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Once this is done and the verdict is given, if found guilty by reason of insanity, the person is usually sent to a mental hospital, where treatment can be give. Once at the hospital the patient is then give therapy and even drugs if needed. At the time when the person and the doctors feel he/she are capable of going back into society, and when they are no longer a harm, then they can be let out. This puts fear into society, because a once dangerous criminal might now be let out to the streets. However the insanity plea as been around for many years, and is not used in every court case, and there is long determination to prove that the person does have a mental illness, and to prove that its is not gear to get a harsher term. In the eyes of the law, a defendant is legally insane if he or she is unable, because of a mental problem, to form a mens rea, a Latin term meaning a guilty mind.# Since the law only punishes people who are mentally responsible for their actions, most states allow juries to find a defendant not guilty if he or she was insane at the time a crime was committed. The insanity defense, states that at the time of the crime the defendant could not decide between right or wrong or could not keep from acting on their impulse, due to mental illness. Each state has its own definition of insanity, but most states follow a basis of the M’ Naughten rule, which comes from a famous English case decided in 1843.# Under this rule, a defendant may be found not guilty by reason of insanity if, at the time of committing the act, he or she suffered from a diseased mind or defective reasoning, so that it was not possible to know the nature and quality of the act. A person also can be found not guilty by reason of insanity if he or she did know what was happening but did not understand that it was wrong. Since this rule requires a disease or defect of the mind, the lowering of a person's inhibitions by drugs, alcohol, blind hatred, extreme anger or some neurotic behavior would not provide an insanity defense. However, more recently states have been adopting a more interpretative view on the insanity plea. The American Law Institute (ALI) requires the defendants to be judged and found not guilty if either two of theses points can be adequately established in the court of law. First of all they must show that due to an mental disease or defect the defendants lacked, at the time, the substantial mental capacity either to understand what they did, and, secondly to conform their act to the requirements of the law.# In the court of law you can also plea that at the time of the crime you were in a diminished capacity, incapable of premeditation. Which means that even though you are sane in your everyday life at the time of the crime you were in a sudden mad rage, causing you to act the way you did, so therefore you were temporarily insane. While an insanity defense could be raised in almost any criminal case, it usually is reserved only for the most serious crimes carrying harsh punishment, such as the death penalty or life in prison. “Of the total number of criminal acts committed, relatively small proportions are detected; even smaller proportions of offenders are formally charged with a crime. Of those charged some ninety percent plead guilty: only a small number of the ten- percent who stand trail plead the insanity defense.”#. The insanity defense is rarely used in the court of law due to the difficulty of proving a mental illness to the jury. The best evidence in a case is a person whose mental problem is very obvious to the courtroom. Since they would be so far away from the “social norm”, it makes the case a clear guilty by insanity, for the jury to see. The most consequential aspect of the trail, for the defendant, is to prove in someway the mental condition of the defendant, at the time of the crime. As well as there state of mind up to the present time. When a person has a mental illness it is not always present. They can have times where they are “normal” and they are in free of symptoms. However they can have a peak, if a person is put into an atmosphere, which may cause anxiety, they may react in an irrational manner, like a psychotic episode. A psychotic person’s behavior is influenced by irrational beliefs, perceptions and impulses, which can at the time over ride any thoughts of sanity. The most prominent illnesses in the courtroom are schizophrenia and manic depression.# Also some defendants can have seizures, or go through an epileptic state, causing severe mood swings causing them to act in an illogical manner, with anti-social behavior. Defendants with epilepsy, an organic disease, would cause the verdict of insanity to come much quicker. However, such illnesses, which are more nurture instead of nature, are hard to detect. For example, a manic depressant, will go through a manic state, where they can become violent and aggressive. A mental disease tends to represents a impaired judgment that is not enough, to prove insanity, a series of test and a psychologist evaluation and a character judgment is also need to get the verdict of choice. Most states require such a person is to be housed in a maximum-security mental institution that is virtually indistinguishable from a prison. That person must stay there for as long as it is determined that he is a danger to himself or to others. This time period is not fixed (though there may be a minimum required), and can last, in theory, for the rest of that person's life. As a result, it does not make much sense for a person charged with less serious felonies or misdemeanors to use the insanity defense. Usually a release hearing or trial is required, and it is very difficult to get a release if the institution believes the person is still a potential danger. Release does not require that the person be "cured." It only requires that he or she no longer pose a danger. In a NBC poll 87 percent of people feared that to many accused murder’s turn to the insanity defense to avoid being sent to prison.# People feel that once a person is sent to a rehabilitation center there is a chance the criminal can get back on the streets. People are afraid that the now patient, could harm again. There is no guarantee, that they will not get out of jail at least for the minimum amount of years ordered. There is a danger though in releasing a criminal with a mental disease, even if they seemed better at the time. The chance of relapse is there, and can happen, this does not put the population at ease. Also if medication is prescribed ,the person might believe they are cued. If they believe that they are cured then they can stop using their medication, causing them to regress in their mental disease, and going back to their pervious behavior. There is no right or wrong theory relating to the insanity plea. The decision of whether some one is sane or insane, varies from the crime, illness, nature, nurture, and the person. For the courts to determine if the person was not in their right mind, they must go through many evaluations. Even after the verdict is placed it is not the end. The patient cannot be placed back into society until it is determined that they are not in danger of hurting themselves or others. Bibliography: Bibliography Dolan, Edward Jr, The Insanity Plea, New York, Library of Congress in Publication Data, 1984 Fingarette, Herbert The Meaning of Criminal Insanity, California, University of California Pres Ltd, 1972 Gerber, Rudolph J , The Insanity Defense, New York, Associated Press Inc, 1984 Goldstein, Abraham S, The Insanity Plea, New Haven, Yale University, 1967 Latzer, Barry, Death Penalty Cases, Boston, Library in Congress In Publications, 1998 Lewis, Dorothy, M.D., Guilty by Reason of Insanity, New York, The Ballantine Publishing Group, 1998 Szasz, Thomas S., M.D., Psychiatric Justice, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1965 Winslade, William J, Ph.D, and Judith Wilson Ross, The Insanity Plea: The Users & Abusers of the Insanity Defense, New York Word Count: 1384
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