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Why the insanity defense is rarely used.

The insanity defense is a defense used as an excuse in a criminal case, arguing that the

defendant is not responsible for their actions due to an episodic or persistent mental disorder at

the time of the criminal act. This defense both hard to prove and hard to dismiss. In the United

Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States, use of the defense is rare. The English House of Lords

expressed the first modern insanity test in the infamous M'Naghten case. Daniel M'Naghten was

a commoner who killed a civil servant while suffering delusions. He was acquitted and placed in

a mental institution for the rest of his life. Afterword, the M'Naghten rule says that a person is

insane if, because of a "disease of the mind" at the time he committed the act, he did not know

the "nature and quality of the act" that he was performing; or he did not know that what he was

doing was wrong. The M'Naghten rule was widely adopted almost word for word in the United

States. In 1962, the American Law Institute, or ALI, announced another insanity defense. This

defense had immediate popularity with many legislatures and judiciaries. Under the ALI test, a

person is not responsible for his criminal conduct if he either lacked "substantial capacity" to

appreciate the "criminality" of his conduct, or he failed to "conform" his conduct to the

requirements of law because of mental defect. A frequently cited study found only one percent of

defendants charged with a felony plead insanity. Of those, no more than a fourth are found not

guilty by reason of insanity. These are leading factors in the rarity of the insanity defense, that

causes the defense to be seldom used in the court of law. In some instances, a plea of insanity

was thrown out due to it’s impracticality. ​The insanity defense is rarely used because it is
impractical in the court of law, because it is hard to discern whether or not someone is

clinically insane, and because some states do not have an exact stance on this defense.

The insanity defense’ impracticality stems from its’ controversial methods of testing and

its’ inability to hold up in court. According to the​ Yale Law Journal Vol. 73 ​“unless a conflict

can be discovered between some basic objective of the criminal law and its application to an

"insane" person, there can be no purpose for "insanity" as a defense. Until a purpose is

uncovered, debates about the appropriateness of any insanity-defense formula as well as efforts

to evaluate various formulae with respect to the present state of psychiatric knowledge are

destined to continue to be frustrating and fruitless.” This being said, the application of the

defense is fallible, to even attempt to make a case on the basis of insanity the defense must have

one hundred percent certainty that they can claim their client as “insane”. On the other side of the

spectrum the insanity defense is also a deterrent in a case against the prosecution, once a

defendant’s sanity comes into play, the prosecution must prove their sanity in order to huld such

a case. The aforementioned book also states that “when lack of mental capacity is raised as a

defense to a charge of crime, the law accepts the general experience of mankind and presumes

that all people including the accused is sane.” In such cases, as soon as evidence of mental

disorder is introduced, sanity like any other fact, must be proved as part of the prosecution's case

beyond a reasonable doubt.” Such clauses have caused a general dismissal of such an act as
depicted by the following graph, with less than 40 cases a year between the years 1978-2000.

Yet another reason why insanity pleas are rarely used in court is because how difficult it

is to prove that an individual is insane without a reasonable doubt. The ALI rule on insanity is “a

person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental

disease of defect he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct

or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.” while the M’Naghten rule goes off the

basis that every man is assumed to be sane, quoted here: “Every man is to be presumed to be

sane, and ... that to establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at

the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of

reason, from disease of mind, and 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” Words like "insane" and
"crazy" are thrown around pretty freely in our culture. Regularly, we utilize the expression

"insane" to portray somebody who is only somewhat different, on different occasions, we use it

to depict ourselves when we are feeling a tad bit out of sync with the rest of the world. Since the

beginning as far back as Biblical occasions, and without a doubt considerably earlier than that,

there was an affirmation that a few people just were not able adjust to commonly settled upon

social standards and traditions. A wide range of marks were connected to such individuals:

frantic individuals, crazy people, lunatics. Yet, the recognizable proof of the individuals who fit

these names, just as acknowledged treatment, changed through the ages. “Insanity is a legal term

and not a psychological term. The legal definition appears to support our understanding of

insanity as a defense in court in the US. To meet the legal definition of insanity, a defendant

must prove that he or she was unable to tell the difference between right and wrong at the time a

crime was committed due to the severity of his/her psychosis” according to a quote by Sarah

Fader of BetterHelp.com. Fader alludes to the fact that while most people use the word

“insanity” as a way to describe a person’s general psychosis, this definition is different to the one

used in a legal sense. Without a general understanding of the legal grounds of the word

“insanity” jurors act on what they think of as morally “right” or “wrong”. An individual’s

psychosis can cause a great controversy in terms of assessing their state of mind, especially at the

time of a crime. While difficult to prove whether or not an individual is insane, it is of even

greater difficulty to prove whether or not said individual was or was not insane at the time of the

crime in which they are accused of committing. Taking into consideration that an individual s

declared insane, there are two pathways in which the prosecution can use this in their argument,

the first being that the individual in question may have been “blinded” by a case of “temporary
insanity”. The notion of temporary insanity argues that a defendant was insane during the

commission of a crime, but they later regained their sanity after the criminal act was carried out.

Another route the prosecution could take is claiming that the individual’s insanity was brought

upon by the act in which they commited. The prosecution could claim that the act in which the

individual supposedly committed could be so heinous that said individual “lost their sanity” in

the aftermath, then making the defendant legally liable for their actions while “sane”. With

muddled tactics of discerning whether or not an individual is “sane” and then discerning at which

point did said individual become “insane” trials could and/or would go on for weeks to months at

a time.

Another reason why the insanity defense is rarely used is because of differing laws in

states. Out of 50 states, 46 of those states have a form of the insanity defense, and out of those 46

states, 45 states have insanity tests based on either M'Naghten or the Model Penal Code(MCP)

tests. “Using the MPC test, a criminal defendant must be found not guilty by reason of insanity if

he is diagnosed with a relevant mental defect (for example, severe mental retardation or

schizophrenia disorder) and at the time of the incident was unable to either: Appreciate the

criminality of his conduct; or conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. Therefore,

using the MPC test, a legally insane individual must have been diagnosed with a mental defect

(typically by a court-appointed mental health professional) and either did not know right from

wrong or lacked the ability to control an impulse that led to the incident.” According to

Findlaw.com. States with the Model Penal Code test have chosen to include a control element,

and certain states still using the original M'Naghten test have added that "irresistible impulse" or
control element. Some states don't even have the insanity defense. Montana was the first state to

get rid of it completely. Four other states followed suit and abolished the defense: Utah, Kansas,

Idaho and Nevada. Nevada's Supreme Court later ruled the absence of the insanity defense

unconstitutional. States free to develop law in the field of legal insanity, and under the

Constitution, they are encouraged to do so. Though the court has "the power to prevent an

experiment. We may strike down the statute which embodies it on the ground that, in our

opinion, the measure is arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable" essentially meaning that a law can

be placed on insanity but it is likely to be removed in a perpetuary sense.

iii

The insanity defense is rarely used because it is impractical in the court of law, because it

is hard to discern whether or not someone is clinically insane, and because some states do not

have an exact stance on this defense. The insanity defense is a defense that is slowly dying with

age. It's complicated application in the court of law holds firm. While definitions of the term

“insanity” are evolving to better suit the court of law, it is only bringing about harder case trials.

While the federal U.S. government doesn't have a law that applies to the insanity defense, most

states do. While most states have some type of laws that would apply to the insanity defense, one

state’s law on the insanity plea may be drastically different than another.
 Works Cited 
● Caplan, Gerard M. Yale Law Journal. Vol. 73, Book On 

Demand, 2012. 

● “The ‘Model Penal Code’ Test for Legal Insanity.” Findlaw, 

criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/the-model-penal-

code-test-for-legal-insanity.html. 

● “‘Define Insane:" How To Know Whether Someone Is Insane 

Or Just Different.” Betterhelp, 

www.betterhelp.com/advice/personality-disorders/define-i

nsane-how-to-know-whether-someone-is-insane-or-just-dif

ferent/​. 

● Tindula, Rob. “The Rarity of the Insanity Defense.” The 

Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 2 Dec. 2016, 

www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-tindula/the-rarity-of-the-insa

nit_b_8683958.html​. 
● “Position Statement 57: In Support of the Insanity Defense.” 

Mental Health America, 25 June 2014, 

www.mentalhealthamerica.net/positions/insanity-defense​. 

● Cevallos, Danny. “Insanity Defense? Forget about It.” CNN, 

Cable News Network, 17 July 2015, 

www.cnn.com/2015/02/11/opinion/cevallos-insanity-defense

/index.html.