On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates, an ex-nurse from Houston with a history of severe postpartum depression, drowned all five of her children (aged six months to seven years) in a bathtub. Following a conviction in 2002 that was overturned on appeal, Yates was acquitted in 2006 as not guilty by reason of insanity. Yates’s attorneys, backed by expert testimony, contended that she thought she was being persecuted by Satan and needed to protect her children from eternal damnation by killing them.
Forty-six U.S. states have some version of the insanity defense on the books, with Utah, Montana, Idaho and Kansas disallowing it. This defense is designed to protect people who are incapable of understanding or controlling their criminal actions and to help them get treatment. Nevertheless, the idea of offenders being deemed legally innocent is hard for the public to swallow. In the case of Yates, radio talk-show host Mike Gallagher captured the sentiments of many: “So now,” Gallagher opined, “officially and formally, Andrea Yates did not drown her five children, is that it?” Similarly, after the 1982 acquittal of John W. Hinckley, Jr., for the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, an ABC News poll revealed that 76 percent of Americans believed that Hinckley—who was deemed delusional—should have been convicted.
Although excusing the violence of Yates and Hinckley may seem wrong, the insanity defense is actually tailored to such situations. The concept of criminal “guilt” refers to more than whether a defendant committed the crime; in almost all states, it also requires that the person be deemed of sound mind when the act was performed. And although many believe the plea dumps dangerous felons back on the streets, in fact attorneys attempt the defense only rarely and typically fail in the attempt. Even when the defense succeeds, the acquitted usually end up with sentences similar to or longer than those for convictions. The main difference between an acquittal and conviction: those acquitted on the basis of insanity are usually sent to psychiatric hospitals rather than prisons.
Origins of a Plea
In 1843 Daniel McNaughton went to 10 Downing Street in London with a plan to kill the British prime minister, Robert Peel. Mistaking Peel’s secretary for Peel, McNaughton shot the secretary, who died five days later. McNaughton was acquitted on the grounds that he believed the government was plotting against him, but the verdict had no clear precedent and rested on fuzzy legal grounds. Reacting to public anger to the verdict, a panel of judges fashioned a guideline for insanity, now called the McNaughton rule: to be declared insane, defendants must either not have known what they were doing at the time or not have realized their actions were wrong.
The McNaughton rule, which many U.S. states adopted, hinges on cognitive factors, excusing people from legal responsibility because they lacked understanding of the crime’s meaning. Some states now employ the looser guidelines set out by the American Law Institute in 1962, which broadened the insanity defense to also include cases in which a person cannot control his or her impulse to act because of a psychiatric disorder. Proponents of the defense, in either guise, regard it as a needed exception for the rare cases in which people are unable to inhibit their destructive behaviors. Most advocates believe that it is inhumane to punish individuals who did not adequately grasp what they were doing. Instead, they say, we should try to rehabilitate or least treat them.
But critics contend that excusing individuals for a crime that they unquestionably committed makes no sense. To them, the insanity defense confuses the question of whether a person should be found guilty of a crime with that of what punishment he or she should receive. Most skeptics believe that all defendants who commit a crime should be found guilty but that those with severe mental illness should sometimes receive lessened sentences.
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25 Comments
Add CommentThe insanity defense should be allowed as it defines "mens rea", a guilty mind, and intent as essential to establish criminal responsibility. However, I agree with critics that it is sometimes misused. I know of one instance in which a major drug trafficker, who had committed several murders, successfully pleaded insanity as a defense. He was NOT insane. However, he was extremely wealthy, powerful, influential, and unprincipled. Instead of justly being found guilty, he was sent to a mental institution in which he further exercised his unprincipled influence and authority while committing additional crimes. Jurors and judges can be bribed and influenced. Given the aforementioned, the guidelines for utilization of the insanity defense should include reviews by panels of jurists and jurors at several levels to prevent the aforementioned misuse that results in a miscarriage of justice.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think the insanity plea is ever justified. The people declared Bush, Jr. legally insane and then turned him back out on the streets without prison time on any kind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaving an insanity plea accepted means getting life. One NEVER escapes from the attention of payshiatrists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA relative is currently in prison because he heard a voice threatening him that if he did not do what he was told, he and other family members will be killed. So he said something the voice told him to say. Not acted on it, just said it. He has been in prison for 3 years now incompetent to stand trial. If convicted of the crime he would have been released after one. If making threats is a crime (which of course it should be), would it be a crime if someone forced you to do it, with a threat on your life? Is there a difference between someone really making you do it and a hallucination of a mentally ill person? Lawyers almost never recommend an insanity plea because as rhodinsthinker mentioned it is the equivalent of a life sentence. To be able to kill or harm another human being means that there is definitely something wrong with you. But there is a difference between knowing right from wrong and still carrying out these acts and being in an altered reality in which even a "sane" person would act that way, the only difference being that that "reality" applies only to you because of an illness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe prisons of our country at the de-facto mental health treatment facilities anyway (in which inmates get no treatment), but that is where most of the mentally ill end up. So, if a mentally ill person can rarely get treatment and be rehabilitated then that sounds good to me - better than being paroled after a few years of brutality w/o treatment, yes?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think we have had the wrong system with a penal system in the first place. I think all criminal acts are a sign of mental illness to some degree. We should evolve to help all people..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEnglish jails are full of people who were not in control of there actions at the time of commiting a crime, either through drugs or drink or perhaps mental illness. The plea of insanity i belive is valid and nessisary and should be key to the way a person is processed if they have commited a crime. I do not think that a plea of insanity should ever result in a case being dissmissed due to lack of intent or lack of responsibility. If a person is mentally ill and incapable of being accountable then i belive the responsibility should fall on the state to provide the nessissary care for the afflicted individual and protect the communities they come from and should only be released when the doctors are satisfied and with the appoval of the home office according to the crime that has been commited. If my comments offend then I appologise but this is my oppinion. I have suffered with mental health issues for many years so I am not completly blind to the issues involved.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe insanity plea is questionable, at the very least.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think what happened was miserable. Yet, it should be noted that insanity is also a kind of punishment. People often cannot see the reality while they are under the influence of insanity and decide to do something that is a crime for normal people. I do not know what the law has to say about owning and keeping a gun in one's possession. But, the presence of weapon during the "time of extreme insanity" makes it worse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe justice system needs to understand it exists for multiple reasons with regard to criminal acts: 1. Determination of what occurred, 2. Determination of who was involved, how and why, 3. Rehabilitation of offenders, 4. Protection of the community from recidivist offenders, 5. Deterrence of others from undertaking similar undesireable action, and 6. Compensating victims. Guilt is to loose a word to be used; it should be "offended" or "not offended". Judges should be asked to summarise what they think is the highest likelihood answers to 1 and 2 and then assign a probability to each determination. Next an assessment should be made as to how best to achieve the other outcomes on a case by case basis. This could include hospitalisation, psychological/psychiatric treatment, compensations paid by offenders to victims, removal of rights (e.g. to own a business, drive a car, live in the country, run for office etc), public notices of court decisions with regards to offenders (i.e. shaming), placing notes against offenders public record, etc etc. Detention is likely to be useful in only some cases. If a rich person spends a year behind bars and comes out rich they are not getting much consequence for their action. A major fine may have been a greater consequence for their action. Insane offenders will still have offended but then the states reaction would be different than if the offender was of sound mind. A sound mind offender will need to suffer personalised consequences for their action commensurate with their offence, but an unsound offender may need different treatment to stop them re-offending. Unfortunately such an overhaul of the system is not likely to occur.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter a crime is perpetrated, it is generally accepted that society must be protected from further acts. What form should that protection take - treatment, incarceration? Whether there is retribution or punishment is another matter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTongue in cheek: another question is whether symptoms such as hearing voices, seeing demons, believing in magic, and ignoring reason signify that a person is insane? Can a religious person claim insanity for a crime?
Seperating the fact of a crime from the punishment of the crime makes some sense, in my view. If someone brutally murders my best friend my first feelings towards that person is most likely intense anger. If later I discover that the perpetrator has some severe mental illness which led to the crime, that will most certainly cause me to have a different attitude towards them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe that it is safer to first find that the mentally ill person is guilty of the crime. After this, the court, with the assistance of the medical experts, can determine what should be done for the individual.
Knowing who killed my best friend and all the circumstances may help to bring some closure for me. Knowing that someone with diminished capacity is off the streets and receiving the help he/she deserves is good for the whole society.
You and Bush, Sr. and Jr. is on the same mentality scale...why are you still out on the street?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's ARE James. You and Bush, Sr. and Jr. ARE on the same mentality scale
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNGBRI!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have mental issues too and without treatment would be a danger to society. I think that it would be much better to identify the problems before crimes are committed and treat them than to be vindictive afterwards.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery plea is questionable. That is why we have trials to determine if the plea is correct. Sometimes even a guilty plea is questioned and not always just by the defense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA few commenters said that determination of guilt should be separate from determination of punishment, and they would eliminate the insanity defense and replace it with this two-phase determination. Although this view makes some sense, it misses a fundamental reason for the insanity defense - the legal concept of "mens rea" or "guilty mind." One commenter already mentioned mens rea, but the authors of the article did not, in the portion of the article on the website.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe concept of mens rea is fundamental to criminal law. If you accidentally kill someone in an auto accident, which you caused, you are not charged with murder. Because, even though you killed a person, you did not have the mens rea. You did not INTEND to kill.
But if you intentionally kill someone with a gun and are arrested, you are charged with murder because you have the mens rea. You are guilty because you intended to kill.
The crime of murder, like many crimes, is a crime of both act AND intention. You are guilty only if two conditions hold: the actus reus (guilty deed, the crime) and the mens rea (guilty mind, intention to do it).
But what happens in the case of a mentally ill person, who kills under the influence of a paranoid delusion that the victim was trying to kill him. Or suppose he suffers from from command hallucinations, which he thinks come from God, that order him to kill. Or suppose he has a physiologic brain disorder which makes him mistakenly think he is squirting a water gun.
Does such a mentally ill person possess the mens rea that the crime of murder requires, the intention to kill? In the first case, the person might believe he was defending himself. In the second, he believes he was following orders. In the third case, he believes he was playing with a squirt gun.
Does such a person have the mens rea required to be convicted of murder? Did he have the intention to murder?
The history of jurisprudence in English law, from which we get American law, has for hundreds of years held that defendants are guilty of crimes, like murder, that require intention only if both the guilty deed and the guilty mind were present in the crime. The requirement for both those conditions is fundamental to our system of justice, which chooses not to assess guilt, if the perpetrator did not intend to do it.
In the Tucson case, which invoked this discussion, there appeared to be many signs that the person was not sane enough to own or have access to a gun. Once a person has multiple contacts with the law where the ability to control actions are in question, it would be prudent for law enforcement to notify gun dealers to NOT sell this person a gun. There are laws to prevent sale to people who cannot be trusted. If the person wants to prove that his sanity is adequate, then let him prove it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo let this man buy a gun after multiple negative contacts with this very liberal law officer, is INSANE.
From a variety of sources of information (much is still
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnot public), I believe this person made a conscious
choice to become evil and conducted many kinds of
actions that lead him to murder. I don't believe
his actions were a mental illness and he should be
tried as a sane (but evil) person.
Attention should be paid to the current protests at Napa State Mental hospital where psych techs have been murdered and attacked by inmates.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReality is that very few violent psychotics or psychopaths can be treated. The number is vanishingly small. Reality is that violent psychotics and psychopaths need to be incarcerated where there are people able to control them properly. They don't belong in "treatment facilities" where they attack staff regularly and kill from time to time.
So the insane offender needs to be automatically sentenced for life without parole, and psychiatrists and psych techs need to be focused on people who can be treated, not those who can't.
kudos to you "Duality"you make total sense!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChronic & persistent mental illness along with the stigma that all people w/schizophrenia or psychopaths are violent is absurd.treatment should always be the option such as in the Yates case.her delusional state was her reality & although it lead to a tragic outcome,treatment w/new anti psychotic medications as well as psychotherapy and intense follow up in the hopes of her stabilizing & eventually leading a responsible & contributing member in her community.this would far outweigh locking her up & throwing away the key! What she did to her children without question was a horrific act!But she was in a delusional state and thereby not responsible. In this situation,i believe, treatable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Smokva...As said by Spock: "Colloquially expressed, but essentially correct." Though not very likely to be the case as you describe it, (your family member in prison after being found by the criminal court to be incompetent to stand trial) for the following reason. In most jurisdictions, a person found by the criminal court to be incompetent to stand trial will very likely be sent (not to prison as you suggest but to treatment at a) hospital. Involuntary hospitalization, (commitment) for treatment for the presumptive mental illness may seem very much like being in prison to the lay person or the general public, but it is not the same and as such maintains the appearance, (not necessarily the reality) of fairness which is the basis for our system of justice. The problem is that too many (former) accused criminals; (now civil commitment detainees) have no incentive to be "restored" to competency to stand trial, (perhaps because they know just how real the difference is between being in a hospital and being in a jail or prison.) Secondly, civil libertarians on a mission will thwart the system by imposing impossible standards on the restoration or evaluation and treatment process which further impairs the sixth amendment guarantee of a “speedy and open, {interpreted as fair} trial.” Finally, witnesses die, move out of state, are intimidated or otherwise are lost to follow-up which makes the administration of justice ever more difficult of people with the label of mental illness.
@John_Toradze
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpot on!
@co2dog: I think I know of what you speak and agree. We are told that he left letters in his apartment which attested (before the crime) to his planning and execution and the fact that he knew what he was doing and that what he was doing would be considered wrong by society. Case closed (one would think). A history of mental illness and then vultures swooping down to prevent justice from being performed
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