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Federal law provides for the commitment of those found not guilty only by reason of insanity. Once such a verdict is handed down, the defendant has the burden of proof of showing that his release would not create a substantial risk of bodily injury to another person or serious damage of property of another due to a present mental disease or ...
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 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.
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 ...
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 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. This legal defense developed in the 19th century and became especially associated with the defense of individuals committing crimes of passion.
If the issue is the defendant's mental state at the time of the offense, the ultimate issue would be the defendant's sanity or insanity during the commission of the crime. . In the past, expert witnesses were allowed to give testimony on ultimate issues, such as the applicability of the insanity defense to a particular defenda
It is very difficult to put it in a phrase, but it has been put in this way: that there must be aberration or weakness of mind; that there must be some form of mental unsoundness; that there must be a state of mind which is bordering on, though not amounting to, insanity; that there must be a mind so affected that responsibility is diminished ...