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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.
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 idea of insanity in English law dates from 1324, when the Statute de Praerogativa Regis allowed the King to take the lands of "idiots and lunatics." The early law used various words, including "idiot", "fool" and "sot" to refer to those who had been insane since birth, [2] and "lunatic" for those who had later become insane, or were insane with some lucid intervals. [3]
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 ...
In United States criminal law, insanity may serve as an affirmative defense to criminal acts and thus does not need to negate an element of the prosecution's case such as general or specific intent. [11] Each U.S. state differs somewhat in its definition of insanity but most follow the guidelines of the Model Penal Code. All jurisdictions ...
Among the most controversial affirmative defenses is the insanity defense, [8] whereby a criminal defendant seeks to be excused from criminal liability on the ground that a mental illness, at the time of the alleged crime, prevented him or her from understanding the wrongful nature of his or her actions.
The criminal law of the United States is a manifold system of laws and practices that connects crimes and consequences. In comparison, civil law addresses non-criminal disputes. The system varies considerably by jurisdiction, but conforms to the US Constitution . [ 1 ]
The ALI rule, or American Law Institute Model Penal Code rule, is a recommended rule for instructing juries how to find a defendant in a criminal trial is not guilty by reason of insanity.