Question

Does the insanity defense serve a useful function today? If you could create your own rule for determining insanity in criminal trials, what would it be? How would it differ from existing rules?

Answer 1

Insanity defense refers to the concept of defense by excuse by saying that the defendant wasn’t in a normal mental state while committing the crime because of the defendant’s mental disease which may be episodic or permanent. Today, I don’t think it should be taken into account because any lunatic can be used to kill hundreds or even thousands of people by shooting at them randomly and then escape without any punishment.

If I’m given the responsibility of framing a rule, I would say anyone who commit a crime should be punished without looking at whether they were mentally retarded, women or children except that they did it to protect themselves from a possible attack. The existing rule simply leaves the person if they find them unfit or mentally unstable during the time of the crime.