly reported use of the insanity defense in 1843 there have been many changes made to try and lessen a defendant's chances of using it successfully when they truly shouldn't have. The plea of insanity is entered into by the perpetrator of a crime or their attorney at the time of trial, and the court makes a decision as to if they should continue with the trial or hold a separate trial to consider their sanity.

According to (Hill, & Hill, 1998), the legal definition of insanity as it pertains to the law is;

1) mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to p...

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...eral government can agree on there will probably be a wholly new idea of insanity from what it currently is today. Whether it is ultimately adopted as an explicit constitutional requirement, or abandoned due to the lack of ability to find a definition that fits and is specific enough. By placing new limits on the commitment of defendants acquitted through insanity, the ultimate opinion of the court also suggests constitutional limits on the power states have to impose commitment sentences and involuntary mental health treatment. Although the whole of the constitutional limit is difficult to see and understand because the opinion was too ambiguous. The court's holding that individuals who are no longer mentally ill may not be confined in a mental hospital as an application of a new limit on the states' mental health power the therapeutic appropriateness principle.

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