Criminal commitment and insanity during crime commission

¶ … criminal commitment and insanity during the commission of a crime.

Criminal commitment and insanity

When a defendant is found not guilty by reason of insanity, the public often cries out in outrage. However, some people are found guilty and not criminally insane, despite the fact they commit barbarous actions that only an apparently insane individual would commit. The reason for this apparent contradiction is that the legal definition of insanity is different from either the colloquial definition of insanity (as in: 'you're crazy!') and the clinical, psychological definition of insanity. A person can be mentally unbalanced, yet still able to differentiate from right and wrong, and thus legally sane. Although it can be difficult to determine criminal insanity in a justice system "largely designed to weigh facts and evidence," the insanity defense is largely considered a necessary mercy (Martin 1998). State of mind is a factor when considering many crimes and punishments. Additionally, a criminal punishment is an ineffective deterrent for an individual unable to discern right from wrong. If someone believes that they have killed a devil, for example, or a terrorist, because they are insane, jail time will not cause them to repent of the errors of their ways. The nature of the defendant and his or her state of mind and character is always questioned in criminal cases, even on a basic level of humanity "a child who accidentally starts a fire shouldn't be treated as an arsonist," for example (Martin 1998).

The insanity defense is "a plea that defendants are not guilty because they lacked the mental capacity to realize that they committed a wrong or appreciate why it was wrong" (Martin 1998). It is different than the question of whether a defendant is competent to stand trial. The insanity defense concerns the defendant's state of mind when he or she was committing the crime: for example, a woman could have committed a crime while suffering from postpartum psychosis but because she has recovered, she is competent to stand trial, yet is pleading the insanity defense. In contrast, a Mafia boss could be incompetent to stand trial because of dementia, but not plead insanity as a defense regarding the criminal activity he allegedly directed in his mentally competent youth (Martin 1998).

The definition of criminal insanity originated in British common law. In 1843, Daniel M'Naghten, a woodworker, believed he was the target of a conspiracy involving the Pope and British Prime Minister Robert Peel. "M'Naghten traveled to 10 Downing Street to ambush Peel, but mistakenly shot and killed Peel's secretary. During the ensuing trial, several psychiatrists testified M'Naghten was delusional. A jury agreed, declaring him not guilty by reason of insanity. The public howled in outrage and, a year later, a panel of British judges set forth the legal standard that has been used for 150 years...The M'Naghten rule says defendants may be acquitted only if they labored 'under such defect of reason from disease of the mind' as to not realize what they were doing or why it was a crime. Some call it the 'right-wrong' test (Martin 1998). For example, a mother might she was insane because she believed that she was saving her children by killing them, as a result of post-partum psychosis.

Attempts have been made to refine the M'Naghten rule. The Durham rule was a precedent established to refine M'Naghten and held that "an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease," and was a looser test designed to incorporate more scientific knowledge about the basis of mental illness (Durham rule, 2009, Law Dictionary). But as a result of difficulties of interpretation and drawing a line of causality between an act as a product of a mental illness, "the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously rejected the Durham rule, " and "replaced it with a standard developed by the American Law Institute: A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law" (Durham rule, 2009, Law Dictionary). This new reformulation of the insanity defense, a kind of a fusion of the earlier M'Naghten and Durham tests, was intended to be a less constrictive version of the right-wrong and irresistible impulse tests. Today, "most states in the union allow this 'right-wrong' test and some states also allow defendants to argue that that they understood their behavior was criminal but were unable to control it. This is sometimes called the irresistible impulse defense" (Martin 1998).

Insanity defenses are controversial amongst the public, just like M'Naghten's acquittal. Yet despite the perception the defense is misused, "less than one percent of defendants plead insanity and, of them, only a quarter win acquittals" (Martin 1998). The majority of defendants acquitted by reason of insanity suffer from schizophrenia or some other mental illness (Martin 1998). To be criminally committed to a state mental institution is not a 'gift.' In almost all cases, a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity means being committed to a mental institution until the defendant deemed no longer a danger to the community. "For some, that could be akin to a life sentence. M'Naghten, for instance, died after 20 years in a mental asylum" and a criminal commitment can be longer than if the defendant had been found sane and guilty of the crime (Martin 1998). Other political controversies rage around the defense as it involves public policy and economics: it is alleged that state budgets have more to do with how people are treated -- it may be more expensive to incarcerate individuals in need of treatment in a mental facility, for example, and drugs rather than counseling are cheaper and easier to administrate.

Individuals may also be involuntarily incarcerated until they are deemed competent to stand trial -- for example, until a schizophrenic accused of a crime is medically stabilized. Civil commitment is a kind of preventative treatment, whereby a mentally ill person can be incarcerated within a mental hospital involuntarily if deemed a danger to him or herself or others. This method of detention, however, has been criticized as unfair to the mentally ill, as only 3% of all crimes in the U.S. are committed by mentally ill individuals, and within such confinements, the persons rarely receive the treatment that they need to recover (Legal issues, 2009, University of Hawaii).