Defenses to Criminal Liability Explain

Defenses to Criminal Liability

Explain the difference between the defenses of justification and excuses to criminal liability

According to Article 35 of the New York State Law Penal Code, and in other like documents throughout the United States, the defense of justification in any prosecution for an offense is a defense for some kind of legitimate use of physical force which would otherwise be a criminal offense. For instance, when an officer uses physical force in his performance as a public servant, or when, in an emergency situation, a person acts in self-defense. Specific situations named in this code are: (1) when a parent or teacher uses physical force on a person under 21, as long as it is not deadly force and is considered reasonable to maintain discipline or to promote their welfare. (2) a warden in a jail or prison is acting to maintain order and discipline. (3) Someone in charge of keeping order in a carrier of passengers uses force to maintain order, including deadly physical force when it is considered reasonable. (4) a person stops someone from committing suicide or inflicting injury upon himself. (5) a doctor uses force to administer a medical treatment which will promote the physical or mental health of a patient who has consented or, in an emergency situation, when any reasonable person would consent. (6) in defense of himself or a third person, or in order to stop larceny or criminal mischief to property, to arrest someone, or prevent an escape from custody, a person uses physical, even deadly, force.

Excuses to criminal liability are as varied and numerous as may be created by imagination, but the law allows only a few excuses, such as infancy (minors are not liable), insanity (see description below), settled insanity (drug induced insanity) and automatism, such as when someone commits a criminal act when they are not in control of their body in an epileptic or hypoglycemic seizure or in some cases, are drunk. (Finkelstein 326)

Explain why "insanity" is a legal concept and not a medical term.

The insanity defense is based on forensic professionals' evaluations that the defendant was incapable of telling right from wrong when the offense was committed. According to a history of insanity defenses, the M'Naghten Rules state "it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong" (Walker 4).

If persons are not responsible for their actions because they lack understanding of their consequences, in spite of it being a danger to society, it does no good to punish a criminal or non-criminal act because the person does not understand that what they did was wrong. The insane person understands the consequence to be a part of the expiation and rehabilitation process, not a punishment. The state, in a position of parens patriae, should put the person under its care and protection, requires or offers treatment and does not subject this person to the stress of undergoing a trial, because punishment is only morally justified if the person understands the wrongfulness of their actions.

According to the law, insanity is determined by whether criminal conduct is a result of mental disease or defect or not, and whether the defendant lacked substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirement of the law or not. Dr. Park Elliott Dietz, the government witness, determined that Hinckley on March 30, 1981, knew what he was going to do and was doing, but "did not lack substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirement of the law," and therfore was sane, according to legal standards. In other words, Hinckley knew that his conduct was illegal and immoral, but decided to plan and carry out a criminal act anyway (Linder, Transcripts).

According to the testimony of Dr. William T. Carpenter, his psychiatrist, Hinckley was legally insane, delusional with false beliefs on what was wrong and what was right. The doctor made a case for President Reagan's chance appearance in the same town that he was in, therefore becoming an opportunity for Hinckley to act out his delusions, becoming an accidental meeting and not a planned event.

When does insanity excuse criminal liability?

A defendant has an excuse for liability, says Paul Robinson, in his book Criminal Law Defenses, when he or she is acting involuntarily and their own disability causes him or her to mistakenly or unknowingly violate a criminal prohibition. This person does not know whether his or her behavior is wrong or criminal (Robinson 222). This is in contrast to what is called a character-based approach, where a person's adherence to virtues or vices creates a character and a reputation for morality or immorality, upon which they are judged. Finkelstein argues that a system which bases its retributive punishment on a person's character, rather than on the act itself brings about social welfare. Just as one cannot judge a person's moral character upon a single act, one cannot decide the morality or immorality of a person by visible actions. She quotes George Fletcher as saying "[if] a bank teller opens a safe and turns money over to a stranger, we can infer that he is dishonest. But if he does all this at gunpoint, we cannot infer anything one way or another about his honesty" (Fletcher 800).

However, one's character or disposition has little to do with insanity excuses, because the insane are those who are incapable of controlling their actions under the law and cannot be said to have a moral character, since morality has nothing to do with their actions and their actions are neither for nor against society, but are based solely on involuntary motivations generated from sources they do not have control over.

The law either favors the actions of a person, or tolerates it when a criminal act is committed by someone in any of those four modes of activity mentioned above (infancy, insanity, settled insanity and automatism).

The President Reagan assassination attempt by John Warnock Hinckley, Jr.:

Under the defenses to criminal liability, was the verdict in the Hinckley case and his subsequent commitment to a mental hospital, rather than prison, a miscarriage of justice?

When Hinckley was found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity on all charges on June 21, 1983 in Washington, D.C., most of the American public felt that "justice had not been done," according to an ABC News poll the next day (Hans, 202). The overall opinion of legal insanity defenses stimulated immediate changes in the insanity defense. At the time of the verdict, the way the justice system was set up allowed Hinckley to go to prison on an insanity charge, rather than face a verdict determined by his actions and character. According to the times in which the trial occurred, justice was served.