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The M'Naghten rule(s) (pronounced, and sometimes spelled, McNaughton) is a legal test defining the defence of insanity that was formulated by the House of Lords in 1843. It is the established standard in UK criminal law.
On 20 January 1843, Daniel M'Naghten attempted to assassinate Robert Peel, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Approaching a man he believed to be Peel, M'Naghten fired into his back, in fact killing Edward Drummond, Peel's secretary. Immediately arrested, he was charged with murder and tried on 3 March 1843 at the Old Bailey. [12]
An 1843 artist's sketch of Daniel M'Naghten, and an engraving of his signature. Most of what is known about M'Naghten comes from evidence given at his trial and newspaper reports that appeared between his arrest and his trial. [3]
The guidelines for the M'Naghten Rules, state, among other things, and evaluating the criminal responsibility for defendants claiming to be insane were settled in the British courts in the case of Daniel M'Naghten in 1843. [12] M'Naghten was a Scottish woodcutter who killed the secretary to the prime minister, Edward Drummond, in a botched ...
Edward Drummond (30 March 1792 – 25 January 1843) was a British civil servant, and was Personal Secretary to several British prime ministers.He was fatally shot by Daniel M'Naghten, whose subsequent trial gave rise to the M'Naghten rules, the legal test of insanity used in many common law jurisdictions.
20 January – Daniel M'Naghten shoots and kills the Prime Minister's private secretary, Edward Drummond, in Whitehall. [1] 4 March – M'Naghten is found not guilty of murder "by reason of insanity", giving rise to the M'Naghten Rules on criminal responsibility, and subsequently committed to Bethlem Hospital. [1]
[4]: 632 The rules so formulated as M'Naghten's Case 1843 10 C & F 200 [5] have been a standard test for criminal liability in relation to mentally disordered defendants in common law jurisdictions ever since, with some minor adjustments.
Oxford's trial, and the later M'Naghten case led to an overhaul of the law on criminal insanity in England. In January 1843 Daniel M'Naghten murdered Edward Drummond—the private secretary to the Prime Minister—mistaking him for the Prime Minister, Robert Peel. Like Oxford, M'Naghten was also found not guilty on the grounds of insanity.