A Brief History of the Insanity Plea

The insanity plea is an affirmative defense. An affirmative defense means that the defendant recognizes the crime happened, but does not believe he or she should be the full responsibility for one reason or another. How anyone could probably imagine, a person who is insane argues that he or she should not be held responsible because he or she is legally insane, or was at the time that the crime was committed advocates.

This complaint has caused much controversy over the centuries. SomePeople are horrified by the idea of disease, or other serious criminals that could be a murderer "off the hook" by claiming mental. Other people are equally repulsed by the idea of punishing a person who is unable to fully understand or control his actions.

In the center of all this debate, the attempt was to settle a legal definition of insanity. Many different standards have been proposed and in different courts all over the world. Within the U.S. the legal understanding of mental illness has developed in various forms over time. In chronological order these are the rules of thumb that were used in the insanity pleas in the United States to settle.

The earliest attempt to define legal insanity emerged in England in 1843. It became known as the M'Naghten rule, according to a paranoid schizophrenic who was found not guilty after shooting and killing a politician. This rule states that a person can not be held liable for> Criminal acts committed while suffering from a mental disorder that either a) prevented from understanding what he or she did, or b) are prevented from knowing his conduct is wrong.

Some people in the U.S. and England felt that law was too lenient and that a person should not be crime as long as he or she can be excused to control his behavior. In 1887 the Alabama Supreme Court developed the "irresistible impulse test." Under that law, persons whowanted to plead insanity had to prove that they control their behavior incapable when their crimes were committed. Several states adopted this law, which criticized both too strict and too lenient with different parties were.

Although the Durham article was first developed in New Hampshire in 1954, it was not far in the U.S. until 1950's used. These short-lived law states that, anyone whose crime was caused by a mental illness is not responsible for itstheir crimes. We have to note that rather than set free, the mentally ill were imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals, often indefinitely. Today New Hampshire is the only state still with the Durham rule.

The current definition of insanity used in any other state is the inability to understand the consequences of their actions or control their behavior. That sounds broad, but today the insanity defense is rarely attempted, and very rarely successful.

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