Insanity Defense Reform Act

The Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984 (IDRA) was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on October 12, 1984,[1] amending the United States federal laws governing defendants with mental diseases or defects to make it significantly more difficult to obtain a verdict of not guilty only by reason of insanity.

Act

The act removed the volitional component, that a defendant lacked capacity to conform their conduct to the law, from the ALI test.[2]: 615  Defendants were exculpated only if "at the time of the commission of the acts constituting the offense, ... as the result of a severe mental disease or defect, [they were] unable to appreciate the nature and quality or wrongfulness of [their] acts."[2]: 634  The law passed in the wake of public outrage after John Hinckley Jr.'s acquittal by reason of insanity in June 1982 for his attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.[2]: 634–635 

Prior to the enactment of the law, the federal standard for "insanity" was that the government had to prove a defendant's sanity beyond a reasonable doubt (assuming the insanity defense was raised). Following the Act's enactment, the defendant has the burden of proving insanity by "clear and convincing evidence".[3] Furthermore, expert witnesses for either side are prohibited from testifying directly as to whether the defendant was legally sane or not,[3] but can only testify as to their mental health and capacities, with the question of sanity itself to be decided by the finder-of-fact at trial. The Act was held to be constitutional (and the change in standards and burdens of proof are discussed) in United States v. Freeman.[3]

The Defense Reform Act was criticized by psychologist Lawrence Z. Freedman for being ineffective: "If the attacker is rational mentally, stable emotionally, and fanatic politically, he will not be deterred. Nor will an irrational, affectively disturbed individual be deterred."[4]

References
  1. United States Department of Justice, Criminal Resource Manual, Retrieved May 7, 2018
  2. Criminal Law - Cases and Materials, 7th ed. 2012, Wolters Kluwer; John Kaplan, Robert Weisberg, Guyora Binder, ISBN 978-1-4548-0698-1,
  3. United States v. Freeman, 804 F. 2d 1574 (11th Cir. 1986).
  4. Lawrence Zelic Freedman (March 1983), "The Politics of Insanity: Law, Crime, and Human Responsibility", Political Psychology, 4 (1): 171–178, doi:10.2307/3791182, JSTOR 3791182
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