Insanity Plea
...stitute of Internal and Comparative Law at Santa Clara University. At Santa Clara University he teaches anit-trust, constitutional law, and law and psychiatry. His achievements include over 50 well written books in which 13 pertain to these subjects. He served as vice chair of the American Bar Association Committee on Legal Problems of the Elderly and as chair of the Family Law Section’s Committee on Law and Aging. He gained his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.(Justice Talking) “The insanity defense is terribly inhumane because on the average it incarcerates people longer and denies them of constitutional rights and therefore I think we would do well without it.”(Professor George Alexander) Professor Alexander believes the insanity defense is a way of criminals to fake their way out of punishment. He argues that not all psychiatrists agree that there are mental illnesses. Also he touches on the topic of do Mentally Institutions really treat a patient better than one that is in prison. He says, “no, I don’t believe they do.” Someone who goes to trial and is found guilty has a better chance of being paroled than someone in a mentally ill hospital for the same crime. Professor Alexander believes the insanity defense violates our constitutional rights and should be a abolished. In my opinion I believe we need the insanity defense. Although I really never had a stand point on this topic before I think Professor Fletcher’s points make more sense. It upholds the dignity of the court to be fair with those that are mentally ill. Why should we throw someone in jail who is mentally ill? There is no good reason to. If someone commits a haneous crime and can’t comprehend what they did was wrong, obviously they are in desperate need of psychiatric treatment which jails do not provide. I agree that people who brake the law should be punished but people who are not mentally stable should be handled a different way. To fully understand the insanity defense you must understand legally what it means. “To establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must clearly be proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring 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 was wrong” (Melton, 1997, p. 191). Most states base their insanity defenses around the M’Naughten standard which is listed above. For a person to be convicted of a crime mens rea (criminal intent) must be present.(Sigel 2003) “Idiots and lunatics are not chargeable for their own acts, if when committed when under these incapacities.”(Friedman, 1996, p.143) Most people believe that people who plea for the insanity defense are just faking it. It seems like a way to avoid serving your punishment for the crime. Studies have been done at Rush University that supports the fact that most people who claim insanity really are mentally ill. Psychologists Linda S. Grossman and Orest Wasyliw studied 49 insanity defendents who were accused of everything from murder, rape and tax evasion. Each defendant was given a MMPI which is a personality test given to determine the mental status of a person. Among the 27 defendants that showed no sign of exaggerating their symptoms almost three quarters of them proved to be psychotic- ill enough to qualify for the NGRI (not guilty for reasons of insanity). Another 20 percent of the defendants proved to be neurotic. The researchers who conducted this study believe that although the stereo-types, most defendants are definable mentally ill.(Rosenfield,1988) “A person is morally responsible if, with knowledge of the circumstances, and the absence of external compulsion, he deliberately chooses to commit a forbidden act.”(Aristotle,5000 B.C.) The insanity defense as you can see dates back from thousands of years ago. Ev...