Insanity Defense and the Jury

This paper will discuss the insanity defense in American criminal law and how it is applied by juries. This first part of the paper will examine the background of the defense and the various standards which have been developed by courts to determine whether or not a defendant is criminally responsible for his actions. The second part of the paper will discuss the various factors which influence jurors in their decisions concerning the criminal responsibility of a defendant who has raised the defense of insanity.

The insanity defense goes back to 13th Century England, where a noted legal scholar explained that children and "madmen" could not be held guilty of crimes because they are innocent in their designs and have no will to do harm. A madman "knows not what he does and lacks mind and reason, and is not much removed from a brute." During these times, various legal definitions were used to describe under what conditions a madman could not be held guilty for acts he committed, but the most common definition was the abstract "knowledge of good and evil" test. By the late 17th Century, the insanity defense was a formal part of the law. Although given weight under common law, this particular rule was not always followed, especially since most trials where the defense was asserted were stopped when all parties agreed that the defendant was insane.

After the acquittal of a defendant who killed the the private secretary to the Prime Minister

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he defendant's mental state. If he strayed outside the boundaries of the legal standard, the expert provided the jury with a greater opportunity to ignore the law when deciding the defendant's mental state. This dilemma grew more serious as the state of scientific knowledge concerning insanity progressed but the law continued to retain the M'Naghten standard. The Durham test arguably brought the law up to the state of scientific knowledge, defining legal insanity as it would be defined by the medical community. Under the Durham standard, expert witnesses were given broad latitude in explaining the defendant's symptoms and detailing the defendant's clinical history; thus, the jury could make its decision based upon medical knowledge and standards. The problem was that there was, and still is, no commonly accepted definition of "mental disease or defect" in the medical community. The result was that jurors had to listen to conflicting opinions as to whether a defendant's particular condition was a "mental disease or defect." Expert witnesses began to rely upon classifications in the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manuals, which were developed to aid in understanding and treating disorders, not to assess crimin

Category: Government - I