Valentine Shortis Case Study

Chapter two points to the first golden age of the born criminal theory: degenerationism, of the mid-to late-nineteenth-century, and its connections to cutting edge psychopathy research. While at this point, the possibility of the natural good personnel was socially and philosophically engaging, the accurate causes proposed to unhinge the diet, environment, infection, and so forth, were excessively unclear and various, making it impossible to rouse a reasonable social wrongdoing script. (46) The composed the possibility that ethical craziness is the posterity of a kind-hearted doctor (Pinel) who, living in the midst of the dread of the French Revolution and seeing the undertow of blood which went with this period of reason, assumed he had gotten

The second reason why this man deserves justice is because he was obviously having some sort of mental breakdown at the time of his “crime”. He seems to be violently angry and very anxious. In the story, my client had just killed the old man and begins conversing with himself, “--do you mark me well I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror” (3). This quotes helps prove that the narrator is innocent for plea of insanity because he is showing another major symptom of a mental disease- anxious or violent outbursts. The man even admits to being nervous before he killed the old man. The quote also describes how the old man's dead heart still beating in the narrator's mind and is taking over his thoughts. My client also connects his hypnotic state to bringing him “uncontrollable terror”. This supports his symptoms of anxiety because it shows his mind being taken over by his nervousness. Towards the end of the text, the narrator feels too guilted and lets his anger get the best of himself, “I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually

While reading chapter 2 of The Insanity Defense we discussed many different versions of the insanity defense and whether or not they’re valid or not. This interested me so much that I decided to actually go online and research the most ‘insane’ ways to use the insanity defense. Within this research I found various cases where it was used and was so shocked at how bizarre almost all of them are that I decided to write a 3-page paper on it, enjoy.

Furthermore, the narrator can be also better described as a calculated killer because of his “enhanced hearing” and that he hears sounds that aren’t really there. The narrator states, “I fancied a ringing in my ears” (16). This shows that he is hearing imagining the ringing, which demonstrates that he is mentally insane. Another part of the definition of being mentally insane is that “a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality” (Psychology Today). This confirms that he is mentally insane because the narrator doesn’t realize that the sound isn’t real. Moreover, after the narrator had killed the man he was talking to two police officers who came to see if everything was fine. After they talk for a while, the narrator freaks out because of a sound that he hears and tells the that he had committed the crime.

“A young African-American man shot and killed an Alabama police officer in 1981. He was examined in jail and found to be psychotic then and at the time of the killing. In 1982 the Alabama Lunacy Commission found him competent to stand trial, and he was sentenced to death. He was consistently described as psychotic in prison records; but another state forensic evaluation in 1988 again found him competent. After reviewing his records and examining him, I concluded that he had been psychotic when he killed the officer and was psychotic still. A federal appeals court judge ruled that the original trial had been unconstitutional because the defendant was not competent at the time. The prosecutor declined to retry him, and he was sent to a state mental hospital.”(Beck)

The criminal justice system is a system of law enforcement that is involved in prosecuting, sentencing, and punishing those who have committed a criminal offence. When every member of society is aware of their individual rights and the laws enforced, the criminal justice system is very effective, but when a contributor to society is mentally insane and commits a criminal offence everything changes. In Frontline’s A Crime of Insanity, a twenty-six year old psychology student, Ralph Tortoricci, walked across the Albany campus of the State University of New York with a hunting knife and a Remington .270 rifle. He took a class hostage and later wounded a nineteen year old sophomore. Ralph obviously committed a crime but the problem is: was he

In the Hinckley trial, there were two contending interpretations of the cognitive requirement of insanity. Both the defense and the prosecution's interpretations hinged on Hinckley's capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of the crime committed, and to conform his conduct to lawful requirements (Bonnie, et al 49). The prosecutor argued that the meaning of appreciation excludes affective or emotional impairment, and only included cognitive factors. The prosecution relied on the precedence set in United States v. Brawner, that use the Model Penal Code's embracement of the M'Naghten test's prong of appreciation that Hinckley understood the moral consequences of his actions, and that mental illness did not matter (Bonnie, et al 50).

On July 20, 2012 James Holmes enter a theater in Aurora Colorado and shot and killed 12 people. Attorneys tested Holmes and called for a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist stated that Holmes was so crazy that he could not distinguish what’s right and what’s wrong during the period he committed the crime. Dr Jonathan Woodcock interviewed Holmes during the time he was in jail on July 24 just four days after the shooting occurred for two hours duration. Holmes’s testimony drew questions from prosecutors that doubted his analyzation of Holmes being severe delusional during the mass shooting. Doctor claimed that they found Holmes suffering from severe mental illness and because of that it made him act violently. Holmes thought that if he snitch and went on and told the public of attempting to kill strangers he would be obligated to pay for the consequences. Doctors testified that one of Holmes delusion was to go out and do what he had to do. Woodcock was a witness by the defense to purpose the idea that Holmes was indeed crazy the moment he was shot people dead. Before the shooting occurred Holmes had already symptoms of mental illness disorder which made him anxious and stress and committed the crime.

The concept of insanity as a defence was established in the early eighteenth century in the Arnold’s case (1724) and was further developed in the late 18th century in the Hadfield’s case (1800), but the standart test of criminal liability was only formed after the case of Daniel M’Naghten (1843). This case established the special verdict of ‚‘not guilty by reason of insanity‘.

Throughout history, there have been many criminals who used the insanity defence to receive a fair trial, but some of of these people were not actually insane. However, in the case the 1989 Montreal massacre, Canadian journalists medicalized Marc Lepine's deviance in their writing techniques to divert the public’s attention from the event. According to Horwitz (1981), the medicalization of criminal behaviour “refers to the tendency to define deviance as a manifestation of an underlying sickness, to find the causes of deviance within the individual rather than in the social structure. . .” (p. 750). The type of deviances that can be viewed under the term “medicalization” is mental sickness and child abuse. For example, some journalists referred

In the short story, “Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator is telling this story when he murdered a man with a cloudy blue eye. The narrator is either premeditated murder or criminally insane. Whether he's a premeditated murder or just insane, he still murdered a human being. There are many reasons why he’s a premeditated murder but, in this case he is criminally insane. The narrator may be a premeditated murder but there are many thing that convinces the readers that he is criminally insane like, thinks the old man's cloudy eye is evil and says that he is sane, invites the police to the old man's room, and he keeps hearing the old man's dead heart beat.

Courts and the jurors serving in them need to be cautious when listening to expert testimony given, regarding the mental capabilities or sanity of an individual. This is because it is impossible to go into the mind of the defendant and know for a fact that they are mentally capable, which causes any assessment to be in part guesswork. Also the definition of what the judiciary has considered mentally insane has changed through time and in different legal systems. I argue that expert testimony in cases regarding mental sanity is not uniform and varies in different instances. As a society should be trying to make the definitions and assessment of sanity the uniform in all of the states and United States federal courts for persons to be tried

Although the idea of the “insanity defense” is state mandated and not federally acknowledged, it has drastically shifted overall throughout the course of time. The primary debate has now shifted from the sole focus on “insanity defense” to the idea of the death penalty and how it should be addressed in cases of serious mental illness or disabilities. Each state has specific laws surrounding all aspects of mental illness and how that should relate to the severity of the charges. “Currently in the United States, forensic mental-health professionals (psychiatrists, social workers, and psychologists) conduct the determination of whether the defendant fits the Black’s Law Dictionary definition of insanity at the time of the crime” (Richie et al, 2014). On the other hand, forensic psychologists who administer these assessments associated with determining legal proceeding must also place emphasis on adhering to the Code of Ethics. This could mean the psychologist needs to place emphasis on several areas when determining the adequate outcome. Legally, they have policies, questions, and parameters that the psychologist must adhere to but there is also the possibility of professional biases and errors.

Over the years the abuse of insanity plea, has troubled our American Justice System in our world today. The growth in this defense has increased so much that the expansion has asked the question; whether or not insanity plea is a worthy and justified defense to be used in the courts. The Insanity defense is when a criminal defendant can be found to have been legally insane when that defendant committed the crime they did at the time. In some cases, the criminal defendant pleads insane and gets a less severe punishment due to their ruling of having a mental impairment. In the court system, the trial procedure for pleading insane is straight forward with its steps and rulings whether or not the criminal is guilty or not.

Ladies and gentleman of the jury at Cook County Criminal Court, I am the defense attorney. Today we are regarding Case number 407 and my client is insane. This case is about the murderer, Sam Parris, who murdered Billy Porter. We know that Sam is clearly guilty because he confessed to us. Sam Parris is insane because he hears voices inside his head, he says he has a disease, and he is imagining things that are not really there.