Pros And Cons Of The Insanity Plea

As defined by Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, the insanity plea is, “the claim that the defendant is not responsible for his or her actions during a mental health episode,” and consequently exempts the defendant from full criminal punishment. Since 1994, it has been statistically proven that only .9 percent of criminal cases have used the insanity defense. It was also discovered that .013 percent of insanity pleas are successful. Therefore, even though many believe that some defendants take advantage of the plea, defendants should have the right to plead insanity under certain conditions, because it has been proven that less than 1% of criminal cases successfully plead insanity, and most of the ‘insane’ individuals are sent to psychiatric facilities, for longer than they would have been locked up in prison. Because of those breathtaking statistics, we can tell that the insanity plea is not abused, and therefore is a necessity in our society.
Most people believe that many of the defendants attempting to plead insane, are taking advantage of civil liberties granted to all citizens. Civil liberties are personal guarantees,
Most arguments state that if the death penalty is revoked when pleading insanity, then many defendants with no case of insanity, will still attempt to use the plea. The insanity defense is hardly presented in criminal cases, and it is only in a fraction of those cases, where the plea actually is successful. If the plea successfully forms a verdict of “guilty but mentally ill,” or “not guilty by reason of insanity” the defendant will most likely be moved into a psychiatric facility. It has been proven, that if the insanity defense is successful, the defendant will spend a longer amount of time confined into a facility, than they would’ve just being sentenced the consequences of the crime they had