Educationals

Legal insanity vs medical insanity

The word insanity has no technical meaning in law or in medicine. Insanity comprises a degree of mental disturbance, so menacing and so disabling, that the person may be considered to be legally immune from certain responsibilities. Insanity is a defence because, not knowing what he is doing, or not knowing the moral nature of his act, the insane person is incapable of forming the intentions that are required for unlawful killing. He has not the 'mens rea'(guilty mind)for any offence. An insane person is an innocent person, who has nothing to answer for.

Medical insanity would cover abnormality of mind, delusion and cases of irresistibility, all of which warrant diminished responsibility. Legal insanity as such, envisages that the unsoundness of mind of the subject must be such as to make the offender incapable of knowing the nature of the act, or not knowing that what he is doing is wrong or contrary to the law.

The McNaughton Rules

Daniel McNaughton was a 29 year old, son of a Glasgow wood-turner, a man of 'gloomy and reserved social habits' which included membership of religious groups and the Tory party. He decided to murder Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister. He made elaborate plans and travelled to London, but in fact mistakenly shot and killed Edward Druminod, Peel's private secretary, in daylight in front of numerous witnesses on 20th January,1843. During the trial, McNaughton himself admitted that "they have accused me of crimes of which I am not guilty, they do everything to harass and prosecute me, in fact they wish to murder me. I was driven to desperation by persecution". McNaughton knew what he was doing and was aware that he was committing a criminal act but felt compelled to do so, an act he performed with cool deliberation.

Psychiatrists were called and it was accepted:

a) That his delusions were real.
b) That the act was committed under a delusion.

McNaughton was found "not guiltiy on the grounds of insanity".

McNaughton himself was sent to Bethlehem and later Broadmoor asylum where he died in 1865.

In McNaughton's case the Lord Chancellor put to a panel of His Majesty's Judges five questions designed to clarify the legal position. Their replies given on 19th June 1843, constitute the so-called 'McNaughton rules'.

The following contain the main points of the McNaughton's rules:

• Every man is to be presumed to be sane, until the contrary be proved.
• An insane person is punishable, if he knew at the time of committing such a crime that he was acting contrary to law.
• To establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that at the time of the committing of the act, the accused was suffering under such defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong".
• Finally it is the jury's role to decide whether the defendant was insane.

The 'rules' stressed the importance of the

• The defendant's notion of understandability of right and wrong.
• A causal relationship between the content of delusions and the crime.
• The status of the offence if the contents of the delusion were true.

No reference was made to lack of control, irresistible drives or impulses.

There are three compartments of the mind, one controlling cognition, another controlling emotion and the third controlling will. This rule exempts only those whose cognitive faculties are affected, hence the rule has been regarded as too narrow, more stringent and retrogressive. It makes no provision for cases where one's emotion and the will are so affected. Every type of insanity(recognised by medical man is not legal insanity)unless the cognitive faculty of mind is lost as a result of unsoundness of mind is lost as a result of unsoundness of mind. The irony invested in the McNaughton rule is that if the right-wrong test has been applied at the time McNaughton was tried, he could not have been found guilty, on the ground of insanity.

In day-to-day practice, psychiatrists come across several cases where it is pleaded that criminal responsibility of the accused may be exempted and in several cases courts have done so for the accused suffering from unsoundness of mind. But in many cases where it was not established that at the time of committing the crime the person was of unsound mind, accused have been convicted also.

It is a crucial question for the psychiatrist to establish whether or not at the time of commencement of the criminal act the person was suffering from unsoundness of mind. Invariably in the present day procedure, the individual is brought for psychiatric evaluation after a gap of months, or even years, following the event. On psychiatric evaluation and observation it is possible to comment on the present mental state of the individual but a comment in retrospect is possible based on reliable history of illness, which is quite likely to be distorted.