In the established Anglo-American law, it is presumed that some accused persons need not be held responsible for their actions because of their mental condition. A legal treatise formulated in the late 1500s made a distinction between those people who understood the difference between bad and good and those who did not. The British courts established the “wild beast” test which gave lee way to an insane person in case he was involved in a felonious act. He or she was not to be held responsible for the act. This principle in law was largely manifested in the British court’s system in the Daniel M’Naughten case of 1843. He was a Scottish lumber who was accused of murdering the British Prime Minister’s secretary. His main intention was to assassinate the Prime Minister himself. Several witnesses gave testimonies to the effect that Daniel M’Naughten was not mentally stable which made the jury to acquit him for reasons of insanity. The outcome of the case did not please Queen Victoria, who requested a review of the case from the House of Lords. The Jury’s verdict was reversed by the judges. The formulation that came from this review was used as the most basic grounds of the law in England with regards to responsibility and liability in cases that involved mentally unstable individuals. This principle in law was largely embraced by American courts for over a century until the mid-20 th century.
However, the M’Naughten rule was majorly criticized for paying too much attention to the ability of an individual of knowing right or wrong and failed to take into consideration the issue of control. In psychiatry, understanding that an individual behavior is wrong has ramifications for one’s self control. Some states in America addressed this issue by modifying the “test” with a provision covering the notion of “irresistible impulse” which absolves the defendant from any liability so long as he is unable to stop himself even though he knows right from wrong. The rule could only be used if the defendant’s criminal act was as a result of mental an unstable mental condition or disease as was determined in the case of Durham v. United States. It was a revolutionary determination that replaced moral considerations with a more scientific approach that greatly represented the reflective advances in psychological and psychiatry research. However, there was confusion which stemmed from the fact of whether mental defect only meant psychosis or if any other similar mental disorders. It also meant that psychologists and psychiatrists had a major influence in the courtroom. The issue would normally be raised by the defense counsel in collaboration with the defense witnesses.
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The original rule was that the defendant was not to be held responsible if at the time of committing a crime he was in an unstable mental condition and lacked the ability to recognize his criminality or to align his conduct with the provisions of the law. The legal standards of the law treated such cases in manner that it required such defendants lack any form of conscious intent to understand right from wrong while at the same time including the “irresistible impulse” component. It excluded accused persons whose mental condition only manifested itself in antisocial and criminal conduct. Twenty two American states used certain provisions in this rule while the rest used the M’Naughten version that entailed some aspect of the “irresistible impulse” component (Huckabee, 2000).
John Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, a police officer, a secret agent, including the president’s press secretary. In court, He defended himself saying that he only tried to impress a certain actress. He was acquitted of 13 murders, assault and weapons count by a jury for reasons of insanity. Soon thereafter, there was a public outcry against the judgment which led to calls for the abolishment or review of the insanity plea laws. This led to the introduction of pieces of legislation aimed at abolishing or modifying the insanity defense. This federal case which had embraced the “substantial capacity” test had was replaced with laws which had the sole intention of creating a federal standard that was strict to escape the loopholes found in the Hinckley’s case.
In the field criminal responsibility any action that is prohibited by the law may be deemed to be non-criminal because of the notion of culpability being found on the understanding of the particular act and also the free volition with regard to our historical tradition. This is based on the fact that an individual human being is legally free to express possible courses of conduct in relation to those acts that have been condemned by the law which makes him legally and morally responsible.
The main criticism of the M’Naughten rule is a practical dilemma for the psychiatrist in that the domination of an individual by an uncontrollable impulse may give some basis for the inference that the defendant was in a state of labor under the defect of reason as a result of the disease of the mind that he did not know that what he was doing was wrong. This means that if a man is incapable of reasoning he cannot be said to know that what he is doing is wrong. There was, however, no common direction which interpreted the notion of “irresistible impulse” on the defendant’s ability to know the quality of his actions. The law did not presume any effect thereof without any form of evidence. The general view here that that anyone who commits a criminal offense must be punished. On the other hand, the psychiatrist will defend the defendant due to medical grounds because he views him as an individual who needs medical treatment and not punishment. He is more concerned with the moral sentencing and not the punishment aspect. The main issue is whether the defendant knew what he a doing or whether he did not know. The courts will not prosecute a person for any wrong doing if it is established that the said individual was not in his right state of mind when committing the offense (Coleman and Davidson, 1978).
According to my own opinion, I feel that courts have the moral obligation of acquitting such defendants because any criminal activity with intent is supposed to be punished. However, when an individual suffers from mental illness he has no capacity to know what actions he has committed. It not right to punish such defendants because their mental state is not okay.
References
Coleman, A., and Davidson, A. (1978). M’Nagten Rule: The Right or Wrong of Criminal Law. Journal of the National Medical Association . Vol. 70, No. 8.
Huckabee, H. (2000). Mental Disability Issues in the Criminal Justice System. Charles C. Thomas Publisher Ltd.
