If I go up to the first guy I see and shoot him because demons in my head are telling me to, I go to a mental hospital, but if I go up to the first guy I see and shoot him because I need five bucks for a pack of smokes, I go to jail. Why is that? If someone wants money and decides to kill someone to get it, isn’t that crazy? Most normal people I know don’t do that kind of thing.
IANAL but I think I know enough to kick this one off:
First of all, it’s not enough for a person to be “crazy” or “not normal” or even “told by a demon” to commit a crime in order to qualify for the insanity defense. The defense is much more specific. You can be stark raving mad and still be guilty.
What the insanity defense requires is either that the person could not stop themselves from committing the crime (what’s called an “irresistible impulse”) or could not understand what they were doing or that what they were doing was wrong. So if the devil tells you to shoot someone, that’s not enough if you still know it’s wrong and are capable of not shooting the person.
The logic is that in order for a person to be guilty of a crime they have to have both committed a criminal act “actus rea” and had intent to commit the crime “mens rea” (mens rea means a guilty mind, and can include being neglectful as well). This makes sense, if you think about it. Accidents caused by people with good intent shouldn’t be punished. Likewise, if a person is so delirious or confused that they don’t know what they’re doing, we don’t want them going to jail. Imagine if a person delirious with a high fever shoots someone thinking that what they were carrying was a water pistol, then we wouldn’t want to prosecute them for murder. We call that an accident, not a crime.
Now turn that around, to your guy with the smokes. You’re right - there’s probably something wrong with him. But that’s not enough to get him off the hook. What’s wrong with him needs to be so severe that he literally cannot control his impulse no matter how much he wants to, or so severe that he literally has no idea it’s wrong. That’s a pretty high standard, and most ordinary psychopaths just won’t meet it.
Would you understand killing a man for five million dollars?
If you say “yes,” then why not $5? All we’re doing is negotiating the price.
The 1843 McNaughton standard was common in the U.K. and much of the U.S., using this basis for a jury to decide on a verdict of insanity:
More recently, about half the U.S. states have ditched McNaughton for the 1972 Model Penal Code standard, while the U.S. Federal government follows the 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act standard. I find the differences between these to be pretty subtle, myself.
Incidentally, it’s not wholly abnormal to kill other humans, in these sense that the act is concrete proof in and of itself of a mental defect. Depending on context, killing another person might be a conscious, unpleasant but necessary decision.
It is not a normal thing to kill someone because I want a pack of smokes. I do not have a degree in sociology, but you don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. In December of 2004 in Skidmore, Missouri, Lisa Montgomery, 36, of Melvern, Kansas, confessed to strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett, 23, and then “removing the fetus,” according to an FBI affidavit filed Friday.
Is this not crazy? By sending her to prison, aren’t we sending a message to her and everyone else that what she did was wrong, but not crazy? I know lots of people that don’t play with a full deck, yet they don’t do things like this.
Obviously you’re not reading the responses carefully. The insanity defense does not judge sanity, ok? It only judges moral responsibility. You can be crazy and morally responsible. Sending someone to prison does not say they’re “not crazy” and is not meant to decide that.
A crime is composed of a number of elements. To be convicted of that crime, the prosecutor must prove that each essential element of a crime has been committed. It is the prosecutor’s duty to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that that each one of those elements was met. If the prosecutor does not meet this burden, than you cannot be convicted.
For example, consider a very general, simplified definition of first degree murder: First degree murder is to cause the intentional, unlawful, killing of another human being. In a trial, in order to convict someone of first-degree murder, the prosecutor must show that the killing of another human being that was;
A) caused by the defendant,
B) intentional, and
C) unlawful
If the defendant can show that any one of these elements has not been met, than the defendant should not be convicted. Some elements are generally more fact based than others. For example, an alibi would negate the first element. If there was a killing, but the defendant did not cause the killing because he was demonstrably somewhere else at the time, the defendant cannot be convicted of the crime of murder in the first degree.
Some elements are more nuanced. One of the more vexing elements is that of intent. Consider for a moment a hunter who kills another person in the woods. If, during a trial, the hunter offers sufficient evidence to convince the jury that the hunter honestly thought he was shooting at a deer, the hunter cannot be convicted of first-degree murder (as defined above—this is not to say that there isn’t another lesser crime, say second degree murder, that does not have the same intent element). The point being, that by arguing that the prosecutors failed to satisfy the element of intent, the hunter can avoid a conviction.
The intent element of a crime can also be defined as specific intent or general intent. Generally speaking, specific intent requires the mental intent to satisfy the elements of the crime. In my example above, I treated the intent element of first-degree murder (as it commonly is for such a crime) as requiring specific intent. While the hunter did pull the trigger and shoot the gun that killed the woodsman, this general intent is not enough to satisfy the specific elements of first-degree murder, because the hunter did not intend to cause he unlawful killing of another. Rather, he intended to cause the killing of a deer.
Which is how all this applies to the OP. An insanity defense strikes at the issue of intent. Society, through the legislature and the courts, has decided that for some crimes, when specific intent is an element a defendant must have had the mental capacity to form the intent. Society, though various tests and descriptions as noted earlier in this thread, has decided that someone who is insane lacks the capacity to form the type of intent the prosecutor is burdened to prove.
It is not the intent itself that is under inspection. That is, it may very well be that killing someone for five dollars is irrational. But if the person had the rationality to know that this was wrong, but proceeded anyway, that person can be convicted because he had the capacity to form that intent. If, however, some mental defect or deficiency so interfered with that person’s rationality to the extent that they lacked the capacity to form that intent, than this is sufficient to negate the intent element of the crime.
(Please note that the intent of this post was not to fully define or describe the above issues with any semblance of rigor. Rather, the glossing over and oversimplifications above were intended to present a very basic depiction of one of the rationalities behind the ‘insanity defense.’)
Rhythm
I hate to drag this out, but how is “wrong” defined? Has anyone ever did anything that they knew was wrong when they were doing it? When a member of a white supremacy group kills a black or a jew, do they believe what they are doing is wrong? I would assume that they believe what they are going is right. If I steal money from someone, I believe I did something that was right for me, and I can’t get into other people’s heads to figure out what they think. What is “wrong”?
"
well two schools of thought.
-the mainstream one is that there are difenate rights and wrongs, that whilst different societies may hold different values there are still core values that are the same everywhere.
-the alternative is that right and wrong are merely human concepts, that without us existing there would be no such thing.
when people start wars, kill people, attack people on a large scale, following the main stream theory they are evil and are doing what they are doing because they are evil. If you follow the second theory (which I do by the way in case bias is apparent) then these people often believe THEY are doing good, it just happens that their values are so different to the mainstream that their good is someone elses bad.
The idea of a super villain, who does evil for the fun of it, in my view, rarely if ever actually exists. Whether it is because they believe they are more deservinfg of the cash, that their religeon requires them to do so or that the opposition deserve it, they always have a reason. It doesnt mean we have to accept or approve of that reason, merely recognise it exists in the hope that understanding it might help avoid future events of a similar nature…
sorry copperwindow, that turned into a bit of a rant!
In this context, “wrong” basically means “illegal”. The white supremacist in your example, although he might be convinced his actions were morally justified, is also assumed to know that it’s against the law to kill someone without a good reason. The thief is assumed to know that it’s against the law to steal. To succeed on an insanity defence, the defendant has to demonstrate that he didn’t know it was wrong for people in general, not just him specifically, to do what he did.
In the original example, if the demon had convinced the defendant that the country was being invaded and the person he shot was an enemy soldier, there might be the beginnings of an insanity defence, as it’s not wrong for people in general to shoot enemy soldiers.
(Standard disclaimer - I’m not a lawyer, you should seek professional advice on any legal matters before taking any action, DO NOT PLAN A MURDER AND THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH PLEADING INSANITY BY GOING WIBBLE-WIBBLE-WIBBLE IN FRONT OF THE JUDGE, etc).
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In this context, “wrong” basically means “illegal”. The precludes right from wrong, not legal from illegal.
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The white supremacist in your example, although he might be convinced his actions were morally justified, is also assumed to know that it’s against the law to kill someone without a good reason.
The white supremacist believes his actions were right because they were morally justified.
Is everyone who breaks the law expected to try to read the rest of society’s minds to figure out if they think it’s wrong?
The main issue is - what sort of behaviour should a society expect from its citizens?
On the one hand, it’s not a defence to any crime to say “I didn’t know it was illegal”. If the defendant was in any doubt about whether he was doing something illegal, he should have consulted a lawyer to find out, rather than going ahead with it anyway. To answer your specific question, everyone is, in theory at least, expected to have a complete knowledge of the law so that they can modify their behaviour accordingly.
On the other hand, there are some crimes, such as murder and theft, where the law assumes that everyone knows “instinctively” that they’re wrong, and if someone’s thought processes differ so much from the norm that they don’t regard these as wrong, then they’re insane rather than merely ignorant of the law.
(Note that this doesn’t address the “nature and quality” aspect of the insanity defence. If someone has lost touch with reality to the extent that they can’t control their actions, they have a chance of an insanity defence whatever their views on “right” and “wrong” may be).
Now, looking at the actual wording of the McNaughten rules, it would seem to offer an insanity defence to lots of minor crimes - “I didn’t know that it was wrong of me to park for 10 minutes longer than I ought to have done in that spot, officer”. However, since a finding of “not guilty by reason of insanity” is followed by indefinite detention in a mental hospital (in the UK, at least), then it’s only going to be requested in cases where the punishment for a non-insane defendant is worse than this, so its application to minor crimes is, as far as I know, untested.
So it is clear that it’s irrelevant whether or not someone know’s that a crime is illegal. But my question is where is the line drawn between evel and insane. Is killing (for almost any reason really) a crazy thing to do? Do people who kill other ever regard what they are doing is wrong? If they do consider it wrong, why do they do it?
I don’t think so. For example, in the case of self defense, defense of family members, police officers acting in the line of duty, and soldierspeople are killed for arguably rational reasons.
Sure. One example frequently cited in trials on competency to stand trial (in other words, trials to decide if someone was legally insane) often look at whether an individual tried to hide the fact that he’d killed someone. If the person tried to hide it, then he or she arguably knew it was wrong.
For any number of reasons. They don’t care if it’s wrong, they don’t think they’ll get caught, they want the $5 more than they care about getting caught, they think it’s worth the risk, they think they’ll manage to escape the consequences somehow, etc. They obviously don’t arrive at the same conclusion that most people do, but that doesn’t make them crazy.
Okay, killing out of self defence (or accidental) is something completely different. If I kill someone and try to hide the crine, it only proves that I knew what I did was against the law and I didn’t want to get caught. I could easily kill someone and try to cover it up and still believe what I was doing was morally right. Where is the line drawn between evil and crazy? If certain people don’t arive at the same conclusion than other’s, isn’t that a sign of being crazy?
But isn’t that the crux of what we’re talking about?
Keep in mind that we’re dealing with the legal definition of “insanity,” not it’s commonly understood meaning. As pointed out by Bryan Ekers and Rhythmdvl, the legal definition of “insanity” asks whether the individual appreciated the nature of his actions or knew that his actions were wrong. So if you knew that your actions resulted in the death of another person and were against the law, then you can be punished for them regardless of whether you agree with the law or not.
True. But it’s not just a matter of morals. It’s a matter of whether you can appreciate the nature of your actions: Do you undestand that this was a person that you killed? Do you understand that the person is now dead? Etc.
The law allows all sorts of exceptions for circumstances when it’s morally right to kill someone. (We’ve discussed a number of those.) If you truly think your actions were morally justified, then you can avail yourself of either those exceptions, or appeal to the jury based on your moral justification. The sanity question merely asks whether you appreciate the nature of your actions. If you do, then you’re sane enough to stand trial.
I don’t think there is one. To me, someone can be both “crazy” and “evil.” Or they can be either “crazy” or “evil.” Or they can be both.
It’s evidence of insanity, but it’s not conclusive. People arrive at different conclusions all the time. Half the country arrived at the conclusion that Bush would make a better President than Kerry, and half arrived at the conclusion that Kerry would make a better President than Bush. That doesn’t make half the country crazy, does it?
[waiting with baited breath for someone to jump on that one]
The question isn’t whether you believe it’s morally right- the question is whether you know society will see it as wrong. Think delusional - if you kill me, not because you want my money, but because you think I’m one of those demons who is always following you in a little white car trying to take possession of your soul, then of course you wouldn’t know society thought what you did was wrong. You’d consider yourself and anyone else who killed a demon a hero.
The guy who kills me for my money- he knows killing for money is wrong, in general. Sure, he might find some way to make himself the exception, but when someone else kills his little brother for money, that’s wrong.
Don’t get the idea that those who are declared “criminally insane” somehow get out of “punishment” just becuase they don’t go to prison.
Although “One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest” is fiction, there are some elements there. Someone confined to a mental hospital for this type of crime doesn’t have it easy.
Where does all this leave someone who, knowing their actions are illegal, is yet compelled to do it anyway?
“Irresistable Impulse” was mentioned as a requirement for an insanity plea. Any literature I’ve read about serial murderers speaks of their being compelled to commit their crimes (and even experience periods of remorse), yet I’m unaware of any serial murderers “getting off” with an insanity plea.
Though they all tried, neither Dahmer nor Bundy nor Gacy nor Henry Lee Lucas nor Berkowitz were found to be criminally insane.
As a side note in relation to the OP: insanity pleas are fairly rare and tend to garner much media attention (as they’re mostly used in murder cases), thus inflating their seeming frequency to the general public. Also, they’re even more rarely successful. Some states (Utah and Idaho, for example) have abolished the defense at criminal trials all together.
I think one of the odd things about an insanity plea is that untrained jurors are expected to separate legal insanity from psychological insanity, and determine if someone should be prosecuted or not.
My understanding is that it doesn’t matter. Feeling compelled to do something illegal is not a legal justification. And if you understood the nature of your actions, then you can be punished regardless of whether you felt a strong impulse to do it.
Insanity pleas are infrequent, but not perhaps not as infrequent as you think. You’ll get one in just about every large murder case; although they’re almost always pro forma and dismissed.
And you get a few agreed insanity pleas in misdemeanor cases (at least a couple per month in big cities). Usually, those involve situations in which the defendant is just batshit crazy and committed some small crime, but he needs to be committed to the custody of the state for his own protection and the protection of others.
For example, someone reports a crazy homeless person frightening pedestrians at a public site. The cops arrive, see that the guy is crazy, and arrest him for disturbing the peace/public intoxication/whatever. The homeless guy spends the night in jail. When the homeless guy gets appointed a lawyer, the lawyer realizes that his defendant is crazy. The State sends a psychiatrist to evaluate him, and the shrink agrees.
So in Texas, they’ll have a mini-trial in which both the prosecution and defense ask a jury to commit the defendant to the custody of a mental institution. If the jury grants that request, then the charges against the homeless person (for disturbing the peace/public intox/etc.) are not dismissed at that time; they’re held over until the person gets out of the mental institution. At that time, the individual can re-enter a plea of insanity (although if the person gets out of the mental institution, the charges are usually dropped).
I agree that it’s odd, but it’s probably no more odd than asking asking jurors in a medical malpractice case whether a doctor’s actions deviated from the typical standard of medical care in the community. It’s up to the lawyers and witnesses to make their cases clear.