International Journal for the Semiotics of Law -Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique Deconstructing the Criminal Defence of Insanity (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 2022
This paper clarifies the conceptual space of discussion of legal insanity by considering the virtues of the 'medical model' model that has been used in Norway for almost a century. The medical model identifies insanity exclusively with mental disorder, and especially with psychosis, without any requirement that the disorder causally influenced the commission of the crime. We explore the medical model from a transdisciplinary perspective and show how it can be utilised to systematise and reconsider the central philosophical, legal and medical premises involved in the insanity debate. A key concern is how recent transdiagnostic and dimensional approaches to psychosis can illuminate the law's understanding of insanity and its relation to mental disorder. The authors eventually raise the question whether the medical model can be reconstructed into a unified insanity model that is valid across the related disciplinary perspectives, and that moves beyond current insanity models.
New Journal of European Criminal Law, 2020
This article provides a discussion about criminal insanity regulation in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, with a focus on the roles of legislators, judges and experts in the concretisation of the legal meaning of criminal insanity. The authors recognise that these three countries reflect different ideal type rule constructions that are interesting to study comparatively. The article addresses the following overall questions: To what extent and in what way do the different rule constructions also involve different views on the roles of legislators, judges and experts? And in case of competing models, which is the better solution? To investigate and eventually answer these questions, the authors analyse the content and legislative considerations of the relevant rules, how these rules are applied and understood by judges and experts, and how different understandings of insanity, of legislators, judges and experts, depend on each other. The authors show how the different rule constru...
1987
The following article is an expanded version of a paper given during the 1986 W.G. Hart Legal Workshop at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London entitled "Craziness and Codification-Revising the Automatism and Insanity Defences," see pp. 109-121 of Criminal Law and Justice (Sweet & Maxwell, England 1987) ed. l.H. Dennis. Much of the expansion resulted from an informal faculty presentation given at the University of Arizona College of Law in February 1987. 1 wish to acknowledge my gratitude to the Fulbright Commission for their continued support during my visit to the U.S.A. and to the Dickinson School of Law, both faculty and students, for providing me with such an excellent and intellectually stimulating working environment. I also wish to express my special thanks to my research assistant Kathleen Harrington whose comments and intellectual support have been of immeasurable value. 1. 672 F.2d 115 (D.C. Cir. 1982). For detailed analysis see P.W. Low, J.C. JEFFRIES AND R.J. BONNIE, THE TRIAL OF JOHN W. HINCKLEY, JR.: A CASE STUDY IN THE INSANITY DEFENSE, (1986). 2. CODIFICATION OF THE CRIMINAL LAW: A REPORT TO THE LAW COMMISSION (Law Comm'n No. 143) (1985). The Law Commission was established by the Law Commissions Act 1965 (1965 c.22) "for the purpose of promoting the reform of the law" and consists of a chairman and four other Commissioners appointed by the Lord Chancellor. In the case of this particular report, however, the work was "subcontracted" to four academic lawyers. 3. The Criminal Statistics: England and Wales consistently reveal that the insanity defense is only pleaded successfully in one or two cases each year, see e.g. the 1983 Statistics (Cmd. 9349). 4. See H. Steadman, Empirical Research on the Insanity Defense, 477 ANNALS 58-71 (1985), which reveals that the defense is raised in less than 2% of federal and state trials with approximately a 30% success rate. See further, B.D.
Defense Of Insanity: A Loophole In Criminal Justice System
Anu Books, 2022
It's a topic that whenever tried to put some light on it, is always hushed and put under the carpet which needs serious attention and discussions by the judiciary of India. In a spiritual country like India, there are some things that are unsaid, untold, and unexplainable which are beyond the scope of science. Science names that as "paranormal activities" but, still there is not enough explanation for such activities. People using such spiritual sentiments, take advantage of this fact and hush their wrongful acts under the carpet of blood in the name of spirituality. Though the word "insanity" as a mental disorder is nowhere recognized in the provisions of the Indian penal code, of 1860, the Indian judiciary and lawmakers have taken various keen steps and measures to be able to highlight the word "unsound mind" and bring it under the scope and shadow of Section84 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. The particular section says that people being of unsound mind at the time of the commission of the wrongful act who are unable to differentiate between the right and the wrong would get an advantage of law as they do not possess the right amount of men's rea to commit such actus reus. The judiciary of India and the Indian penal code, of 1860 particularly deal with legal unsoundness of mind and not medical. With the immense growth in science and law, some serious changes and amendments shall be made so that the undue advantage of the particular concept in question wouldn't be made. Our judiciary demands the evidence to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, which becomes a bit difficult to be proved in some cases as the present matter is concerned.
Criminal insanity in Bulgaria and Norway: Analysing the prospect of a common approach
International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 2023
This article raises the question of the prospect of a common approach to mentally ill offenders in Europe, through a comparative discussion of the criminal insanity rules and systems in Norway and Bulgaria. The underlying motivation is to fill a gap in current legal research where the insanity discourse is still to a certain extent nationally oriented. Bulgaria is to date not represented at all in the international discussion of criminal insanity. Starting out from recognizing the different history, rules, culture and welfare of Norway and Bulgaria, the authors argue that these countries have a similar practical understanding of insanity and how it is associated with mental disorders as well as common challenges in their forensic and legal systems. These insights can provide a basis for further comparative explorations concerning a possible harmonization of insanity law in Europe.
Dis)articulating Morality and Myth An Ideological History of the Insanity Defense
2014
Both law and medicine are interpretive practices, and both systems have historically worked in tandem, however ineffectively or tumultuously. The law is, by social mandate, imagined as a "fixed" system of social control, made up of rules and procedures grounded in a reality that is independent of language; although we know that law is both revised and interpreted every day in courtroom practice, to imagine the law, the system that keeps bad people behind bars and good people safe, as indeterminate or, worse, fallible, produces social anxieties that upend our cultural assumptions about fairness that predate our judicial system. This imaginary stability, then, is ultimately what prevents the legal system from evolving in consonance with developments in the mental health professions, as inadequate as that discursive system may be for describing and categorizing the infinite possibilities of mental illness, specifically where it is relevant to the commission of a crime. Ultimately, the insanity plea raises the specter of the endless interpretability of the law and mental illness and, therefore, the frailty of the justice system, which makes each insanity defense trial emblematic of larger social anxieties about social control, fairness, and susceptibility to mental illness or the actions of mentally ill people.
Insanity barrier is principally for the most part utilizes in the criminal indictment. The supposition when the crime was perpetrated, the respondent was experiencing extreme mental or ailment so thusly he isn't competent for valuing the nature of crime what he had done on that time. Anyway in law duty implies risk to discipline, basic to our perspective on man as a free; an individual can be held obligated for any act he submits just on the off chance that he does it with wish and through and through freedom. The adages 'actus non feature ream nisi men's sit rea' the physical act doesn't make an individual guilty, the psychological part as malicious goal is similarly significant this supplication of unsoundness of brain or insanity spare the individual from the death penalty. In the previous 145 years there is no adjustment in the comprehension and information and ability to pick the good and bad for criminal obligation, human conduct is the aftereffect of an interaction among organic and ecological factor other than free decision neglected to intrigue the criminal equity framework in light of the fact that immediate danger to a general public profound situated need to accuse somebody than themselves for criminal harm that happen. The insanity or unsoundness of psyche is the shield to respondent the criminal that were carried out and off track the legal executive just as individuals on the loose.