Borderline Insanity Case Study

| Shows no emotion to the murders and crimes that he committed. A heartless selfish man.

My insanity case is People v. Wilbur, 226 Ill. App. 3d 733 (3rd Dist. 1992). In this case, the defendant was a 14-year-old being charged as an adult for a murder that happened in 1988. It was said that child showed that he didn’t regret what he had done. The child admitted to the crime. The defendant’s expert witness said that the child suffered from schizophrenia and that he has heard “voices” in his head. The jury came to the verdict of guilty but mentally ill. The 14-year-old was sentenced to 60 years in prison. The trial court case was appealed is now in the hands of the Appellate Court of Illinois. Two expert witnesses disagreed on the defendant’s state of mind at the time of the murder. One saying that he was able to conform his acts to the law. The other saying, he was not. (pg. 736). The Appellate Court affirmed the trial court’s decision.

In some victimless crimes, motive plays an important part in determining the type of crime and degree of guilt. Assisted suicide, for example, could be a victimless crime if the motive was to end suffering. In such a case, the murder is committed to end suffering for which there is no future end except in death. The person who is murdered has given his or her consent and the motive can be said to be altruistic. In a case where the murderer was motivated by a potential inheritance, the crime does have a victim and is seen in a more serious light.

Forensic psychology has had a lot of debates on the insanity defense. This paper serves as a review to explain why the article I’m reviewing relates to the insanity defense. The article I’m reviewing is called Psychosis and Substance Use: Implications for Conditional Release Readiness Evaluations.

In the case of R v Matthews and Alleyne [2003], the victim was thrown to the river after robbing by the defendants. Before being thrown into the river, the victim had stated that he was not able to swim as he lost his glasses in the attack. However, the defendants ignored what the victim’s said and thrown him to river and watching him drown. Two of them are convicted of murder. As similar as the Woollin case, the judge had directed the jury that to consider whether the consequence of act was foreseeable in order to find out the intention to kill. The court upheld that finding of intent would be ‘irresistible’ (Herring, 2012 p.141).

To begin with, the narrator is guilty of premeditated murder because he planned to dispatch the innocent man. Throughout the short story, Edgar Allan Poe describes the events leading to the confession and made some points clear that he is guilty of premeditated murder. For example, the narrator tells the readers that he has been stalking the old man for seven nights just at twelve. “I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him … to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked upon him while he slept.” (Poe) As you can see, the narrator is clearly devising a plan to kill the old

The insanity defense is a very complex criminal defense plea. Over hundreds of years, the insanity defense has evolved. The correct term for the insanity defense in a criminal case will be “not guilty by reasons of insanity” (NGRI). Many people have used the insanity defense without success. When someone uses the NGRI defense it is argued that a mental illness took full effect leading to an individual to commit a criminal act. Many have tried to use such a defense, yet one after another they have failed. The insanity defense is one of the hardest, if not the hardest defense to use. Pleading insanity can be tricky. One cannot simply plead insanity and expect for it to work.

The act of claiming insanity at the time of the crime is unjust, a crime is a crime no matter the circumstance. Insanity does not alter the severity of the crime. The same thing should be applied to other cases such as murder. If two people commit the same criminal offense, say first degree murder, it would not be considered just to grant one leniency because they plead guilty by something such as temporary insanity. I would like to think knowledge of what is right and wrong regarding sexual encounters is common sense, unfortunately that is not the case. Though that is no valid excuse.

The accused had to be provoked into committing the crime; the jury will have to charge them with manslaughter rather than murder.

He had the reasoning and understanding of what he did, but he still went through with killing an elderly couple.

First, sudden killings that were intentional, but not premeditated were added. These types of murder were often completed during a heat of passion moment and were unreasonably provoked by the victim’s actions (Samaha, 2013). However, unreasonably provoked means that the victim’s actions were not substantial enough to justify the actions of the attacker. Secondly, judges added unintentional killings that were completed during a felony (Samaha, 2013). While most murders require intent to cause death, under this law, any homicide committed during the commission of a felony, regardless of whether it’s intentional or accidental will constitute as murder. Third, extremely reckless killings were classified as depraved heart

The test for factual (‘but for’) causation requires a jury to consider whether, but for the defendant’s unlawful actions, the harm would have occurred at the same time and in the same way that it did[7]. The requirement for legal causation is that the act was an operating and substantial cause of the result. It is important to note that there may be several different operating and substantial causes of the result, so more than one person can be responsible for the result[8]. Legal causation must be established in order to fulfill one of the requirements of the actus reus of murder. Beyond this, the defendant’s actions would also have to be unlawful, directed towards a living person, and occur in the Queen’s

In criminal cases where an insanity defense is used, the defense must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not responsible for his or her actions during a mental health breakdown. There are two forms of an insanity defense, cognitive and volitional. In order for an individual to meet the requirements for cognitive insanity it must be proven that the defendant had to be so impaired by a mental disease at the time of the act that they did not know the nature of what they were doing. If they are fully aware of their actions, one must prove that they didn’t know what they were doing was wrong. Volitional insanity, also known as irresistible impulse, states that the defendant is able to differentiate between right or wrong at the time, but suffered from a mental disease that made them unable to control themselves. Volitional insanity is common in crimes of vengeance, where very few states allow the use of this defense. The insanity defense should not be confused with incompetency. In incompetency cases, the individual is not able to understand the nature and consequences of the case, nor adequately able to help an attorney with his or her defense. The insanity defense reflects the approach that an individual who can’t acknowledge the consequences of their actions should not be punished for the crime. In most jurisdictions a professional is bought in to determine if the defendant was not able to differentiate between right or wrong at the time of the

As I began to read chapter 5 one thing that stood out to me was insanity and that insanity can be measured through the M’Naghten Rule. Going along with insanity we experienced something horrendous last week. There was a school shooting in Florida and the gunman seemed to be unstable and will most likely be proven insane. I think one of the most frustrating things in this case is that the shooter portrayed cries for help by posting online and the police had been called to his home over 30 times. Understanding insanity and mental illness is what we need to focus on. These issues cannot be ignored because horrendous acts of violence will take place. I enjoyed learning about insanity and mental illness because everyone needs to be aware of it and

In conclusion, I chose not guilty because of reasonable doubt. The evidence that was being shown against him was proved not true making him don’t seem guilty. Evidences were not conclusive enough to call him guilty. The old man wasn’t quick enough to have seen the boy, the old woman wasn’t wearing glasses to have seen, and the height difference made a difference in the stab