ize that he had it, Dunham said. Thus, he would not allow his lawyers to plead insanity. He was found competent to stand trial, fired his attorney, eventually pleaded guilty with counsel and was sentenced to life in prison. Now he's challenging his guilty plea as having been coerced. After the Wilkinsburg shootings, Taylor was found competent to stand trial by a Mayview State Hospital psychiatrist. But two other psychiatrists found otherwise, prompting Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning to rule that Taylor was incompetent. Manning ordered him returned to Mayview for treatment until he is able to understand his predicament and help his lawyers in his defense. Mentally ill. Under the Pennsylvania criminal code, this term applies to someone whose "disease or defect" leaves him unable either to understand his conduct is wrong or to conform it to the law. Legal insanity. This means that at the time of the act, the defendant was laboring under "such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of what he was doing" or to realize it was wrong. A person found not guilty by reason of insanity will be sent to a mental hospital until such time, if any, he is no longer considered a danger. One famous example is John W. Hinckley Jr., who shot President Reagan. He has been at St. Elizabeth's Hospital since 1982. According to the psychiatric association, people who are found not guilty by reason of insanity are held, on average, as long as or longer than those found guilty and sent to prison for similar crimes. Diminished capacity. This is not technically a defense but, in first-degree murder cases, the defense can contend that the state hasn't proven the deliberation and premeditation element of first-degree murder because the defendant doesn't have the mental capacity to carry out a plan or design. Guilty but mentally ill. This applies to a defendant who was mentally ill but not legally insane when he commit...
