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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.
People v Schmidt, 216 N.Y. 324 (1915), is a criminal case interpreting "wrong" in the M'Naghten rule for an insanity defense. [1]: 621 The M'naghten rule included that a person was not guilty because of insanity if, because of a mental disorder, the defendant was not able to know her act was wrong.
The M'Naghten Rules of 1843 were not a codification or definition of insanity but rather the responses of a panel of judges to hypothetical questions posed by Parliament in the wake of Daniel M'Naghten's acquittal for the homicide of Edward Drummond, whom he mistook for British Prime Minister Robert Peel. The rules define the defense as "at the ...
The insanity defense is a traditional affirmative defense that dates at least back to English common law.The codification of the M'Naghten rules, which have been referenced in one form or another in US law as well as UK law, indicates that someone may be found not guilty of a crime because of a mental condition which prevents them from either controlling their actions or from knowing whether ...
M'Naghten's defence had successfully argued that he was not legally responsible for an act that arose from a delusion; the rules represented a step backwards to the traditional 'knowing right from wrong' test of criminal insanity. Had the rules been applied in M'Naghten's own case, the verdict might have been different. [6]
This is an aspect of a more general insanity defense (see the M'Naghten rules). The defense "was first recognized by Scottish common law to reduce the punishment of the ' partially insane ' ." [ 8 ] It developed from the practice of juries in the 19th century of returning verdicts of guilty with a recommendation as to mercy or mitigation of ...
It is a variant of the M'Naghten Rules that addresses the situation in which the defendant knew that what they were going to do was wrong, but had no ability to restrain themself from doing it. The test asks whether they would have done what they did even if a police officer were standing at their elbow, hence its name.
[1]: 614–5 It broadened the M'Naghten rule of whether a defendant was so mentally ill that he is unable to "know" the nature and quality of his criminal act, or know its wrongfulness, to a question of whether he had "substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of [his] conduct".