Insanity Defense Essay

Imagine for a moment, more or lessone has just inexplicably murdered a mformer(a) or child. Imagine the rage, crimson you apart, physically making you shake or be ill. At the same time this rage is entangled and somewhat smo on that pointd by the crushing heartbreak well uping up inside of you. A thought flashes into your head, I leave behind kill the person responsible for this however our sanity stops that action. A persons hallucination allows you to be that to actually carry out a murder is il reasonable, immoral, and illegal. You know that your actions will land you a spot in hell next to all the other Murders. That thought process is exactly what separates you from a killer. Although with the right lawyer, the person who committed this tragic crime may someday be able to be free. This receiver may be able to push such anguish onto a nonher family because they were let free on grounds of momentary insanity. The insanity defense should be wiped out nationwide unless cert ain tests of mental insanity are met and a patient has a history of a mental illness. The insanity defense is a shepherds crook defense that is used when the defendants case states that the crime occurred because the defendant had a severe mental disease or defect and was unavailing to apprehend the wrongfulness of his or her acts.When somebody claims insanity, they are non held responsible for their wrong actions. There are two pieces of evidence the first being the criminate was unable to tell right from wrong and the second that the impeach did not intend to act the way he or she did and/or could not jibe their behavior. The insanity defense should not be a valid excuse to free criminals. Insanity is a legal term, not a psychological one, and experts protest whether it has valid psychological meaning. Critics of not sheepish by reason of insanity form claimed that too populacey sane defendants use the insanity defense to flow justice that the state of psychological kn owledge encourages expensive dueling expert contests that juries are unlikely to understand that, in practice, the defense unfairly excludes some defendants. Research on not guilty by reason of insanity fails to support most of these claims but some serious problems may exist with this.The insanity defense goes defend to 1843 when a man by the name of Daniel McNaughtan attempted to assassinate Edward Drummond, Secretary to theBritish Prime Minister Robert Peel. McNaughtan was under the impression that he was being prosecuted, so he reacted with murder. Daniel McNaughtan killed Robert Peels secretary. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Following his struggle, he spent the next twenty age in a mental asylum until his dying. Soon after this case, the English House of Lords set standards for the insanity defense which they called McNaugtans Rule Every man is to be presumed to be sane, andthat to establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved tha t, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong. (Encyclopedia Of Everyday righteousness) Soon after this rule became legal, the United States criminal justice system adopted this precedent. In 1981, after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, the insanity defense received a lot of harsh publish criticism. John Hickley was found not guilty by reason of insanity.Various people argued that Hinckley was guilty because the premeditation of the crime committed proved him to be sane, therefore the insanity defense should not have proved him not guilty. Hickley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and remains in psyciatic care. This allows the mentally ill defendant to be found liable of his or her crime, but requires them to seek psychiatric treat ment or be placed in a mental hospital. When the defendants are well enough, they are moved to a prison to serve their sentences. Because of cases like this, the insanity defense still undergoes a lot of public criticism today. Although, during a more recent trial of Jeffrey Dahmer, who mutilated and consumed his young victims, the defendant tried to use the insanity defense, but the jurors found the criminal both sane and guilty.This case showed that the insanity defense does not work for all criminals and supported the publics criticism of the insanity defense. In another famous case, the Unabomber case, defendant Kaczynski refused to allow his attorney to present an insanity defense, and instead pled guilty and was sentenced to a life in prison. Had he let his attorney go through with the temporary insanity plea, there is a good bechance that Kaczynski would be a free man today and could potentially kill again. The insanity defense does not eliminate the certificate of indebt edness of a criminal act from theperson committing the crime instead, it is a defense mechanism for criminals who argue that at the time of the crime the defendant did not have willful intent due to a severe mental defect or disease. As stated before, numerous people are opposed to the insanity defense. They are against the insanity defense because they see it as a means where the defendant can avoid the consequences of his or her actions. People fear violent crimes and will be more apt to prosecute a criminal versus allowing the criminal another chance. The public, as they should be, is shocked when a criminal is successful in imploring insanity, is sent to a mental institution, and then is released once deemed cured by a team of physicians. The public does not see this as punishment, because it is not. A absolutely stint in a mental institution is nothing compared to serving hard time. Some studies suggest that prison time is ineffectual, that may be but isolating violent crimin als is a public safety matter. If left to their own devices, there is a very real possibility that they may strike again.The temporary insanity plea is almost always used in cases of extreme mutilation, murder, and other horrific crimes, yet after undergoing a physiological evaluation some of the most vile people earth are allowed to walk free. Incomprehensibly, the very people who most deserve to be locked up for life are the ones who most often get off by claiming temporary insanity. Due to the violent nature of there crimes it is not a stretch to claim that they were insane. The vast mass of violent criminals are repeat offenders, and that affects every assesspayer in the United States, because it costs tens of thousands of dollars just to run a criminal through the justice system, not to nominate the cost of providing care for them afterward. Once a person has proven they have the capacity to commit such an offence, they have proven that they are not learn to enjoy the freed oms that we as Americans are entitled. The insanity defense is an excuse for criminals to break the law and have no bearing on punishments. In most criminal cases the insanity plea is just a defense strategy aimed at delivering guilty defendants from serving time in prison or getting the death penalty. Most defendants that are found guilty by reason of insanity are released from the mental hospital years if not decades earlier than they would have been if they served their continuous prison sentence. The insanity defense allows criminals to avoid the punishments they should be receiving for the crime they committed.Whensomeone is found not guilty by reason of insanity, jurisdictions require that the person reach at least some time in a psychiatric adroitness if not automatically, many states require commitment to a psychiatric facility on grounds of mental illness, dangerousness, or both most states do not have a limit on the amount of time that someone can be institutionalized i nsane. How long they spend in an institution also varies by state, but on average most stay ternary and a half years in New Jersey 35% of the sample were still in institutions 8 years later in myocardial infarction it was 9 1/2 months in Illinois it was 17 1/2 months, however, in this sample over 70% had been found incompetent prior to trial and had spent an average of 38.4 months in institutions. (Washington Post)= In the early 1990s involving eight different states a study was conducted. They found that less than one percent of criminal defendants used the insanity defense. Only a quarter of these resulted in successful acquittals. Today a number of states have replaced the option of pleading not guilty by reason of insanity with pleading guilty but mentally ill. Currently, Idaho, Montana, and Utah banned insanity defenses, along with the supreme courts ruling. Along with this, surrounded by sixty and seventy percent of cases in which the insanity plea is invoked are for crimes other then murder. In actuality, it is used approximately 0.9% of the time. There are 51 different types of insanity defenses in the United States, one for each set of state laws, and one for federal law when dealing with someone pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. With astronomical operating costs of a psychiatric facility that increase the tax burden on every tax payer in the nation, especially the maximum security facilities that this caliber of criminal is housed at, the temporary insanity precedent set forth over a speed of light ago should be phased out. Unfortunately, murder and violent crime has and will continue to happen as long as there are human beings funding in close proximity, it is and ugly and regrettable reality of human society. There is no real solution to this horrible truth, but the closest and most logical option to preventing the deaths of more innocent people is for temporary insanity regulations to become much more strict. This will inevitably sav e lives, for if just one liquidator has a second opportunity to kill another person that is one more person that is needlessly killed because the killer was given a second chance and not put in prison the first time they proved they have thecapacity to take a life.Works CitedInsanity Defense. The Lectric Law Librarys Lexicon. 2 February, 2009. 12 February, 2009.http//www.lectlaw.com/def/d029.htmlMartin, John P. The Insanity Defense A closer look. Washington Post. 27 February, 1998. WP. 24 February, 2009. http//www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/local/longterm/aron/qa227.html otherwise U.S. News AMA Opposes Insanity Plea. Facts On accuse World News Digest 23 Dec. 1983. World News Digest. Facts On File News Services. 23 Feb. 2009. ultimate Court Arizona Insanity Defense Law Upheld. Facts On File World News Digest 29 June 2006. World News Digest. Facts On File News Services. 23 Feb. 2009.