NCJ Number
100336
Journal
Case and Comment Volume: 90 Issue: 6 Dated: (November-December 1985) Pages: 22,24,26-28,30
Date Published
1985
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This article reviews the three basic insanity tests used in the United States: the M'Naghten rule, the Durham test, and the American Law Institute's (ALI) Model Penal Code.
Abstract
First proposed in England in 1843 and subsequently adopted in almost all American jurisdictions, the M'Naghten rule holds that to establish a defense of insanity, the accused at the time of offense must have been laboring under a defect of reason from disease of the mind so as not to know the nature and quality of the act or its wrongness. In response to attacks that the rule was based on obsolete conceptions of insanity, the Durham test was devised in 1954. It holds that the defendant is not criminally responsible if the unlawful act resulted from mental disease or defect. This test was subsequently criticized on the basis that it opens the courts to concepts of psychiatric theory at odds with American jurisprudence and that psychiatric determinations are largely subjective and often conflicting. As psychiatrists criticized M'Naghten and courts rejected Durham, the ALI developed a test that holds that a defendant is not criminally responsible if at the time of the act as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks capacity to appreciate the criminality of the conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. The test further holds that this definition does not include an abnormality manifested only by repeated criminal or antisocial conduct. The ALI test has been enacted in all Federal circuit courts and in three-fifths of the State jurisdictions. The remaining States adhere to the M'Naghten rule. 40 footnotes.