If mental illness does not equal insanity (in a trial), what does?
I’m watching the trial of Iowa vs. Becker on court TV. In the trial a man who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia killed his coach just days after getting released from a mental institution. He told police that he killed the coach because the coach was turning him and the other students into “fish, animals, and dead people” and that the coach was a devil, along with other things that are obviously coming from someone with a mental illness (saying if you squeezed his right hand then the devil wouldn’t be so powerful, the coach was keeping the devil in his nostrils, etc).
The defense is claiming not guilty due to insanity. However, the prosecution argued that “mental illness does not equal insanity”.
If such a debilitating illness like paranoid schizophrenia doesn’t count as insanity in the court, what does? I’m just trying to understand, as I’ve taken an interest in watching these trials. My only guess is that it might be considered insanity if, say, someone kills your child right in front of you, so you temporarily lose your sense of judgment and kill the person who killed your child?
I dunno. Does anyone have any insight?
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Many jurisdictions use an old English Common Law definition for sanity as a defense called the M’Naughton rule, which states that a person cannot be prosecuted for a crime if he or she did not understand the moral consequences of his or actions; that is to say, could not distinguish between right and wrong. Plenty of people who are clinically ill can distinguish from right and wrong, and the law is antediluvian, but the law is extremely slow to adapt.
To amplify to what @dpworkin noted, in many jurisdictions, attempts to either plan the act in a way to avoid getting caught, or cover up the act after the fact are seen as demonstration of the fact the accused did understand the wrongness and consequences of the crime. Perhaps the prosecuting attorney is trying to say, rather ineptly if your words are a quote of his/hers, that the legal definition of insanity is not in play in this trial because the defendant’s actions show that he did not meet the legal standard for insanity.
@ETpro Thanks for clarifying, but that is not the case in this trial – the guy shot his coach in front of 22 other students, told them he was helping the police by killing the guy, then openly admitted to the police that he killed him because he was the devil (and all the other reasons I mentioned above).
The way I understand it, as long as they know it was wrong when they do it, they are still guilty. Some insanity defenses work if they became insane afterwards, they can be held until they regain their sanity, and then tried.
I know of one case where a woman was judged insane, and ordered held until she regained her sanity, she then served five years in jail. But after they let her out, she acted crazier than ever, but hasn’t committed another crime, yet.
@stemnyjones I hope you can follow the case to it’s verdict and see how the prosecutor’s argument plays out. The judge will issue instructions to the jury, and they should include precisely what it required for a finding of “Not guilty by reason of insanity.”
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