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"Irresistible impulse" can be pleaded only under the defense of diminished responsibility, not under the defense of insanity. Thus it operates only as a partial defence to murder, reducing the charge to manslaughter, and giving the judge discretion as to length of sentence and whether committal would be more appropriate than incarceration.
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. United States (1954).
The case of Yates—who had exhibited severe postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, and schizophrenia leading up to the murders—placed the M'Naghten rules, along with the irresistible impulse test for sanity, under close public scrutiny in the United States.
The Durham rule, also called the Product Test, is broader than either the M'Naghten test or the irresistible impulse test. The test has more lenient guidelines for the insanity defense, but it addressed the issue of convicting mentally ill defendants, which was allowed under the M'Naghten Rule. [12]
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's acceptance in American jurisdictions varies considerably. The majority of states have adopted it by statute or case decision, and a minority even recognise broader defenses such as "irresistible impulse". Some U.S. states restrict the defense to the charge of murder only where a successful defense will result in a manslaughter ...
Irresistible impulse test shows that the defendant lacks the capacity for self-control and free choice because of mental disease or defect. Durham rule is a but-for test where the defendant is not excused if the unlawful act is the cause of a mental disease or defect, and the defendant would not have committed the act if it was not for the ...
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]