Law Commons^™

Rationality, Insanity, And The Insanity Defense: Reflections On The Limits Of Reason, Theodore Y. Blumoff

Theodore Y. Blumoff

Individuals who suffer from chronic paranoid ideations live with deeply embedded conspiratorial delusions that are sometimes accompanied by unwanted visual and/or auditory stimuli, sometime neither: just psychotic delusions in which they feel as if they have lost control of their lives – and of course they have, albeit not from the performances of foreign forces. When those perceived forces persevere for even a fairly short period of time, they can dictate the performance of evil deeds that the individual ultimately feels helpless to oppose. What observations and findings from neuroscience make clear is that such individuals do not lack knowledge, …

The Insanity Of Mens Rea: Due Process And The Abolition Of The Insanity Defense, Jean K. Phillips, Rebecca E. Woodman

Jean K Phillips

The Insanity of the Mens Rea Model:

Due Process and the Abolition of the Insanity Defense.

Jean K. Gilles Phillips and Rebecca E. Woodman

Abstract

In the last 15 years a flurry of legislative activity has taken place as states have attempted to redefine the insanity defense. This article focuses on those states who chose not just to refine the definition of insanity, but to completely abolish it as an affirmative defense.

During the 2006 Supreme Court term many believed that the Court would answer the question of whether the Due Process Clause protects the right of the accused to …

Rearranging Deck Chairs On The Titanic: Why The Incarceration Of Individuals With Serious Mental Illness Violates Public Health, Ethical, And Constitutional Principles And Therefore Cannot Be Made Right By Piecemeal Changes To The Insanity Defense, Jennifer Bard

Jennifer Bard

The author argues that the problem of adjudicating the mentally ill who commit crimes is too large a societal issue to be resolved by refining the insanity defense. Since this is a threat to the public's health, it is fair to describe the current situation as a public health crisis. First, by not providing adequate mental health resources we create conditions in which people with mental illness find themselves in situations where due to their illness they have the opportunity to commit criminal acts which are causally related to the impairment of their thought process. Second, when people with mental …