civilly committed, though this was becoming a difficult procedure. Some were sent to trial where they might or might not raise an insanity defense:
Those who did succeed in pleading insanity, however, were no longer automatically banished to the eternal purgatory of hospitals for the criminally insane, because the law had backed itself into a corner and, following the implications of its own rules to their logical, somewhat irrational result, maintained that when an insanity acquittal came in, the crime disappeared and the defendant was cleared of all taint (Maeder 131).
This has led to the belief on the part of the public that the
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