The Defense Of The Insanity Defense - 1706 Words

The insanity defense has been used in several cases in criminal law. This defense basically states that the accused cannot be held responsible for what he/she did because they had no control over their actions. Many times the defense attorney will plea for a deal that the defendant be sent to a mental rehabilitation center for proper treatment. When using this defense the defense attorney will argue that there may be a chemical imbalance in his brain therefore he had no idea what he was doing at the time. In my opinion the insanity defense should not exist because many of the people accused just use to get out of their justified sentence. Daniel M Naghten was a woodworker who believed he was the target of a conspiracy involving the pope†¦show more content†¦And this is because so many people were using this defense to get out of being in trouble and later being sentenced. In many cases involving the insanity defense the defense attorney will raise the point that there is a chemical imbalance in his head, basically stating that he had no control over himself at the time that he did the act of violence. Monte Durham was a 23-year-old who had been in and out of prison and mental institutions since he was 17. He was convicted for housebreaking in 1953, and his attorney appealed. Although the district court judge had ruled that Durham s attorneys had failed to prove he didn t know the difference between right and wrong, the federal appellate judge chose to use the case to reform the McNaughton rule. Citing leading psychiatrists and jurists of the day, the appellate judge stated that the McNaughton rule was based on an entirely obsolete and misleading conception of the nature of insanity. He overturned Durham s conviction and established a new rule. The Durham rule states that an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect. The Durham rule was eventually rejected by the federal courts, because it cast too broad a net. Alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, and drug addicts had successfully used the defense to defeat a wide varie ty of crimes. (Legal information institute, Cornell university law school). This is an example of how the insanity