Criminal law serves the purpose of society by establishing social controls to promote a civilized state. There are crimes against property as well as crimes that do bodily harm. Each state in the United States has its own standards of individual conduct. Each state having its own feel for the boundaries of right and wrong. Law establishes what is considered “outrageous behavior”. In a sense it is law by consensus. The jury of “peers” decides what is reasonable. The federal law obviously rules ultimately.
Case law takes the statues and applies them to each and every circumstance to insure democracy. Law considers a citizen to be innocent until proven guilty and that every citizen has the right of defense with an attorney. However it must be noted that the quality of attorney often comes with a sticker price that those who do not have allot of money can afford. Therefore questions can be raised about the nature of justice in a capitalistic society.
The law presumes sanity. It is necessary to consider whether or not the defendant intentionally committed the crime or whether their was a loss of control. It is believed that reasonable people can control their rage and not kill when provoked. The law considers “reasonable” to be the standard. What would a reasonable man do in the circumstances or context in which the crime was committed. The defendant is compared to that standard. What is the common law of reasonable people? Under these circumstances what can we expect of a reasonable person? The law assumes every person has a conscience and capacity for knowing right and wrong. It is the sociopath that has no sense of societal boundary. The psycopath is usually in their own world.
The criminal law considers the mental competency of the defendant. Competency to stand trial is based on whether or not the defendant can understand proceedings against him. The defendant who is capable of understanding the nature of the crime he has committed, and the responsibility of knowing right from wrong regarding the crime, is considered to be competent to stand trial. There would be prior history of mental diminished capacity. A consideration of whether or not the defendant was sane at the event of the crime. The sentencing will serve the purpose of retribution or rehabilitation. The defendant either goes to prison or to a mental hospital. A mental hospital is not necessarily better than a prison sentence.
In order to determine intent the law considers the concept of mens rea. Mens rea involves projection, educated imagination, and somewhat fictionalizing to establish intent. The actual thoughts and intent of one human being cannot be absolutely determined by another. In other words one person cannot read another persons mind. However the law seeks to establish intent, or guilt before sentencing. It is impossible for even the most expert of scientist to know another persons head. The law presumes sanity.
Insanity is a legal device to define the outter limits, our boundaries of what we as a society can tolerate. To be considered insane there has to be a demonstration of diminished capacity which has a sliding scale of criminal responsibility. There are conditions such as senility, infancy, epilepsy, or medication’s that are medically demonstrable.
Mens rea is simply as having a guilty mind. Criminal courts must establish the “substantial capacity” of an individual to be able to distinguish right from wrong. Susan Estrich does a good job of describing the qualities that are examined to gauge mens rea.
“Mens rea measures the deliberate of choice or criminal intent. Criminal intent is divided into for basic categories: purpose (acting with a conscious object--the worst); knowledge (doing something with virtual certainty of the bad result, which is essentially the same as doing it on purpose); recklessness (knowing a risk is an unreasonable risk, and taking it anyway); and negligence (taking a unreasonable risk, whether you know it or not). Murders are graded according to the intent of the killer. The hit man, who acts on purpose, is worse than the drunk driver, who acts recklessly; the reckless driver who deliberately runs a stop sign is worse than careless one who doesn’t even see the stop sign.” (Estrich, 10)
In the criminal justice system to establish a plea of guilty by reason of insanity changes the purpose of punishment. Sentencing decides if the defendant will be locked up and what type of rehabilitation will be administered. The desired result of sentencing is to deter the criminal from committing crimes and protecting society. If the defendant is found guilty by reason of insanity a criminal would be sent to a mental hospital which is considered to be sometimes worse than prison, a warehouse for the criminally insane.
Criminals are determined to be insane at the time of the crime or incompetent to stand trial by two tests. The M’Nagten case of 1843 that produced the control test and the product test. Based on British law the House of Lords handed down a decision in the M’Nagten case that is now referred to as the M’Nagten test.
Americans allow a person who is mentally retarded, or mentally diseased to stand trial. However a person who was not sane at the time of the trial was treated and returned to trial when he could understand the proceedings against him. In the case Ake vs. Oklahoma (470 US) the proceedings were suspended until the defendant was treated. At this point charges are dropped if the crime is not serious or the defendant will be committed to an institution indefinitely. In the Ake vs. Oklahoma (470 US) the crime was a capital offense and the proceeding continued when the defendant was considered competent to stand trial.
“Whether . . .at the time the act was committed (M’Nagten) had that competent use of his understanding as that he knew that he was doing, by the very act itself, a wicked and wrong thing. If he was not sensible at the time he committed that act, that it was a violation of the law of God or of man, undoubtedly he was not responsible for that act, or of liable to any punishment what ever flowing from that act.. . . But . . you think the prisoner capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, then he was responsible. (Ake vs. Oklahoma 470 US) “
“Every man is to be presumed to be sane. . .To establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.” (Ake vs. Oklahoma 470 US)