Uses of the Insanity Defense

of her stuff always wots over. It's delicious. The avocado looks top notch Jerry, It's insane how good that stuff is. Oh man, Uh, it's funny that you bring that up, Chuck, because we are talking today about the insanity defense. Is that why you just did that? Yeah, you know, Chuck. Yeah, for a very long time, basically since there was is such a thing as law, you know, prior to the advent of law in western civilization, if I killed your brother,

you would come kill me. Yeah, and I right, that was actually the first law, the Code of Hammurabi from the Bible. But a little after that, right, and actually I think it predates the Bible Hammurabi. Yeah, I mean it's like on a black obelisk. Yeah, all right, that's old. That's what I mean. Um, the pretty much the whole idea behind law from the get go was the idea of what was going on in your head when you

did something motive tent. There's a difference between accidentally killing somebody and killing someone on purpose, and this was the idea behind law, to get to the bottom of it and then punish accordingly. And so it's it's a pretty short hop, skip and a jump from getting to the bottom of what someone was thinking at the time to finding that some people weren't thinking anything that any sane

human being would recognize as rational. And with that understanding came the beginnings the premise of what we recognize now is the insanity defense. But this this whole idea that somebody can that the insane, those who are mentally ill um can't understand or grasp the criminality, the moral wrongness of their act um. The idea that that's out there, that people like that are out there, has moved us, I think, quite compassionately, like this check one for humanity.

In my opinion, to protect them, like we need to make sure they don't do that again. But that's not evil and the point of law is to punish evil, right fielders. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, you know so. Um, the from the beginning of understanding this too, even to today, that the insanity defense has undergone evolution after evolution after evolution. Yeah, and you know quite a bit about this a little bit. Um.

It started out in sixteenth century England and um. At the time, Uh, they had the wild beast test in England where a person was so depraved of understanding or memory of like what they had done that uh quote no more than an infant of brute or a wild beast could be found not guilty of his crimes. Um. And it's important to say in insanity is not a medical condition, Like you can't look it up and define insane in like the medical what was was the book the d S d S, d S M. Insanity is

not in there, I don't think, um. And there's no single standard in the United States were defining it um in the court system as far as the defense goes even today. Yeah, Like different states have different methods. There's not like a single federal standard. Yeah, and there's actually a conversation now of whether or not that should be. That's a constitutional right protected by the Eighth Amendment that you are, um, you have a right to plead insanity

or try to prove that you were insane. And yeah, because some states recognize it, right, Uh yeah, as we'll find out. Um. So there's a couple of different um tests that the United States generally operate under. And the first one is the uh monoton test. You pronounced that. I think it's m apostrophe not in and it looks like it should be McNaughton, but they left the sea out and replace it with an apostitis exactly. So he's

very stylish. And that was in the UK and the eighteen forties, and I guess we should go ahead and talk about that case now. Well, Daniel Manon, Yeah, yeah, um. He was a Scottish woodwork um who believed that Prime Minister Robert Peel and the Pope were plotting against him. Yeah, so um, Manaunton went to London and he shot and killed Peel's um secretary. Now, was that a mistake in the identity thing or was it just a bad shot?

I didn't see kill the wrong person. Yes, but he did kill that person with the intent of killing Peel because he thought that Peel was out to get him. Um, and so Peel was. He was tried, but he was acquitted by reason of insanity and he was sentenced to life in Bedlam, which was not a nice place to be. It just sounds like, you know, why would you name it Bedlam unless it was just awful. Well, you know, this is where it comes from. Yeah, because Bedlam was

like kind of a British um. I think it was open. It was open in twelve seven and it was kind of short for Bethlehem, and it was the first mental asylum in Europe. Yeah, and this guy was sentenced to life there, which is that's that was not a nice thing to have happened to you. But even still, the fact that some guy tried to kill the Prime Minister and was not thrown into prison, which I imagine was even worse than Bedlam. Um. Queen Elizabeth herself came out

and said, well, what are you guys doing? What courts explain yourselves. And what the courts came up with was what came to be known as the Magnaton rule. They said, if you here's a test for insanity. If somebody UM doesn't know what they're doing at the time they commit the crime, or they don't know what they're doing was right or wrong. It's also called the right wrong test. Then from now on under British law, we're going to uniformly say that that person is insane and can be

acquitted of a crime. They really called it the right wrong test. It's along the nose UM, so that's a monoton test and what we'll get to how that applies today. UH and then came along UM American Law Institute the a l I established an insanity test in nineteen two, um laid out in the Model Penal Code, and they

then began to consider what they called irresistible impulse. So if you're a defendant, you could not refrain from doing something you knew was wrong, like you you can see red, you know what's wrong to kill someone, but you just couldn't help yourself, like what you might call a crime of passion or something like that, like you're so overwhelmed with rage or vengeance or whatever. You know what you're doing is wrong, but you can't stop yourself. It's also

called the volition rule. YE you're doing it like Shawshank for instance, although he didn't really kill anyone, but that's what they thought was Tim Robbins had walked in on his wife and like, try this guy. So, um, under this test, h you were criminally insane if you're unable to quote appreciate the criminality of conduct or to conform

your conduct to the requirements of the law. So you can still go out and kill someone and uh use gloves and dispose of the body and all that stuff and still be considered insane under this standard used to it was pretty it was pretty controversial. And then twenty years after that, I got named John Hinckley changed all that again, which led to the Insanity Defense Reform Act

of eighty four. So what happened with Hinkley? We all remember that, right, Yeah, he went after Reagan to impress Jodie Foster and he shot Reagan and he was acquitted. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and the nation went crazy. Yeah, people were like because it was the president, you know, like, how can you acquit this guy? Right? Well, not only that, it was when Monoton was sentenced to bedlam and the Monoton Rule came about for about a hundred years after that, maybe a

little less. If you were found insane, whether or not you're acquitted, you still spent the rest of your life in an insane asylum. As psychology progressed further and further and got to the point where they're like, hey, this person's cured. This person's cured. That person. Sometimes when you were found not guilty, very's in insanity, you weren't even like you got out after a couple of years. It

was basically tantamount to getting off. And by the time Hinckley was acquitted, UM that the public kind of saw that that was the case, like he wasn't going to get any kind of punishment, and we need to do something. So they came up with a reform for the insanity defense. Yeah, and basically that sort of put the ali standard aside and brought us back to something more like the magnoton rule.

And UH even more significantly, probably they federal and state shifted the burden of proof after Hinckley to UH defense, so you had to instead of being in on the prosecution, UM, it was on the defense to prove that they were UH with clear evidence that they were legally insane. At the time, So that was a big deal that shift. Yeah, and yeah, they did away with the volition rule too, right, I think so. And and it's important to know that when you there's two ways to to use the insanity role.

You can go guilty by reasons of insanity or not guilty by reasons of insanity, which is interesting that you can use the same thing for guilty or not guilty. But um, it's there to protect the mentally ill, you know. So it's a it's a good thing, and it's not it's pretty tough to get it through. Like only one percent of cases are successful, and then only about fifteen of that one percent are actual acquittals. So it's not like, you know, oh I was I was insane at the time,

and so you can't throw me in jail. Yeah, well it's pretty rare at the time. Is a really big thing too. You can't just be like, oh, well, I'm mentally ill, so I gotta let me off, because then I have blanket immunity from any of my actions. You have to be able to prove that at that time you didn't understand what you were doing was wrong, you were not competent to too. I guess stand trial, Yeah, and for that and convince a jury of that, which is that's the trick. Yeah. So we have some famous

cases here. Yeah Manton his case came in uh eighteen forty three, but um, he wasn't the first one in the West to uh, I guess get off for being insane. Acquitted by reason of insanity. Um. In the United States back in eighteen thirty five, a guy named Richard Lawrence, who was a house painter, um, was acquitted by reason of insanity. We're trying to kill the president. Yeah, trying to kill him really hard to Andrew Jackson was the president at the time. Yeah. I don't think I knew

this until this article. I didn't need did you know you didn't know? Okay, I'm not a dummy. Then he had a derringer, and I think derringers at the time were notorious for not firing. It fired, it fired bullet, so it went off, but the bullet didn't come out. Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying. They were known for not firing correctly. And uh. He actually had two derringers and they both misfired, and apparently Jackson went after him with his cane like

you know this dude was trying to kill me. Like there was no secret service at the time. I guess secret service was his cane, right. He happened to be coming out of a state funeral. And so not only did Andrew Jackson beat this guy with his kane, none other than Tennessee Senator Davy Crockett helps to subdue again, of course he did. Richard Lawrence is like, this is awesome. I'm getting beat by Davy Cross Jackson. I'll be remembered forever.

And he was and as uh if you know about him, Um, but he was acquitted and committed to a mental asylum and that was the end of Richard Lawrence as far as we know. Yeah, and we should say like he was it wasn't just going after the president that made him insane. He was He believed he was Richer the Third uh, the king who was recently found buried beneath

the parking lot. Oh yeah, um, he thought he was Richer the Third and the Andrew Jackson had killed his father and that by killing Andrew Jackson, um, a lot more money would be available. This is during a depression, and Jackson actually, for his part, came to believe that Richard Lawrence was a patsy in an assassination attempt carried out by the rival I think Wig Party who wanted him out of the presidency, which wasn't true, no, but

he spent the rest of his life paranoid about it. Alright, So uh ezra Pound, poet, writer, and unbeknownst to me, uh anti Semite and fascist. I had no idea. I didn't either. He was um. And this was a tricky case because most people believe now that he wasn't insane and that he just really I knew the right people and pulled the right strings to get out of a crime.

So he was a big Mussolini guy. Moved to Italy and started doing a radio broadcast, began writing and broadcasting these anti Semitic, anti Roosevelt rants during World War Two. That doesn't sit well with the United States, of course, especially not when we invade Italy and take over Ya. And so uh it was an act of treason, and he was arrested and imprisoned in Italy, and then after

Mussolini died, he was extradited. Uh faced these charges and he pled insanity and was actually found not competent to stand trial and spent the rest of his days in a middle asylum, Saint Elizabeth's in d C, Washington, DC. He didn't spend the rest of his days. He got out in nineteen fifty eight. Oh. I thought he died at night, and while he was at St. Elizabeth's, which was headed by a devotee of Ezra Pound, a guy named Dr winfried Overholser, Sr. That's not a real name.

I swear he was the head of Saint Elizabeth and he thought Pound was just one of the greatest literary figures alive. I thought he died there and no, and so he vouched for him and um. Basically Pound was allowed to have like visitors over for sex anytime, and he he had a really cushy um life while he was there, and got out and got around being tried for treason even though he was never declared insane. No doctor ever said this man's insane. They just vouched for him that

he was. I can't remember how they put it, but basically they got around it with some antickes off his rocker is that the legal term. Uh. The next one is pretty interesting to Anthony and William Esposito brothers dubbed the Mad Dog killers in one in January, New York City, they held up their office manor and office manager for about six fifty bucks and then shot and killed him. And then this wild police chase on foot down Fifth Avenue or up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, like darting in

and out of department stores, shooting and stuff. One of the guys gets popped in the leg, goes down, plays dead, and then shoots and kills the officer as he approaches them. The dirty rat, Oh man, that's such a dirty right move. The other guy or when he shot and killed the cop um, he got up and starry to run off in a bunch of New Yorkers got on top of him and beat him unconscious. That's the beauty of New York.

And they they found the other guy his brother in in a convenience store, and so they were caught and tried, and throughout the trial they barked and drooled and banged their heads on the on the desk because apparently this is what insane people do exactly, And the jury didn't buy it and convicted him both sentenced him to death.

Actually yeah, And while they were at sing sing they continued this I mean I I don't know if people thought it was real or not, So I don't I'm hesitated to say continued the charade because maybe they were a little off. But um, they continued this in prison, and they basically didn't care in sing sing and they were put to death in so unsuccessful in their bid to get off on the insanity rule. Yeah, like you said, only is effective in one percent of cases, Andrew Goldstein, Yeah,

I remember this going down, do you really? Yeah, this is such a stead case. Nine He uh pushed a woman named Kendra Webdale in front of the end train at the twenty three Street station during a psychotic episode. And this was a true case of someone who was deeply, deeply troubled. You know. It wasn't someone who said, let me use the insanity defense because I didn't know what

I was doing at the time. He uh started off his life as a pretty bright guy and then started suffering delusions in college and had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals. Um had had violent episodes with his mother, violent behavior, basically committed self committed thirteen times over a two year period, and was just released a few weeks before he had pushed this poor woman in front of

the train which killed her. Yeah, and um, as a result of her death, New York came up with something called Kendra's Law, which gives judges the power to um forcibly commit people they think need psychiatric attention for up to seventy two hours. Um, which is a big deal. But in this case it doesn't quite jibe from what I understand, because Goldstein did voluntarily seek treatment. Oh yeah, it's just a sad case. He was tried three times for it. The first time there was a hung jury.

He played insanity. The second time he was found guilty. But um, that uh, that finding what was what would that be called? Verdict? Yeah? That verdict? Man, something's up with me? That was thrown out on a technicality as I understand. And then in two thousand and five he was tried for a third time and play guilty, yeah, to manslaughter though not murder. Yeah, and he has in prison and he was sitce the twenty three years plus five of probation, and like you said, Kender's Law was

passed as a result. So yeah, very very sad case. Yeah, there's no nobody comes out a winner on that. You got one more yeah, um? John Delling I mentioned or not, um that there was a discussion about whether or not someone has a constitutional right to plead insanity. Um. This is the guy that brought it up most recently. Um. Back in two thousand seven, he shot over the course of a couple of months, he shot three of his friends friends, Yeah, and killed two of them. One was

a childhood friend, were friends since childhood. And um, it was he was a diagnosed paranoid. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia. And um, he was under the impression that people were stealing his powers. I guess the people he that he killed. Yeah. The thing is, um, even the defense and the judge said, you know, the whole reason that you did this was because of your mental illness, and you this is a

perfect insanity defense. Idaho doesn't recognize the insanity defense. So he was sentenced for to two life terms in solitary confinement without parole for were the killings. Yeah, and like everyone agreed that this guy was mentally ill. But like you said, wrong state, wrong crime, and uh that's what prompted like like you were talking about like is this

should this be a federal right? And you know, after the Hinckley verdict, a lot of states repealed the insanity defense, um, and then a lot of them went back and reinstated it under different terms. Yeah, like Utah for example, repealed it and then allowed it to come back. But it's next to impossible to prove it under the definition that that's out there. But Idaho was like, no, there's no insanity defense. And I think there's a couple of other

states too. Well, that's all the cases I have same here. Man, It's it's definitely I mean, it's there to help the mentally ill. But I think you're right. For a little while there, it was you know, plead insane, go to a hospital, a few years, get out. Well, you know what's interesting is we we talked about um, we talked about them getting rid of the volition rule, right, but like just quickly Lorraina Bobbitt she was basically temporarily insane

and she was acquitted of her actions assault. And the Dahmer was a very famous case too. Yes, but he's his insanity plea didn't work out because the jury believed he knew what he was doing was wrong. Neither did his prisons day. You know that guys, he's trying to write a book the guy who killed him. No, I didn't know that. Yeah. I'm kind of interested too, because he always like, there's not a whole lot of information

on what's his name, Uh, somebody Carver, Clarence Carver. I think, no, you're thinking of the saxophonist for the Bruce Springsteen bangand that's Clarence Clemens. And he's passed away. His name is Christopher Scarver, Clarence Carter Carver, Christopher Scarver, Clarence Clemens passed away. Yeah, man, like last year. I think I didn't know that, said, um.

So anyway, he's trying to write a book, and I was always curious because there's not a lot of information like why he killed he killed those two guys that day? Oh he killed someone else that day, Yeah, he killed He was on bathroom duty with two other dudes, two other murderers and another guy. And I think he got a piece of like a metal bar from the gym and beat them to death. And uh, he wants to write a book now to like explain why he did it and to reveal Bomber's final words, which you know,

it's very salacious. But of course I'm like, what do you say, Well, I hope he does do it and then finds out later on that you're not legally allowed to profit from your crime. Yeah, that's true, so he wouldn't be able to If you're listening to this, I didn't just say that, Scarborough. I don't think he's listening. Okay. Uh, people do listen to this in prison. We know that for a fact. Yeah, he's probably making a mould wine in a sock. Uh. You got anything else on mould wine? Nope? Okay.

If you want to learn more about the insanity defense, um, there's a great article on how stuff works dot Com called ten Uses of the Insanity Defense. And there's another one called, um, what is the definition of insanity? Right? Yeah, which we'll go back. We may want to do that one in full. We'll see if it's got more stuff in there. Um. You can check both of those out by typing insanity into search bar the search bar how stuff works dot Com Because, as I said, search bar, Uh,

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