Insanity defense

SIGNIFICANCE: The insanity defense is often known as the not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) plea. Individuals invoking the NGRI plea at trial acknowledge that the acts they committed were criminal but contend that an intentional state of mind was lacking. The insanity defense is rooted in the concept that persons may lack moral blameworthiness because mental illness absolves them of guilty intent for their actions. Determining the individual’s state of mind at the time of the criminal act becomes a central issue in the consideration of an NGRI plea.

When the insanity defense is invoked, or when one pleads guilty but mentally ill, it is the burden of the defense to show that at the time of the crime, the defendant was unable to know right from wrong, that the defendant was unable to resist an impulse, or that the defendant’s actions were a product of a mental defect or disease.

The defense must convince the jury that the defendant was mentally ill at the time of the act. In order to accomplish this conclusion, defendants are often portrayed as having been victims of unusual trauma in their lives that leads to a mental illness. Critics of the NGRI plea suggest that defendants may pretend to have a mental illness and then profit from presenting the fraudulent claim. Because of the difficulties inherent in the NGRI plea, it is used infrequently and in less than 1 percent of capital cases, according to a study conducted in the early 1990s.

Identifying Mental Illness

Historically, a number of guiding principles have been used to consider the state of mind of a defendant at the time of the criminal act. One of the first was the M’Naughten Rule that was established in 1843. This principle is often known as the “knowing right from wrong” rule, and it stated that persons are considered sane unless it can be proved that at the time of the criminal act they were laboring under a defect of reason caused by a disease of the mind so that they did not know the nature and quality of the acts. If the individuals knew they were committing the act, they did not understand that was a wrongdoing. The M’Naughten Rule is related to the cognitive aspects of understanding about right and wrong and how it relates to an individual’s behavior. It is sometimes called the right-wrong test.

A principle from 1887 was known as the doctrine of the irresistible impulse. This concept suggested that defendants may not be responsible for their actions even if there was understanding of the wrongful nature of the act. In the circumstance that the person had no power to choose between right and wrong because of an irresistible impulse that compelled the person to act beyond reason, the individual would be held blameless. The doctrine of irresistible impulse has been the foundation for the volitional aspects of an insanity defense. This principle addresses the question of whether persons were unable to control their behavior sufficiently to prevent the criminal act.

Twentieth century applications of these principles include the Durham rule, established through a US Court of Appeals decision in 1954. The Durham rule expanded the insanity defense to include the scientific findings regarding mental illness and developed a “product test.” Using the Durham rule, an accused person is not deemed criminally responsible for unlawful acts if the actions were the product of the mental disease or a mental defect.

The American Law Institute proposed a further refinement to the insanity defense in 1962, called the substantial capacity test for insanity. This combined both the cognitive aspects of the M’Naughten Rule and the volitional component of the doctrine of irresistible impulse. The substantial capacity test of insanity held that a defendant is not legally responsible for an act if, at the time of commission, the person lacked a substantial capacity either to appreciate the action’s criminal character or to conform behavior to the law’s requirement of right and wrong.

Within the federal court system, the Federal Insanity Defense Reform Act (IDRA) of 1984 applies. This act abolished the volitional element of the substantial capacity test and narrowed the cognitive component to only “unable to appreciate.” This IDRA also specified two important requirements for the presentation of an insanity defense. First, the mental disorder must be a severe condition that impedes functioning. Second, the burden of proof was shifted from the prosecution to the defense. With the IDRA, the defense must convincingly establish the state of mind of the defendant at the time of the criminal act to have been mentally ill. Previously, the prosecution had to show that the defendant was sane when the crime was committed.

Applications of the Insanity Defense

Reforms in the insanity defense as illustrated in the IDRA came about in response to extensive protest following the outcome of the trial of John Hinckley. In 1981, Hinckley attempted to assassinate US president Ronald Reagan. In 1982, Hinckley was acquitted on the grounds that he was acting outside of reason and not guilty by reason of insanity. Since that trial, reforms in the insanity defense have tried to discourage its use and make its success unlikely when and if used. Some states even went so far as to place a ban on the use of insanity as a legal defense. Throughout the following years, the states of Montana, Idaho, Kansas, and Utah dropped the provision permiting criminal defendants to use the insanity defense. Othe states had established the plea of guilty but mentally ill as an alternative. This plea prevents a defendant from being acquitted for a criminal act and then being turned over to a mental health facility, from which the person could be released at any time.

In 2004, a majority of states adhered to some revised version of the substantial capacity test or the M’Naughten Rule. Various jurisdictions require a pretrial screening of the defendant that includes psychiatric evaluation and appraisal of criminal responsibility. Research has shown that the vast majority of insanity defense pleas were withdrawn after the screening process. Of those defendants most frequently successful in insanity defense pleas, the following characteristics have been present: woman defendant, one who had a previously diagnosed severe mental illness, one whose crime was not murder, and one who had prior hospitalizations.

In 2006, a jury made the relatively rare decision to accept the insanity defense plea, finding Andrea Yates not guilty by reason of insanity for the drowning of her five children in the family's bathtub in 2001. Committed to a psychiatric hospital, Yates reportedly suffered from postpartum psychosis. However, when, in 2015, James Holmes's lawyers attempted to apply the insanity defense in his trial for the mass shooting massacre he perpetrated at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, that left twelve people dead in 2012, the jury almost immediately found Holmes guilty of first-degree murder and attempted murder, rejecting the insanity plea; he was sentenced to life in prison. Despite psychiatric testimony and brain scans used to argue that Holmes was legally insane and suffering from schizophrenia at the time of the crime, the defense attorney claimed that this evidence did not prove that he did not have the ability to tell right from wrong. In 2022, a judge found a former United States Marine, Michael Brown, not guilty of killing his abusive stepfather by reason of insanity. Brown suffered from blackouts, lost time, and dissociative amnesia and was committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Many critics of the insanity defense argue that it requires an impossible task to be completed, as psychiatric testimony often fails to agree on the mental state of a defendant. In 2012, the US Supreme Court denied the request to take up an Idaho case contending that criminal defendants have a constitutional right to claim that they are innocent by reason of insanity, challenging the state's ban on the insanity defense. The court opinion ruled that the state's lack of the insanity defense does not violate due process of the law under the Constitution.

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