The Criminal Procedure Act 1991: What Is Insanity?

What is insanity? If someone cannot tell the difference between right and wrong, then how can they be convicted of a crime if they didn’t understand it was a crime? The definition of insanity is the state of being seriously mentally ill, either temporarily or permanently. Thus, making insanity defense a defense used by criminal defendants in a criminal prosecution to avoid liability for the commission of the crime because the person did not understand or realize the wrongfulness of the acts.

The first known recognition of insanity as a defense used by a criminal in the court was in the year 1581. However, the Criminal Procedure Act 1991 is the first official written law to allow criminal defendants to plead insane. The insanity defense was

However, many don’t realize how difficult it actually is to convince the jury and judges to successfully plead insanity. Take the Jeffrey Dahmer case as an example. Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested in 1991 for killing at least 13 victims. His apartment contained the remains of many young men who he had brutally murdered and dissected. He poured acid on his victims, cut them into pieces and preserved their heads and genitals. He treated, preserved and decorated the skeletal structure remains of his victims. His crimes are a litany of perversion and torture that is rare even for a sexually motivated serial killer. In court, his attorneys attempted to plead Jeffrey Dahmer not guilty by reason of insanity. But psychologists and prison psychiatrists were able to prove that Dahmer was legally sane at his trial. At the time of crime, he knew full well that killing was against the law and what he was doing was wrong. The insanity plea was not accepted in his case, and he was sentenced to serve life imprisonment. (Norris 1992) If someone like Jeffrey Dahmer could not be categorized as legally insane, then it stands up to reason that the criteria for insanity must surely be a difficult standard to