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"Irresistible impulse" can be pleaded only under the defense of diminished responsibility, not under the defense of insanity. Thus it operates only as a partial defence to murder, reducing the charge to manslaughter, and giving the judge discretion as to length of sentence and whether committal would be more appropriate than incarceration.
The defense centered on a rare form of the insanity defense called "irresistible impulse". [15] Until the Peterson case, the "irresistible impulse" defense had not been used in Michigan since People v. Durfee in 1886. [17] The trial lasted seven days with a total of 31 witnesses: 26 for the prosecution and five for the defense. [18]
The case of Yates—who had exhibited severe postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, and schizophrenia leading up to the murders—placed the M'Naghten rules, along with the irresistible impulse test for sanity, under close public scrutiny in the United States.
The Durham rule, also called the Product Test, is broader than either the M'Naghten test or the irresistible impulse test. The test has more lenient guidelines for the insanity defense, but it addressed the issue of convicting mentally ill defendants, which was allowed under the M'Naghten Rule. [12]
The defense's acceptance in American jurisdictions varies considerably. The majority of states have adopted it by statute or case decision, and a minority even recognise broader defenses such as "irresistible impulse". Some U.S. states restrict the defense to the charge of murder only where a successful defense will result in a manslaughter ...
The M'Naghten Rules lack a volitional limb of "irresistible impulse"; diminished responsibility is the volitional mental condition defense in English criminal law.
Under Bazelon's Durham rule, a defendant would be excused from criminal responsibility if a jury found that the unlawful act was "the product of mental disease or mental defect," rather than the product of an "irresistible impulse" (which was the old test). [19]
Irresistible impulse, a legal defense that claims that an accused should not be held responsible for his or her actions Topics referred to by the same term This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Impulse .