Insanity Defense Essay

The Insanity Defense: Insane or Not The insanity defense is a topic that seems to garner a lot of public attention even though it is rarely used and is rarely successful. So why is this topic so popular considering its rarity? The answer could be a combination of highly publicized cases that use the insanity defense and the public’s misunderstanding of exactly what happens when someone is found not guilty by reason of insanity. The public has a common misconception that someone found not guilty by reason of insanity it just let go and not punished for his or her crimes, but in reality a person is almost always committed and often longer time than if the defendant had gone to prison
Discussion
Three Classification of Insanity Defense
Yates was a mother of five children, who also had a history of mental illness and psychiatric hospitalization. In March 2000 she drowned her five children, one by one, in the bathtub. Yates suffered from postpartum psychosis. Postpartum psychosis is in some susceptible women, dramatic hormonal changes in childbirth and shortly afterward can result in a form of brief psychotic disorder (Fundukian and Wilson 2008). She was first found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison but was awarded an appeal based because expert witness had made an inaccurate statement while testifying. In the second trial Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity and is now in a mental institution where she is likely to spend the rest of her
Insanity defense is not there to get criminals off of the criminal charge, but is there to protect the mentally ill. The defense is there to help the people whose minds are not right. It is there so that if a mentally ill person commits a crime they will be able to get the right psychiatric help and for the psychiatric doctors to understand to further help people in the future. This is a topic that has many of great debates and will be debated further until all Americans actually know what the insanity defense