The Insanity Plea by Winslad and Ross: Summary
The Insanity Plea is a book about the Uses & Abuses of the Insanity Defense in various cases. The book is by William J. Winslade and Judith Wilson Ross. In this report, I will basically summarize the book and tell you different ways people have used and abused the Criminal Justice System using The Insanity
Plea.
I will first talk about the case of Dan White. On November 18, 1978,
Preliminary reports began broadcasting news of the events in a town called
Jonestown, at first all that was known, was that people of a religious cult shot and may have even killed California Congressman Leo Ryan. Then on
November 27, 9 days after the news of the death of Congressman Ryan another 2 deaths happened. George Moscone, the mayor of San Francisco, and Harvey Milk, a city supervisor and the leader of San Francisco's politically active gay community, had been shot and killed at death in the San Francisco City Hall.
The Police then sniffed-out and charged Dan White with the murders of the 3 people. In 2 years the trial ended with the verdict of guilty on the account of manslaughter. He was later sentenced to 7 years and 8 months in a Prison, with a possibility of parole after 5. After the verdict there were Riots breaking out in the streets because of the verdict. Before hand he was elected a Supervisor and resigned because he didn't like the way that Politics worked.
The point before, that I may not have mentioned, is that the defense argued that he was insane and that "a person with a normal background who was brought up in a good home, something is obviously missing." Since he was being charged on 3 accounts of Murder in the 1st, they somewhat bought the insane defense so they lowered his charges to 1 account of voluntary manslaughter, where he received 7 years and 8 months with a possibility of parole after 5 years.
In the summer of 1978, Lyman Bostock seemed to have it made very good. He was one of the 3 highest paid players EVER in the American League and he was highly regarded by fans and sportscasters alike. Then one errie, summer night at 10:30 Lyman Bostock was gunned down at Fifth and Jackson in downtown Gary,
Illinois while he was riding in the back seat of his uncle's Buick with a twelve gauge shot gun, that was fired by a Mr Leonard Smith. Leonard Smith was a 33 year...
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Houses. He searched the house and found nothing. He undid the leather to allow easy access to his gun as he came out of the building. A group of black teenagers, including Randy approached the building and shouted out to Torsney and asked if his apartment had been searched. Torsney immediately pulled his gun and shot him in the head. Torsney was found with 5 years in a Loony Bin with help from other people.
The book itself only gave the plain hard facts on the case and the author did not say anything about his oppinion on any case so I will expand my oppinion. I think that the Insanity Plea is often mis-used, ordianary people just like you and me get of with only 4 years in a mental home for killing people. Also the people who actually ARE insane sometimes get ruled down and are put in jail, where they commit even more crimes.
So as you can see, sometimes the Insanity plea was put to good use and some bad, well I guess that is just an opinion. There were more cases left in the book but those were the most important ones in the book, if I took the time to do all of them, This report would be 20 pages long. I thank you for reading it, adios.
The entire crimes committed throughout the book were resolved. The major crimes highlighted in this book are three and they are criminal offenses in nature. However, according to my opinion, the resultant consequences were neither fair nor just. This is characteristically because in drawing the final ruling, Judge Dee relied on Asian influence. This could have been misleading as it depended on ghosts, dreams and superstitions, which are unreliable sources of information in drawing critical judgment. Torturing the guilty as a way of demanding confession raises a moral issue. This is because it can coerce an innocent person to confessing to a crime he/she did not commit.
Many criminals find many ways to get out of jail or being sentenced to death, what goes through their minds? Pleading insanity means to not be guilty of a crime committed due to reason of mental illness. In many cases criminals get away with pleading insanity, but in the end does it always work out? Bruco Eastwood pleaded insanity and therefore his background, crime, and where he is now will be crucial to Brucos’ insanity plea.
This paper discusses the case of Andrea Yates, she confessed to the drowning of her five children and was charged with capital murder in 2001. The initial conviction was overturned and Yates was found not guilty due to insanity and was ordered to a mental hospital in 2006. Yates had sought help for her mental illness and was seeing a psychiatrist, who advise her not to have another child. Andrea Yates only received a minimal amount of therapeutic treatment. If the treatment was possibly longer could have help with the deterioration of her mental condition.
He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but some thought he might actually be suffering from drug-induced toxic psychosis. He visited the emergency room for testimonials that bones were coming out the back of his head, someone stole his pulmonary arteries, his stomach was backwards, and his heart stopped beating sometimes. He was also diagnosed with hypochondria, where he believed his heart was in danger of shrinking until disappearance. He then came to the solution that drinking blood of animals or humans would stop the shrinking. He was also interviewed and said that he killed to stay alive. He was admitted to a mental institution and was prescribed antidepressants. He was allowed to leave anytime he wanted. He was left unsupervised and his mother told him that he did not need the
wrongfully convicted as an accomplice and sentenced to life in prison. It was a terrible ordeal that Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz suffered being wrongly convicted of a murder. They both spent 11 years in prison, fritz serving a life sentence and Williamson on death row, locked up with heartless killers and treated like an animal.
In other words, photography can be used to present objectivity, to facilitate treatment and for future re-admissions of the insane. With his presentation Diamond’s application of photography to the insane in asylums became widespread. Just a few years later in 1858 British psychiatrist John Conolly published, “The Physiognomy of Insanity,” in The Medical Times and Gazette. In this series of essays Conolly reproduces photos taken by Diamond and provides a detail of each photo selected. I have included four of the plates Conolly used in his essay below.
Through the use of insanity as a metaphor, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, William Blake, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, introduced us to characters and stories that illustrate the path to insanity from the creation of a weakened psychological state that renders the victim susceptible to bouts of madness, the internalization of stimuli that has permeated the human psyche resulting in the chasm between rational and irrational thought, and the consequences of the effects of the psychological stress of external stimuli demonstrated through the actions of their characters.
To begin, it is important there be an established definition of insanity. Though the original work is set in the turn of the 17th century, and Branagh's in the late 19th, it is important that insanity be described based on current definitions. Antiquated understandings of the matter will provide very little as far as frames of argument. Thus, for this task, the paper will employ law.com's vast legal dictionary for a current definition of insanity. The dictionary tasks itself to such extent. It defines insanity as “mental illness of such a sever...
Thorrey, Fuller E. The Insanity Offense. New York: W.W. Norton and Company Inc, 2008. Print.
How is that even possible? The dictionary definition of the word insanity is the state of being seriously, mentally ill (“Definition of the Word Insanity”). Insanity is also classified as a medical diagnosis. Insanity came from the Latin word insanitatem (“History of the Word Insanity”). People started using this word in the 1580’s. The Latins interpreted insanity as unhealthy Modern day society uses the word insanity too loosely. Although the dictionary definition of insanity is not wrong, several cases that prove having “insanity” does not always mean “being seriously mentally ill” has came to surface.
Much of my skepticism over the insanity defense is how this act of crime has been shifted from a medical condition to coming under legal governance. The word "insane" is now a legal term. A nuerological illness described by doctors and psychiatrists to a jury may explain a person's reason and behavior. It however seldom excuses it. The most widely known rule in...
back to the 1980’s. In the 1980’s, there were two defendants on trial. One defendant was to be
discussed as one that focuses on madness, when it deals with two of the most insane and depraved
With murder charges of fifteen people, cannibalism, and necrophilia hanging over his head, Jeffery Dahmer plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Since Dahmer was a child he had shown withdraws and avoidance of society. He had a habit of collecting dead animals, and he would dissect, dissolve them in many different ways. When Dahmers plea of insanity was rejected by the court, he was then charged with fifteen counts of murder (Yoong). Many believe that when Jeffrey Dahmer 's plea was rejected that it was the end of anyone using, but that isn’t the case. It is used quite rarely, but it is still in use. In all reality, the insanity plea should always be rejected. The only way it should be allowed is if the criminal is fully innocent. “The insanity
John Hinckley’s trial ended in 1982 with the verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. About a year before, Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan because he was infatuated with the famous actress Jodie Foster. He thought shooting Reagan would impress her and lead her to fall in love with him. After the verdict was announced, the public responded with dismay because they felt as though Hinckley should pay for what he had done. Following the uproar, the United States revised and limited the insanity plea with the hopes that fewer people would use it or actually receive the verdict (Hans). While on trial for any type of crime, the defendant always has the opportunity to plea not guilty by reason of insanity. However, after entering that plea, he or she has to go through extensive testing to determine whether or not insanity is truly present. Throughout this country, varying views concerning the insanity plea exist. Some believe the insanity plea should be restored to what it had been previously while some believe it works just fine now, and others think it should be abolished all together.