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Pros And Cons Of Insanity Defense

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The insanity defense is also known as the mental order defense. In the criminal justice system, a defendant that been evaluated to be legally insane when he or she committed the crime in some states may be found not guilty because of insanity (Schouten, 2012). This does vary, and it depends on the state laws and regulation when it comes to a case like this. However, in some cases the person may be found guilty and is sentenced to less time. For example, the time frame for murder is 20-25 years, but they may be only held accountable to do 5 years, due to their mental illness. In some court cases, a person may be sentenced other forms of punishment such as, institutionalized in a mental hospital or what we call a hospital for individuals with …show more content…

There have been many controversies in the past regarding the insanity such as, why are these individuals allowed to be free. However, as listed above is the person has a mental illness then they are not held accountable for their actions. Which insanity defense is the most common used by the States? The most common insanity defense used by the states is the “M” Naghten because it defines that if a person commits a crime they may not be found guilty because of the individual mentality (Yoong, 2012). The Steinberg trial was a case where he was able to walk away as a free man, because the courts stated that he had a mental illness (Yoong, 2012). Steinberg stabbed his wife 26 times and was still able to walk away as a free man (Yoong, 2012). However, this is not always the case just cause an individual claim to be insane, they still can be charged unless it is proven by a professional (Yoong, 2012). For example, the criminal case in 1941, where the bothers robbed a payroll truck in Manhattan, and in the mix of escaping they killed a cop (Yoong, 2012). During their trial the brothers tried to prove that they were not in their right state of mind during the robbery (Yoong, 2012). They started exhibiting behaviors in the court room like banging their head on the table etc. The courts were not convinced and still sentenced these individuals with the death penalty. In my opinion, this criminal defense is often raised a lot today, because individuals are aware of the insanity defense and will try to use it to get out of

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The legal definition of insanity differs from the medical definition of insanity, and due to this, there have been ongoing debates on whether or not

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Dr. Mark Nolan, Senior Lecturer at ANU College of Law, says that the NGRI plea “enables defendants to avoid criminal liability and standard criminal punishment” (Nolan 8). The main disagreement with America is the focus whether if the “guilty defendant” pursues to misuse the “Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity” as an alternative to imprisonment or if the criminally accused was at the time of committing the crime “clinically insane” and in need psychotherapy. Therefore, during this discussion of opposing viewpoints concerning the insanity defense being misused or ethical are going to be

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The Andrea Yates Case: The Insanity Defense On June 20, 2001, in Houston, Texas, Andrea Pia Yates was charged with the murder of her five children, which she drowned in the bathtub one at a time, and was found not guilty by reason of insanity under the Texas Law Insanity Defense. The legislative history of the Texas Law Insanity Defense begins with the British test for right and wrong, known as the M’Naghten, being adopted in the majority of American states. The M’Naghten test for right and wrong required a mental disease that kept the defendant from controlling their actions and that cognitive impairment is the cause for the defective reasoning of what is right and what is wrong. Beginning in 1973, Texas adopted the American Law Institute’s

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A case can be changed due to the call of the insanity plea. Nevertheless, This may cause a possible difference to the charge of the defence. In a court case dealing with murder such as the issue with the Clutter family, the Insanity plea was brought into thought to test if Perry and Dick were mentally stable during that time. By definition, the insanity plea is an argument stating the defense was not responsible for their actions due to a psychiatric disease at the time of the act, consequently, making him/her unaware of the occurring actions moreover the later consequences. In the book, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, the main characters Perry and Dick killed the Clutter family committing the crime of the century.

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The next case was the M’Naghten. This case is what started the revolutionary insanity theory. The not guilty by reason of insanity was adopted by the New England first and then the United States. The test consisted of the cognitive test and the volitional test.

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Based on the legal definitions and description of court cases in relation to those definitions, Ana’s case can correlate with the insanity defense due to her reaction to the crime. As stated previously, while asleep in the park a male attempted to wake the client up causing her to go into a rage yelling “ Get off of me!” as she stabs this individual. After committing the crime Ana then went to into a state of sobbing, as well as being easy to calm down. Ana was also able to cooperate during her arrest, but she did not want to discuss what had occurred.

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In the field of criminal law there is a certain type of criminal defense that comes to the court and has a low success rate. These cases concern the mental capacity of the defendant and if they have enough mental capacity, or are sane enough, to be aware of their crime and consequences of crime. The insanity defense is extremely rare because of how difficult it is for the defense to prove to the court and jury that the defendant did not have the mental capacity to understand what they did wrong and the consequences from it. The case of Myers III v. State of Indiana is one example of criminal responsibility and mental capacity. This case has information that can be connected to the textbook with the insanity defense tests, mental competence

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I did not realize how much of a problem those individuals have when it comes to the criminal justice system. The information is very important to the criminal justice system. When looking into the police enforcement, prison system, the court system and even the safety of the community knowing and understanding the basic information with serious mental illness people is very important. The author provides a lot of information in this chapter. The author covers a lot of different aspects when it deals with the serious mentally ill.

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Yet, there is a significant proportion of death row inmates are mentally ill and the research evidence found suggests that mental illness is often, in fact, an aggravating factor as far as capital sentencing bodies are concerned. The Supreme Court eventually came to the conclusion of this: “If it is cruel and unusual punishment to hold convicted criminals in unsafe conditions, it must be unconstitutional to confine the involuntarily committed - who may not be punished at all - in unsafe conditions” (French, 2005) There are rights that each individual has, and there needs to be guidelines to make sure each person is treated fairly, even if they do not deserve such

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There are actually many intricacies associated in a mental health court process. For instance, there are “probations, parole, the courts, jails, the community health system…” involve in the cases, which is difficult to manage, especially, for someone with a mental disorder (Docgurley, 2011). Simply penalizing accused mentally ill people will not help them become better, so through this court system, they can maintain their human rights and have the support they require to improve their condition. Mental health court, thus, is a sufficient system because it will not incarcerate and isolate indicted mentally ill

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Intro: “It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane” (PHILIP K. DICK, Valis). In present day America laws have been placed that prevent people who are “insane” to be guilty of the crimes they commit. In short, insanity is the state of being seriously mentally ill relating to madness. This is presented in the book Medea written by Euripides through her point of view. In Medea, a surge of insanity purges her after she is betrayed by her husband Jason causing many cruel and harsh actions to follow from her.

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Insanity is a disease capable of making a person lose control of themselves. On the other hand, sanity is when a person is what others call “normal”. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe the narrator kills a man and he is confessing to the cops about it. He confesses how long the murder took and what he did each night and how he executed the murder. However, the narrator is not guilty because of the reason of insanity.

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As it stands, psychopathy, or Anti-Social Personality Disorder, does not meet the criteria for Guilty Except for Insanity plea, by virtue of being a personality disorder defined by anti-social behavior, as well as by the lack of symptoms that would preclude them from understanding the criminality of their actions or prevent them from being able to comply with the law (Hare, 1999; Effect of qualifying mental disorder). When describing his murders, Kuklinski doesn’t cite any delusion that caused him to act them out, instead he seems to have had a perfectly clear understanding of the criminality of his actions, and, even as he struggled to fully grasp why the descriptions of his actions evoked horror from the people around him, he seemed to fully realize that the rest of the world does not find murder as an appropriate course of action in the circumstances he described committing them in (Ginsberg,

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Some say an insanity defense is a legal concept, not a clinical one. In some cases, the prosecution has had a hard time distinguishing between people pretending to be insane and the people who actually suffer from insanity. (Math, Kumar, and Moirangthem) Even though it is legal to be insane, do not take advantage of it and go do something you will regret later in life. There is a time and place and there is also a way to act in a public place.

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For example, as seen in Clarke where the defendant left the supermarket which items she didn’t pay for, the judges ruled that in order to use the defense of insanity, the defendant’s powers of reasoning must be impaired; should he merely failed to use those powers, he wouldn’t be able to use the defense. In Clarke, the defendant was said to be ‘absent-minded’ and thus wasn’t able to use the defense of insanity. Another example can be seen in Kemp where the defendant irrationally attacked his wife with a hammer without any motives. It was later discovered that he was suffering from arteriosclerosis which caused a temporary loss of consciousness at the time of the crime. The defendant didn’t want to use the defense of insanity and instead used the defense of automatism.

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