CJL 4110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Diminished Capacity, Intellectual Disability, Personality Disorder
6 Dec 2015
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Mental disease is legal insanity only when the disease affects a person"s reason and/ or will: insanity excuses criminal liability only when it seriously damages the person"s capacity to act and/ or reason and understand. Defendants were so mentally diseased they couldn"t form a criminal intent and/ or control their actions, no blame: hard defense to succeed with, civil commitments. Court decide if defendants were insane when they committed the crime and if they are still insane if so locked up in max-security prison hospitals, most likely: four tests of insanity. Was majority until hinckley, now not in fed courts. Hinckley found not guilty by reason of insanity for attempting to assassinate president reagan to impress an actress. The right-wrong test of insanity wrong: depends on defendants" mental capacity to know right from, m"naghten 2 prong test. The defendant had a mental disease or defect at the time of the crime, and.
