What about the insanity plea?

insanity, diminished capacity
Hi john/nyc:

Except for strict liability offenses (e.g., speeding, no liability insurance), most crimes are defined to require both a guilty mind (mens rea) and a guilty act (actus reus).

Mens rea is culpability element of an offense. Generally, crimes are graded in accordance with culpability. The greater the culpability, the greater the punishment.

If your state follows the Model Penal Code (MPC), homicides are defined as follows:

Murder: Intentionally or knowingly causing the death of another.
Manslaughter: Recklessly causing the death of another.
Negligent Homicide: Negligently causing the death of another.

(If your state follows common law rather than the MPC--the definitions are more complicated--but you get the idea.)

The state must prove each and every element of a crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, in a homicide case, the state must prove both the defendant's mens rea (intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently) and the actus reus (causing the death of another).

A mental illness may be serious enough to negate the essential mens rea element of the offense charged.

Therefore, my answer is no: The insanity defense (or a diminished capacity defense) should not be eliminated. In fact, it can't be eliminated. Every person accused of a crime is entitled to assert all possible defenses. If your defense negates an essential element of the crime charged, then you have a right protected by the constitution to present that defense.

Even though a mentally ill person might not be criminally responsible for the guilty act; that person may be a threat to himself or others and may be subjected to civil commitment. (In some cases, the length of civil commitment can far exceed the maximum punishment for the crime.)

Do you see any need to change the standard as to what constitutes insanity? Does the mere ability to know right from wrong adequately define mental illness in its impact on criminality?

Change the standard?


The standards for establishing criminal responsibility must abide by the requirements of the Constitution. See IN RE WINSHIP, 397 U.S. 358 (1970). The standard for "lack of criminal responsibility" is generally defined something like this:

An individual is not criminally responsible for criminal conduct if, as a result of mental disease or defect existing at the time the conduct occurs:

1. The individual lacks substantial capacity to comprehend the harmful nature or consequences of the conduct, or the conduct is the result of a loss or serious distortion of the individual's capacity to recognize reality; and

2. It is an essential element of the crime charged that the individual act intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly."

The due process clause of the Fifth Amendment (applicable to federal prosecutions) and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (applicable to state prosecutions) places upon the prosecution the burden of proving each and every element of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt. See In re Winship. As previously stated, a crime consists of the essential elements of mens rea and actus reus. In order for an accused individual to be found guilty, the guilty mind must exist at the moment of the guilty act.

If the existence of a mental disease or defect negates the essential mens rea element of the crime, the accused cannot be found guilty because it is impossible for the prosecution to prove an essential element of the crime charged.

As a Constitution thumper (as we all should be due to the dire consequences if we are not), I would be against any law that would water down the protections embedded in the Constitution.

Actually I was suggesting that we beef up the standard as opposed to water it down because I thought that many states had legislated the application of a strict McNaughton standard.

In practice though, the defendant's sanity is generally debated by competing mental health professionals. Psychiatrists and psychologists testify for both the prosecution and defense, and may offer quite differing opinions regarding the defendant's mental state/capacity at the time of the crime.
Unfortunately, all of these opinions are speculative, since they are based on examinations of the defendant after the crime has been committed. Even if a psychiatrist who had previously been treating a defendant offered testimony, they are still not aware of the defendant's state of mind at the exact moment of the crime.
This leaves even the "experts" in the position of offering only educated guesses. Inferences regarding sanity are often drawn from the defendant's actions immediately after the crime. Andrea Yates, for instance, was in touch with reality enough that she phoned police immediately after killing her five children, and that apparently convinced a jury she was sane. Is that evidence enough of sanity? Does that mean she wasn't delusional at the time she killed her children? Could any mental health professional offer any concrete evidence of her state of mind when she murdered her children?

One problem with the insanity defense is that psychiatry is not a precise science. Psychiatry cannot predict certain behaviors with real accuracy, and it cannot always explain behavior in retrospect with any accuracy. Yet psychiatrists and psychologists are the experts courts and juries must rely on when considering an insanity defense.
Another problem is the extremely wide range of psychiatric disorders which can influence an individual's behavior. Even psychoses differ greatly in terms of how they influence someone's overt behavior and demeanor, and in how consistently the psychosis influences an individual's thought processes. A paranoid schizophrenic, for instance, can often appear quite rational and composed, despite the presence of an underlying delusional system. To a lay person, such as a juror, the individual might appear legally sane because, superficially, they can maintain adequate, appropriate social behavior most of the time. Yet that same individual's actions, in the commision of a crime, might well have been influenced by mental factors which were not within their control at that point in time.

I personally think we need improved guidelines for the legal definitions of insanity. Apart from the complexities of mental illness, and apart from the imprecision of psychiatric evaluations, the current problems are further compounded by the fact that legal standards of insanity differ from state to state. In some states the standards for insanity are higher than in other states.

I do think we should keep the insanity defense.

Complete agreement with firefly's assessment.

Hacking will be an interesting case. It looks like they may go with an insanity defense, but he really seemed to have done more 'sane cover-up' than Yates, who I feel should have been found NGRI.