Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The insanity defense, also known as the mental disorder defense, is an affirmative defense by excuse in a criminal case, arguing that the defendant is not responsible for their actions due to a psychiatric disease at the time of the criminal act.
Per Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12.2, a defendant intending to pursue an insanity defense must timely notify an attorney for the government in writing. The government then has a right to have the court order a psychiatric or psychological examination.
The idea of insanity in English law dates from 1324, when the Statute de Praerogativa Regis allowed the King to take the lands of "idiots and lunatics." The early law used various words, including "idiot", "fool" and "sot" to refer to those who had been insane since birth, [2] and "lunatic" for those who had later become insane, or were insane with some lucid intervals. [3]
The House of Lords delivered the following exposition of the rules: . the jurors ought to be told in all cases that every man is to be presumed to be sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes, until the contrary be proved to their satisfaction; and that to establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the ...
The defense is to be contrasted with insanity which is a complete but affirmative defense. In most jurisdictions a defendant would be acquitted on the grounds of insanity if the defendant established to the satisfaction of the jury that he suffered from such a mental disease or defect that he was unable to appreciate the consequences of his ...
A Durham rule, product test, or product defect rule is a rule in a criminal case by which a jury may determine a defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity because a criminal act was the product of a mental disease. Examples in which such rules were articulated in common law include State v. Pike (1870) and Durham v
In United States criminal law, insanity may serve as an affirmative defense to criminal acts and thus does not need to negate an element of the prosecution's case such as general or specific intent. [11] Each U.S. state differs somewhat in its definition of insanity but most follow the guidelines of the Model Penal Code. All jurisdictions ...
The ALI rule, or American Law Institute Model Penal Code rule, is a recommended rule for instructing juries how to find a defendant in a criminal trial is not guilty by reason of insanity.