ading of the wording "mental condition shall not be a defense to any charge of criminal conduct" would mean that an affermative plea of "not guilty by reason of insanity" could not be raised. The crucial distinction here is drawn between affermative and ordinary defenses. An ordinary defense is simply an attempt to shown that the prosecution has failed to connect the accused with the crime, a defense used in everyday law. An affermative defense is raised when the prosecution has connected the accused with the crime, as in an example of self-defense. The defense argues that, yes, the accused did shoot and kill the person and did so intentionally, but because the act was commited in self-defense the accused does not bear criminal responsibilty for it. The same is true in the case of a criminal act commited under duress. The insanity defense, in this respect, is an affermative defense. It is this usage that needs to be abolished. In cases such as self defense it may be an adequate and totally acceptable defense, for in how many cases do you hear of a man being aquitted due to a self-defense plea returning to the streets in order to kill again? To draw a comparison between the two and argue that both defenses are neccessarry to the total order is naive and unfounded. CONCLUSION The law of insanity involves the conceptes of mens rea and punishments, as does the criminal law in general. Insanity is a legal concept, not a medical concept, and insanity is defined within th...
