e M'Naghten rule in light of the preceding analyses.
The rationale for the use of insanity as a defense must be confronted within the framework of criminal law objectives (Coughlin, 1979): to restrain offenders--to prevent individuals from injuring others; to discourage individuals from committing criminal acts; to reform offenders; to obtain retribution; and to secure restitution. One law review article characterizes the defense:
The usual rationale for the insanity defense is that moral and legal responsibility for criminal behavior can be ascribed to an actor only if he possesses certain capacities, such as the ability to know and understand the nature of his actions or to resist or control his urges to behave criminally. It is considered unfair, immoral, and nonutilitarian to blame and retributively punish a person who lacks these capacities because such a person is allegedly not able to conform his behavior to law. Mentally ill people are treated specially because insanity is thought to destroy these capabilities. The insanity defense is a cognitive/volitional incapacity defense that is limited only to those whose incapacity is allegedly the result of insanity (Moore, 1978, p. 640).
Thus, it can be argued that the use of insanity as a defense does not inhibit the restraint of offenders, supports the objective of deterrence, does not inhibit the reform of offenders, supports the objective of retribution, in that only those individuals capable of knowingly committing criminal actions are punished for such actions, and does not support the objective of restitution.
The M'Naghten rule states: "It must be clearly proved that, at the time of committing the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disea
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