[ExI] insanity plea

Stefano Vaj stefano.vaj at gmail.com
Sun Feb 24 13:24:20 UTC 2013


On 18 February 2013 11:48, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> 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.
>

It should however be taken into account that even though insanity defences
may work well in jury trials ("hey, everybody can see he is totally
nuts!"), the common law tradition, as enshrined in the McNaughton Rules, is
at least theoretically much more restrictive than their continental
equivalents.

For instance, the ability to organise a well-concocted conspiracy, to adopt
plans to avoid detection and/or capture, and to put them in place, should
in principle exclude under common-law criminally-relevant insanity, even if
you have a good-faith claim that the conspiracy was ordered by your
reptilians lords.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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