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Research Paper On The Insanity Plea

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Recommended: Against death penalty arguments

Running head: THE INSANITY PLEA AND ITS USAGE 1

The Insanity Plea and its Usage in Large Scale Trials
PSYC2003 Fall 2015 (01)
Isaiah Cash
North Arkansas College THE INSANITY PLEA AND ITS USAGE 2
The Insanity Plea and its Usage in Large Scale Trials
Discussion
The insanity plea is defensive tactic used by perpetrators of violent crimes to place the blame of their actions on mental instability. In some cases, this defense is appropriate and legitimate. Other times, the plea may be used by a truly guilty party who is seeking out a lighter sentence than execution or life in prison with no parole. This tactic though, goes back farther than the recent Colorado theater shooting or even the attempted Reagan assassination. The earliest use of the insanity plea can be found in 1843 when a man named Daniel M’Naghten killed an …show more content…

A young gunman by the name of James Holmes sat in a theater of four hundred people, pretended to take a phone call, and exited the theater. Eighteen minutes later, he reentered the theater, wearing armor, a gas mask, and was equipped with a twelve gauge shotgun, an AR-15 assault rifle, and a block handgun. He threw tear gas into the crowd and opened fire, killing 12, including a six year old girl. He also injured seventy others in the attack. When his gun jammed, he calmly walked outside and surrendered to the police. In Holmes’s subsequent trial, he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutors believed he was simply trying to escape the death penalty by pleading insanity, while a neuropsychologist who ran tests on Holmes said that there were no signs of him faking his supposed insanity that prevented him knowing right from wrong during his

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As we all know 27 year old James Eagan Holmes opened fire in a crowded movie theater, Century 16, on July 20,2012. Holmes had over 700 rounds of ammunition with him, killing 12 and injuring 70. Not long ago, over 3 years after the shooting, on August 7th, Holmes was sentenced to 12 life sentences and 3,318 years without parole. Holmes was a former grad student.

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At the 2002 trial, Yates pleaded not guilty, by using the insanity defense. The insanity defense argues that an individual should not be found guilty of a crime if they have a persistent psychiatric disease at the time the crime was committed. It was proved that Yates could tell right from wrong, so she did not meet the definition of the insanity in Texas (Walsh). The jury deliberated for almost four hours, and finally found Yates guilty. The jury rejected her insanity defense, and Yates was sentenced to life in prison.

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Insanity is an illness an individual cannot overcome and will make decisions without thinking. Lacking the further knowledge of a criminal's mental state does not endorse the fate of acquiring the death

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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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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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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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Danielle Amoils Psychology, Law, and Justice Track 7 April 14, 2016 James Holmes James Holmes was found guilty of killing twelve people and wounding seventy others in a mass shooting in an Aurora, Colorado theater on July 20, 2012. The incident occurred at a movie theater, while they were screening the 2012 Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises. James Holmes was arrested wearing a gas mask, a “body armor,” and died his hair red to look like “the Joker,” a popular Batman villain.

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Holmes was convicted on 24 counts of murder and 140 counts of attempted murder for the 2012 Aurora shooting that killed 12 people and injured 70 others. He had no known criminal record prior to the shooting. “We believe that the death penalty is morally wrong, especially when the condemned is mentally ill,” his parents had written in a letter. “He is a human being gripped by severe mental illness. We realize treatment in an institution would be best for our son.

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Hence, life in prison, with out parole in the cell where he will spend most of his days alone. And, thus this is a most acceptable punishment for Holmes. Because all of us will know how long his suffering will be

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