The aim of this essay is to critically analyze the current status of the use of insanity as a defense within a court of law. In order to do so this essay will do the following ****. This essay will attempt to draw a conclusion as to whether or not the current legislation in place is sufficient to ensure that society is protected. In the recent decades within Ireland it had been called that the laws governing the defense of insanity were to be reformed. The factors that have led to the slowness are low rates of crime, absence of public interest and political motivation about the crime until the 1960’s. Reformation somewhat came in 2006 with the introduction of the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act. Although it is felt that it did not do enough to address the issues at hand. And in cases of insanity the common law is still heavily relied on as it mainly focussed on the procedural aspects of insanity. The most substantive change was the introduction of the …show more content…
“A man must be presumed sane and a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes until the contrary is proved… to establish a defence of insanity it must be clearly proved that at the time of committing the act, the accused was labouring under a defect of reason from a disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, and if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing was wrong”
A set of rules arose from the judgement of this case, and they are still relevant today. They are as follows.
“(1) A partial delusion will be no defence if the defendant still knew that his actions were against the law.
(2) Every person is presumed to be sane and therefore accountable for his actions, until the contrary is