[ExI] insanity plea

[Anders Sandberg]

On 18/02/2013 02:09, spike wrote:
>
> During the current US debate on new gun laws, a question occurred to 
> me.  Suppose we manage to pass a law which would prohibit those deemed 
> mentally unstable from having a firearm.  If a crazy person was caught 
> with a firearm, couldn't she just plead insanity?  If that didn't work 
> and the judge declared her sane, couldn't she then plead innocent of 
> owning a gun while insane?
>

Legal insanity is an interesting concept. It is not the same thing as 
being insane in a medical or everyday sense, but that a person's mind 
is/was not working in such a way that they could understand that what 
they were doing was wrong. See
http://thecriminallawyer.tumblr.com/post/18951395853/excuse-defenses-part-11-excuse-me
(about halfway down) for a nice explanation. Including of why insanity 
rarely works as an excuse. Conversely, it is totally possible to be too 
unstable own a gun (say having severe personality disorders) and yet be 
legally sane.


Hmm, being in ethics makes you doubt most commonsense definitions of 
right and wrong, should it be regarded as a form of legal insanity? No: 
ethicists criticise *moral* right and wrong in strange ways, but they 
have little to say about legal right and wrong. That is another faculty.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University

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