In one of the landmark decisions, Surendra Mishra v. Jharkhand State,[20] the Supreme Court ruled that a defendant seeking exoneration from liability for an act under section 84 of the CPI must prove legal insanity, not medical insanity. In addition, the Delegation also stated that the term “insanity” was not defined in the IPC and was mainly treated as equivalent to insanity. But the term insanity has a different meaning in different contexts and describes different degrees of mental disorders. Not all persons suffering from mental illness are exempt from criminal responsibility. The mere fact that the accused is conceited, strange, angry and that his brain is not quite in order, or that the physical and mental ailments from which he has suffered have weakened his intellect and affected his emotions or have engaged in certain unusual actions, or that he has had bouts of madness at short intervals, or that he has been subjected to epileptic seizures and that there has been abnormal behaviour or that the behaviour is strange, is not sufficient to ensure the application of Article 84 of the IPC. [16] The current legislative system was created by the Canadian Parliament after the previous system was found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Swain. The new provisions also replaced the old senseless defence with the current mental disorder defence. [39] One of the most poignant efforts of these efforts to rehabilitate the language of insanity and bring together legal and health professionals for a joint reform effort was launched in 1909 by the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology (AICLC). The AICLC`s energetic Committee on Insanity and Criminal Responsibility, which included such illustrious medical members as William A. White, Adolf Meyer and Morton Prince, worked for more than 10 years to develop a series of proposals for reform of the defense of insanity and expert testimony.
Time and time again, their efforts collapsed when lawyers, led by committee chair Edwin Keedy, and doctors tried to explain to each other what they meant by insanity. The committee eventually agreed to disagree and drafted a model law that all physicians considered woefully inadequate.6,8 The deficiency was highlighted in a 1923 book by William White,55 the superintendent of the prestigious St. Elizabeth`s Federal Mental Hospital in Washington, D.C., in a book entitled Insanity and the Criminal Law. For White and many others in his generation, “insanity is a purely legal term and means irresponsibility or inability to make a will or enter into a contractual relationship.” which the law hopelessly confuses with illness, which consists in defining the task of medical psychology/neuropsychiatry. The mental illness defence, also known as the mental disorder defence, is a positive defence by apology in a criminal case arguing that the defendant is not responsible for his or her actions at the time of the offence because of an episodic or persistent psychiatric illness. This is countered by an excuse of provocation, in which the accused is responsible, but responsibility is reduced due to a temporary mental state. [1]: 613 It also contrasts with a finding that a defendant in criminal proceedings cannot stand trial because mental illness prevents him from effectively assisting defence counsel in a civil finding in trusts and estates in which a will is annulled because it was made when a mental disorder prevented a testator from: identify the natural objects of its premium. and involuntary civilian admission to a psychiatric institution if a person is severely disabled or poses a danger to himself or herself or others. [1]: 613 This word is, of course, “folly.” I`m sure it wouldn`t surprise most of you if insanity was considered a legal term in 2004.
The Concise Medical Dictionary explains that insanity refers to “a degree of mental illness such that the affected person is not responsible for his or her actions or is unable to enter into a legal contract. The term is legal rather than medical. 11 Similar definitions can be found in other standard medical dictionaries as well as dictionaries compiled for the general public. The most scientific of these publications sometimes mention that the term once had a medical meaning, but are quick to point out that such use is outdated. Legal dictionaries do not contain such a disclaimer. They embrace the word with little or no comment on its origins, often providing long lists of cases and legal statements manifesting the meaning of insanity.12–14 To meet the purpose of the research, the authors conducted an electronic search of articles published in “PubMed” without limiting the date. MeSH terms such as insanity defense, Mc-Naughten rule, and criminal insanity were originally used. To be more inclusive, non-MeSH terms such as “not guilty of mental illness”, “guilty”, “mental illness”/”mental illness” and “criminal responsibility” were used as terminologies for searches on PubMed. References to major articles and journals, where applicable, were further reviewed. To conduct research related to legal issues, we used a combination of primary and secondary data. Online searches of various databases such as PubMed, Ebsco Host, Science Direct, ProQuest, Manupatra, Hein Online, Lexis Nexis, Jstor, Springer Link, Westlaw India and International, AIR Online and SCC Online were helpful. The author found a wide range of published articles and case law.
In order to arrive at a meaningful discussion, only relevant articles were selected for review. The stain of madness so evident at the end of the 19th century will only worsen in the early years of the 20th century. Changes in psychiatric theory, particularly advances in neurological knowledge and the importation of clinically informed definitions of disease such as the European Kraepelins and Blueers, as well as early psychoanalytic thinking, would lead British and American physicians interested in mental illness into entirely new conceptual frameworks.47–52 Temporary defense of insanity is rare. It is generally used in circumstances where the events leading up to the crime had a direct bearing on the commission of the crime itself. Common examples include: there is an urgent need to train the psychiatrist at each district hospital and medical college in mental illness defence assessment and trial capacity assessment, so that forensic psychiatric services are easily accessible and unnecessary delays in obtaining expert advice can be avoided[33] and that the defence against insanity is mainly used in the application of the law.