Won't people start pleading insanity if we only go through with the death penalty if we are 100% sure?

Pleading insanity is actually quite complicated and intricate. If someone could just “plead insanity and get away with it” then there would be a lot more criminals going free.

As to your last question insanity is certainly subjective but it can be useful in cases such as court cases to place objective measures on it, keeping in mind of course that this is just done for said purposes.

You are mistaking evidence for psychiatric evaluations. The “100% sure” argument has to do with evidence like, the defendant was videotaped killing the victim, his DNA and fingerprints were all over the crime scene, and he willingly confessed. Even so, we cannot apply those standards equally, and so many states have banned the death penalty owing to numerous acquittals/exonerations of death row inmates.

Why would more people plead insanity if there is no death penalty?

Why would such people “get away with it”?

You can never be 100% sure if someone did the crime and is sane.

I fail to see what that has to do with the death penalty.

If you’re trying to draw an analogy you’ve got your burden of proof switched; in America the burden of proof is on proving guilt.

Insanity as a legal defense is under some tight standards: “Under the M’Naghten rule, a criminal defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity if, at the time of the alleged criminal act, the defendant was so deranged that she did not know the nature or quality of her actions or, if she knew the nature and quality of her actions, she was so deranged that she did not know that what she was doing was wrong.”

I think most shrinks that the court would call in for these tests can suss out a faker. The prosecution will try to make rather sure of that.

“insanity” has to do with being capable of distinguishing between right and wrong at the time you did what you’re accused of; the key is it doesn’t actually matter what you thought, just that you were capable of understanding it at the time. There is more to it than that of course but the bottom line is a successful insanity defense is very difficult because the burden of proof falls to the accused and it is subjective. As to 100% sure, it would restrict the death penalty to only the fewest of crimes, and is often argued because it would effectively end the death penalty and generates a sympathetic argument that is tough to counter consistently without exposing the fallibility of the legal system.

@wonderingwhy
So people who are insane but fail to show that due to the imperfect rules in proving your insane could still be killed. so innocent people may still die if they can’t prove the person is insane?

People wouldn’t “get away with it” even of they somehow did manage to convince a court of law that they were insane and they weren’t.
I think a lifetime in an asylum would be enough to drive anyone mad. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than living among insane people who you were unable to predict or read or rationalise their behaviour.

As @RedPowerLady said, “pleading insanity” isn’t all it is cracked up to be. You don’t go home. You go to an asylum either for the rest of your life, or until you are no longer “insane”. Then you go back on trial.

No one is “getting off” when they plead insanity, they just go to crazy person jail before they go to big boy jail.

I’m loving the “pleed” tag.