Pros And Cons Of Insanity Plea

The insanity plea is a defense used in court that is highly debated in society. When a person is accused of a crime, they can recognize that they committed the crime but pled “not guilty by reason of insanity.” Although the insanity plea is rarely used and few of those cases are even successful, it garners a lot of attention from society due to the publicity on those few cases. The insanity plea arises in five percent of criminal cases and is successful only in a quarter of those. Most people are misinformed when it comes to understanding exactly what the insanity defense actually entails. The insanity plea is less about determining whether the defendant is guilty and more about the knowledge of the wrongfulness of their crime. When acquitted,
This code states: “A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law”. Congress passed the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984 and it states: “It is an affirmative defense to a prosecution under any federal statute that, at the time of the commission of the acts constituting the offense, the defendant, as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, was unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts. Mental disease or defect does not otherwise constitute a defense”. Many states have banned the insanity defense altogether including Idaho, Kansas, Montana, and Utah. Many states, however, use the verdict of “guilty but mentally ill or insane”. This verdict protects the rights of the mentally ill, while still serving the criminal sentence. This usually entails receiving psychiatric treatment to become sane and then serving a sentence in prison. On the other hand, if a person is not guilty by reason of insanity, they do not serve a sentence; however, they spend an equal or greater amount of time in a psychiatric facility to receive
On the other hand, some people who are mentally ill truly do not know that what they are doing is wrong. One of the most famous recent cases involving the insanity plea was the case of Andrea Yates. On June 20, 2001, police were called to the house of Andrea Yates where she was standing outside in her clothes, dripping wet, and told the responding officer, “I just killed my kids,”. Police found the corpses of four of her child the fifth still floating face down in the bathtub. “Their mother grabbed them, choked them, beat them, and shoved their heads underwater until their lungs burst and they died,”. Her children were ages six months, two, three, five, and seven. The Yates were a family deeply rooted in Christian religion, and Andrea’s husband wanted six children, despite her severe issues with postpartum depression. Andrea had a history of mental illness starting in 1999 including fasting for long periods of time and suicide attempts with knives and pills. Her husband took her too many psychiatrists where they diagnosed her with postpartum depression and schizoaffective disorder. She was put on varieties of antidepressants and antipsychotics that were beneficial for a while. It seems that she developed postpartum psychosis, which is different from the baby blues