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Per Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12.2, a defendant intending to pursue an insanity defense must timely notify an attorney for the government in writing. The government then has a right to have the court order a psychiatric or psychological examination.
The insanity defense, also known as the mental disorder defense, is an affirmative defense by excuse in a criminal case, arguing that the defendant is not responsible for their actions due to a psychiatric disease at the time of the criminal act.
[1]: 614–5 It broadened the M'Naghten rule of whether a defendant was so mentally ill that he is unable to "know" the nature and quality of his criminal act, or know its wrongfulness, to a question of whether he had "substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of [his] conduct".
The House of Lords delivered the following exposition of the rules: . the jurors ought to be told in all cases that every man is to be presumed to be sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes, until the contrary be proved to their satisfaction; and that to establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the ...
[2]: 634–635 Prior to the enactment of the law, the federal standard for "insanity" was that the government had to prove a defendant's sanity beyond a reasonable doubt (assuming the insanity defense was raised). Following the Act's enactment, the defendant has the burden of proving insanity by "clear and convincing evidence". [3]
A Durham rule, product test, or product defect rule is a rule in a criminal case by which a jury may determine a defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity because a criminal act was the product of a mental disease. Examples in which such rules were articulated in common law include State v. Pike (1870) and Durham v
The defense attorney said Rojas was born prematurely just outside of Santiago, Chile, and spent almost three weeks in the hospital soon after his birth in a coma and getting blood transfusions.
Durham v. United States, 214 F.2d 862 (D.C. Cir. 1954), [1] is a criminal case articulating what became known as the Durham rule for juries to find a defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity: "an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect."