Assessment of the Necessity and Validity of the Insanity Defense Despite public notions about the use of the insanity defense in criminal trials by defendants as a method of reducing their punishments, the reality is that the defense is rarely invoked, difficult to feign, and when proven, often leads to longer incarcerations than if the defendant was criminally convicted. Due to the fair nature of the insanity plea, it remains a valid form of defense for mentally handicapped people charged with crimes.
Not only is it a valid form of defense, but it is a necessary one. It was set in place to protect people with mental diseases and/or defects from unfair prosecution. The first use of insanity as a defense in law courts occurred many hundreds of years ago, in England in the thirteenth century. Since then, the definition of “insane” has undergone many alterations. The most widely used tests in the United States for determining whether a defendant can be ruled insane are the M’Naghten Rule and the Model Penal Code rule.
The M’Naghten Rule states: Every man is to be presumed to be sane, and .. that to establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it ust be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of mind, and not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong. (Gale Encyclopedia of Everyday Law, 2006, p. 86) When summarized, this M’Naghten Rule says that a person is sane unless proven insane. A defendant is considered insane if he/she was unable to see the wrong-doing of his/her actions or was not able to understand what exactly he/she was doing at the time of the crime due to ental disease or defect. The Model Penal Code rule was based on the M’Naghten rule and therefore shares many similarities.
The only main difference between the two is that the Model Penal Code rule uses a more broad definition of “insane. Most importantly, both of these rules require the defendant to prove they were not in a right state of mind at the time of the crime, which helps to prevent criminals who willingly and knowingly committed crimes from using the insanity defense, yet still allows people who have mental diseases or defects to properly se the defense (Crime and Punishment: Essential Primary Sources, 2006, p. 30). To properly prove to the court that a defendant is indeed classified as insane under the law, the defense must seek the evaluation of a psychiatric expert.
According to Dr. Robert Wettstein (2014), a practicing psychiatrist, “The evaluator must analyze the defendant’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior carefully to determine whether the specific cognitive or volitional criteria for the applicable insanity defense are satisfied” (p. 1732). Before the M’Naghten rule was adopted, it was the responsibility of the prosecutor to rove that the defendant was sane, which allowed some criminals to successfully feign insanity.
Using the insanity defense is much harder today; the defense is invoked in less than 1% of criminal cases and only around one quarter of these pleas are successful (Crime and Punishment: Essential Primary Sources, 2006, p. 30). With the help of well-established rules, the insanity defense is practically impossible to abuse. Another misconception about the insanity defense is that it reduces a defendant’s punishment if he/she is found insane.
However, the real truth is that a defendant found not guilty by eason of insanity is confined to a mental hospital for about twice as long as they would have spent in prison if they were found guilty and were incarcerated. Furthermore, the insanity plea is very risky. Defendants that use the plea are admitting that they committed the crime(s), but were not in a right state of mind at the time. This means that if the court denies their claim of insanity, they will definitely go to prison.
Also, on average a person who pleads not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) but fails to prove insanity receives more time in prison than if they adn’t plead NGRI (Gale Encyclopedia of American Law, 2010, pp. 437-438). In fact, the defense isn’t meant to reduce a defendant’s punishment; it is meant to allow mentally ill people to receive help in an attempt to prevent them from committing more crimes in the future. A major contribution to the public’s skewed view of the insanity defense is the media’s selective coverage of cases.
Most of the cases that media covers in which the insanity defense is involved are homicide cases. However, around 60 to 70 percent of cases in which the defendant pleads NGRI are crimes other than murder. Since the media only covers the extreme cases, many people don’t consider the plea being used for less serious charges. Some of these lesser charges can range from shoplifting to assault (Gale Encyclopedia of American Law, 2010, p. 438). For example, the media covered the case of John Hinckley Jr. , a man who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan.
Hinckley claimed that he was only trying to impress an actress, Jodie Foster, who he was obsessed with. Hinckley successfully plead NGRI and spent the next 36 years in a mental hospital until his release in September of 2016. In the mental hospital Hinckley was treated for various mental illnesses with which he had been diagnosed. The general public sees cases such as Hinckley’s as a failure on part of the legal system to punish criminals and therefore call for the abolition of the insanity defense, without knowing the full process employed in these trials.
In the article “Does the Insanity Defense have a Legitimate Role? ” (2006) it is stated: “The media may foster the notion that criminals get away with feigning mental defect, only to be released and recidivate” (p. 31). As stated earlier in this aper, safeguards make it nearly impossible to feign insanity in court. This misleading information about the defense spread by media results in the public seeing the insanity defense as unnecessary. However, the defense’s necessity can be made clear when the purpose of it is considered.
The defense is set in place to protect people with mental defects or diseases from receiving unfair prosecution for factors out of their control. The insanity defense can be compared to the punishment of young children. Both young children and legally insane people have imited knowledge of what is considered right and wrong. A child is admonished and taught that their acts were wrong, so why should an insane person be treated any different?
This is the purpose of the insanity defense. It attempts to treat a person’s mental illnesses so that they can learn the difference between right and wrong, instead of placing them in prison where they cannot receive the treatment they need and therefore will never be able to integrate into society. When all factors are considered, the insanity defense plays a very important role in the legal system today. Without it, the rights of some defendants would be infringed upon.
The defense is fair in that it provides protection for mentally diseased or defected people, yet has safeguards that prevent sane people from abusing it. When successfully invoked, the defense leads to treatment for the defendant rather than incarceration, which leads to the betterment of the person and society as a whole. Despite public opinion formed with a lack of proper knowledge about the defense, it remains a necessary part of our legal system that will likely last for many years to come.
