Defendant Insanity Case Study

Defendant’s plea Insanity Insanity is identified as a defense for criminals and they use it as an excuse defense because they claim that when they are committing that certain crime they are not using their minds correctly or they were not thinking, a lot of different excuses for pleading insanity. The process criminals have to go through if the criminals plea insanity is the psychiatric testimony has to try and prove if the defendant understood what they did wrong and they decide if the defendant was sane enough or if they are mentally disable. Defendants should not be able to use insanity as an excuse defense. (Larry J. Siegel, P. 139).

Why should an Insanity Defense not be an excuse? Pleading for Insanity should not be used …show more content…
There are many different types of ways a defendant can claim that the reason they did a certain crime was because of one of these four sources.
There are a specific types of rules when someone wants to use the insanity defense. One rule of the Insanity Defense is The M’naghten Rule, this means that the person who committed this crime could not tell what they were doing or what was going on, they could not tell what was right or what was wrong. This is used in most states. Another rule that you have to follow is called The Irresistible Impulse, this rule is used mostly, it means that the person who did what they did, did not know that this was illegal and they could not control what was going on because of the mental illness that they have. They sometimes claim that it was an …show more content…
A long time ago, 1981, someone named John Hinckley fell in love with Jodie Foster. Since he was in love with her, he decided that he wanted to get her attention in some way, he decided try and shoot Ronald Raegan. Ronald Raegan was shot underneath his arm, but he did not get killed. John Hinckley only shot him because he wanted to get notice by the girl he fell in love with. In his trial, he was found not guilty because he plead insanity. After that happened, the Insanity plea was not allowed as an excuse in a lot of states and it became even more strict.
It became stricter by different states saying that they are limiting the amount of times that you get to defend yourself about what you did wrong or what mental illness caused you to do that certain crime. Ever since then, the Insanity plea does not get used as much as it used too, even when a defendant uses it, most of the times it is likely that they will still be