WEBVTT - Ep37 "What is Insanity?" Part 2 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:09.080 Is there such a thing as temporary insanity? Is there 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:13.200 such a thing as the twinkie defense, or using pre 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:17.080 menstrual syndrome as a criminal defense? And what does this 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:21.720 tell us about the differences between brains yours and other people's, 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:25.720 or even between yours one day and yours the next day. 0:00:26.200 --> 0:00:30.360 How does the legal system wrestle with the science, and 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:34.160 how are the law and the science like two different 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:38.120 people with very different ways of looking at the world. 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:44.320 Welcome to the inner Cosmos with me, David Eagleman. I'm 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:48.320 a neuroscientist and author at Stanford, and in these episodes 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:52.840 we sail deeply into our three pound universe to understand 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:56.280 why we believe the things we do and behave in 0:00:56.360 --> 0:00:59.160 the ways that we do, and why there's such a 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:02.400 variety in the ways that people see the world, and 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:12.440 how we try to structure legal systems around that fact. Now, 0:01:12.480 --> 0:01:16.039 today we're picking up on the trial of Andrea Yates, 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:18.680 who was a young woman in Houston, Texas, who had 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:23.040 five beautiful children, and one day she murdered them one 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:26.720 by one by drowning them in the bathtub. Now, if 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:28.880 you haven't heard the previous episode, please go back to 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:31.560 that one to get the full background on that story. 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:35.839 Andrea was suffering from a psychosis, which is a mental 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:41.800 disorder characterized by a disconnection from reality, and at her trial, 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:47.280 her lawyers pled the insanity defense, or specifically, not guilty 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:51.840 by reason of insanity. Now as a reminder, the prosecution 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:56.480 hired on a psychiatrist who said, yes, Andrea clearly has 0:01:56.560 --> 0:01:59.800 mental troubles, but I think she did this particular act 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:04.960 more purposefully because if she was unable to distinguish right 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:07.040 from wrong, which is one of the prongs of the 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:11.280 insanity defense, then she wouldn't have made sure she waited 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:14.720 until her husband was gone before doing it, and she 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:19.160 wouldn't have suffered regret. And Deet said, there was an 0:02:19.200 --> 0:02:21.840 episode of Law and Order, which is a show that 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:25.800 Andrea watched regularly, in which a woman drowns her children 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:28.280 in the bathtub so she can be free to be 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:32.400 with her lover. So Andrea's case brings to the forefront 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:36.919 some of the deep questions about the insanity defense. How 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:40.880 do we know when we should judge someone's actions to 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:45.000 stem from a mental disorder like a psychosis, versus judging 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:48.120 the person to just be more devious? We can't really 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:51.240 know what is happening inside someone's head. So how do 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:55.000 we make these judgments as a society, and how do 0:02:55.080 --> 0:03:00.360 we canonize these decisions into law. I mentioned in the 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:03.959 last episode that in eighteen forty three a Scottish man 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:08.440 named Daniel McNaughton suffered from a deep psychosis and he 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:11.720 shot and killed a man that he erroneously thought was 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:15.200 the British Prime Minister, and a court of judges sat 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:18.079 down and defined what came to be known as the 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:21.560 McNaughton rules, which essentially said that if you want to 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:26.799 establish an insanity defense, you have to clearly prove that 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:29.400 at the time of committing the act you had a 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:33.960 disease of the mind such that you didn't understand the 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:36.920 nature and quality of the act, like if you pull 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:40.880 a trigger a bullet comes out, or you didn't know 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:43.560 that what you were doing was wrong. In other words, 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:48.040 you were unable to distinguish between right and wrong. Okay, 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:51.400 So these McNaughton rules caught on in England and America 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:55.880 and around the world. But in the late nineteenth century, 0:03:56.280 --> 0:03:59.560 legal scholars began to worry that maybe the McNaughton rules 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:04.120 were too narrow. Why because These rules only ask whether 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:07.000 a person knows the difference between right and wrong and 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:10.400 understands the nature and consequences of the actions, and that 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:16.320 invited concerns for psychiatrists and lawyers. First, can a psychiatrists 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:21.279 really testify to absolute knowledge of right versus wrong or 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:25.000 about absolute freedom of choice? And even if they can 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:30.760 in extreme cases, the rule only allows for total incapacity. 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:34.320 But what if you're just a little confused about the 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:37.279 difference between right and wrong? And what if you know 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:41.520 the difference just fine, except for during a small window 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:46.000 of time. So let's dig into that. On a February 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:49.560 day in eighteen fifty nine, there was a United States 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:54.279 congressman named Daniel Sickles who murdered the US attorney for 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:57.080 the District of Columbia, a guy named Philip Barton Key. 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:01.840 Sickles caught a glimpse of Key outside his house, and 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:06.760 he furiously chased Key into Lafayette Square, across the street 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:09.400 from the White House, and he shot him in the groin, 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:14.080 reportedly yelling quote, you villain, you have dishonored my house 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:18.279 and you must die. Sickles then fatally shot Key in 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:21.600 the chest as he begged for his life, So what 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:25.839 led up to that? Well, before these events in Lafayette Square, 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:29.039 Sickles had been informed by a friend that his wife, 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:34.279 Teresa was having an affair with Key Now. Sickles lawyer 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:37.839 Edward Stayton, who went on to become Lincoln's Secretary of War, 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:43.920 painted Sickles as a betrayed spouse driven crazy by grief 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:48.719 and what he claimed was quote temporary insanity. For the 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:53.320 first time in the United States history, this plea was successful, 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:57.560 and Sickles was declared not guilty. In the United States, 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:02.760 a temporary insanity defense can be raised to argue that 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:06.960 a defendant is not responsible for their actions because a 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:12.039 severe mental disease or defect prevented them from appreciating the 0:06:12.080 --> 0:06:16.560 wrongness of their acts at the time. So different jurisdictions 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:19.480 treat this differently, but the standard from the Supreme Court 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:23.360 of Iowa states that quote in order to be an 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:27.320 excuse and defense for a criminal act, the person accused 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:31.040 and who claims temporary insanity as a defense must prove 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:35.200 that the crime charged was caused by mental disease or 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:42.000 unsoundness which dethroned, overcame, or swayed her reason and judgment. 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:46.600 With respect to that act which destroyed her power rationally 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:51.719 to comprehend the nature and consequences of that act end quote. 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:56.880 So the temporary insanity defense often gets linked with intoxication, 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:01.800 and in certain jurisdictions, intoxication can be grounds for a 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:07.480 reduced penalty because of temporary insanity. Now, Sickles act as 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:10.440 an example of what we commonly refer to today as a 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:15.280 crime of passion. Under this kind of interpretation, Sickles would 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:20.320 have been said to have been experiencing extreme emotional disturbance, 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:24.320 and his crime would likely be reduced from murder to 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:29.560 voluntary manslaughter. Why because crimes of passion are not punished 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:33.400 to the same degree. Because there are certain circumstances under 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:37.360 which we think it's reasonable for someone in extreme emotional 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:41.600 distress to lose their self control. While we don't condone 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:45.120 the crime, we intuitively think that a person acting during 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:49.360 a moment of extreme emotional distress is less culpable than 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:55.200 the cool headed and calculating criminal. Unlike the insanity defense, 0:07:55.760 --> 0:08:00.000 extreme emotional distress doesn't absolve the defendant of all culpability, 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:04.400 but it can lessen the degree of the crime. Now, 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:07.120 you may have heard the term twinkie defense, and this 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:11.640 is used to describe a seemingly absurd, yet somehow successful 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:15.280 legal defense, and what this originates from is the nineteen 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:18.760 seventy nine trial of Dan White for the deaths of 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:23.880 the San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk, 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:28.280 and the term twinkie defense refers to this commonly held 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:34.120 but actually inaccurate belief that White's lawyers successfully argued that 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:37.800 his consumption of Twinkies put enough sugar into his body 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:42.120 to send him into a murderous state. In actuality, White's 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:48.600 lawyers argued diminished capacity from depression and his sugary diet 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:53.160 only played a small role in explaining his mental decline. Nevertheless, 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:57.680 the term twinkie defense continues to be applied to legal 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.360 defenses that seem ludicrous. Now there are many kinds of 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:05.160 defenses that people try, and sometimes they're successful. A woman 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:09.000 in Virginia in nineteen ninety one argued that pre menstrual 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:13.080 syndrome caused her erratic behavior, and she was able to 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:16.720 avoid being found guilty of driving under the influence this way, 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:20.800 and a decade before that, two women in England were 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:25.520 similarly able to reduce their criminal responsibility from murder to 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:30.840 manslaughter based on a pre menstrual syndrome defense. Okay, so 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:35.160 these are the concerns that people have about whether insanity 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:38.240 can be temporary or not. But let's zoom back out 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:41.840 to the really big picture about the McNaughton rules and 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:44.960 what the problems are. The bigger problem with the mcnotton 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:49.680 rule is that it's too narrowly cognitive. You might know 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:52.320 the difference between right and wrong, and you might know 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:56.000 the nature and consequences of your action. But what if 0:09:56.040 --> 0:09:58.679 that's not the problem. What if the real problem is 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:02.920 one of the In other words, your cognitive reasoning is fine, 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:07.080 but you can't stop yourself. In later episodes, we'll see 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:11.280 a lot of examples of impaired volition. For example, there's 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:15.520 a disease known as frontotemporal lowbar degeneration, where people can 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:18.880 know perfectly well the difference between right and wrong, but 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:22.920 they are totally unable to stop their impulsive behavior. They'll 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:26.680 expose themselves in public, they'll urinate in public, they'll touch 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:31.040 people inappropriately. They'll shoplift, they'll reach into garbage cans and 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:33.959 eat food out of it. They'll run red lights, they'll 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:37.240 curse in public. They just do whatever they want. If 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:41.240 you ask such a person is shoplifting right or wrong, 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:45.360 they're perfectly capable of verifying that they're not supposed to 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:48.840 do it. If you ask you understand when you steal 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:53.040 it costs someone else money, they'll genuinely agree that. They understand. 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:56.240 They can discriminate right from wrong, and they understand the 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:59.720 nature and consequences of their actions. They just can't do 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:03.760 anything about it. This comes up not only in cases 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:07.719 of degenerative brain disease, but also in cases of traumatic 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:11.480 brain injury or from brain disorders that people are sometimes 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:14.640 born with. In all these cases, a person can understand 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:16.880 the difference between right and wrong, and they simply don't 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:22.480 have the proper brain function to stop their transgressions. So 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:28.040 by the eighteen eighties, scholars wondered whether the legal definition 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:31.800 of insanity would need to evolve, and to that end, 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:35.960 an additional prong was added to the insanity defense in 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:41.160 some jurisdictions, and this was the concept of an irresistible impulse. 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:45.800 Was the defendant able to control his behavior at the 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:49.240 time of the offense. I'll give you an example of 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:52.880 this from eighteen eighty five, a woman named Nancy Parsons 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:56.720 believed that she knew why she had been sick and 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:59.920 in bad health for a long time, and her assessment 0:11:59.920 --> 0:12:05.240 was that her husband, Bennett possessed supernatural powers that caused 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:09.079 her illness and put her at risk of death. So 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:14.480 she encouraged her daughter to shoot and kill Bennett. Now, 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:19.080 both Nancy and her daughter sought to employ the insanity defense. 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:23.480 Nancy was experiencing a quote insane delusion and the daughter 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:27.240 quote was at the time of said killing and always 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:31.760 had been an idiot. Now, applying the McNaught rules, the 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.880 jury initially found Nancy and her daughter guilty of murder 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:39.480 in the second degree. On appeal, however, the state Supreme 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:43.520 Court reversed the decision and added a component to the 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:48.120 insanity defense. Someone is not guilty if she was subject 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:52.800 to quote the dress of such mental disease that she 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:56.160 had lost the power to choose between right and wrong, 0:12:56.679 --> 0:13:00.559 and her free agency was at the time to destroyed. 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:03.640 So this was not about knowing the difference between right 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:06.520 and wrong. Instead, it was about losing the power to 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:09.960 choose between right and wrong. A person has an impulse 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:14.760 to act that cannot be resisted. In this way, the 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:19.480 additional prong makes the McNaughton test slightly broader, although the 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:22.360 legal defense still has to demonstrate that the crime was 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:25.920 connected with a mental disease and was directly the product 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:31.479 of it. So to understand this notion of an irresistible impulse, 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:36.600 consider a case that you probably remember. LORRAINA. Bobbitt. In 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:40.160 the wee hours of June twenty third, nineteen ninety three, 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:44.120 she pulled back the covers on her sleeping husband, John 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:47.680 Wayne Bobbitt, and cut off his penis with an eight 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:51.600 inch kitchen knife. She fled from their apartment in her car, 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:56.640 and she tossed the severed organ into a field. Now 0:13:56.640 --> 0:14:00.520 what led to this moment? At trial, her defence team 0:14:00.600 --> 0:14:03.280 alleged that she had spent the years of their marriage 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:07.800 being repeatedly raped and beaten and sodomized by her husband, 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:11.080 and this was verified by expert witnesses on both the 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:15.000 prosecution and the defense, who validated that she quote lived 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:18.800 in constant fear of him. In light of this, her 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:24.280 lawyers argued that she had an irresistible impulse. After many 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:28.080 hours of deliberation, the jury found lorrain and Bobbitt not 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:32.560 guilty by reason of temporary insanity based on their conclusion 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:36.520 that she was unable to resist her impulse to wound John. 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:40.240 In this way, she was not held liable for her assault. Instead, 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:43.680 she was sent for a forty five day evaluation at 0:14:43.720 --> 0:15:04.920 a local state hospital. So by the end of the 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:08.880 nineteenth century it seemed that bases were covered with the 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:13.800 McNaughton rules plus the notion of an irresistible impulse, But 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:18.040 legal experts agonized that this version of insanity might still 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:23.280 be too narrow because the rules only allowed for total incapacity, 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:27.320 they were insensitive to partial problems, and many people on 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:30.880 trial were seen to be in a gray area in between, 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:34.200 not completely unaware of right and wrong, or maybe they 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:38.280 were subject to impulses that might not be one hundred 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:42.520 percent irresistible. In the late nineteen forties, there was a 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:46.560 young man named Monty Durham who had years of petty 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:51.000 crimes and mental illness, and this familiarized Durham with both 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:54.480 the criminal justice system and the state asylum. So in 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:58.200 July of nineteen fifty one, Durham was convicted of housebreaking 0:15:58.520 --> 0:16:01.800 in Washington, d c. And he appealed his case and 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:05.440 as a result, a new test emerged in nineteen fifty four, 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:08.880 which is called the Durham rule, and the idea was 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:13.720 to broaden the mcnot rules such that now the task 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:17.200 was merely to conclude whether a defendant's criminal act was 0:16:17.720 --> 0:16:22.200 quote the product of mental disease or mental defect. If 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:26.120 it was, then he would not be criminally responsible. But 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:28.560 there was a problem here. How do you ever prove 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:32.280 that some act was the product of a disease or 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:35.960 a defect. One might claim the disease was related to 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:39.640 the act, But what portion of the disease came from you? 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:43.240 And what portion from the disease? But that wasn't even 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:45.840 the big problem. The big problem was who gets to 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:49.680 decide if an act was the product of a disease. 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:55.040 So the Durham rule shifted the power to psychiatrists who 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:59.920 gave expert testimony. A psychiatrist would testify whether the act 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:03.080 was the product of a mental disease, and the jury, 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:06.320 instead of making decisions on their own, was in a 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:11.239 position of just having to accept the psychiatrist's testimony. In 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:14.240 other words, starting in nineteen fifty four, the power was 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:19.280 in the physician's expert testimony instead of in the juror's hands. Now, 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:22.200 at first blush, that doesn't seem like a problem, because, 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:25.520 after all, the psychiatrists are the experts. But the problem 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:30.040 was that their testimony could be ambiguous and two experts 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:33.760 could contradict one another. Imagine the defense pulls up their 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:37.920 favorite psychiatrists who asserts that mister Smith has clear evidence 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:40.879 of a mental illness, and then the prosecution puts up 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:45.919 their psychiatrists who says the opposite. Suddenly, the fact finding 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:51.280 job of the jury becomes complexified. Relying on expert witness 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:55.560 testimony turned out to be much more problematic than they 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:59.480 had originally envisioned. So the Durham rule held sway in 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:03.280 US Corps for eighteen years. But then one night at 0:18:03.320 --> 0:18:06.680 a party, a man named Archie Brauner got into a fight. 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:11.119 He left bleeding and returned with a gun, and after 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:15.879 shooting and killing a man, Bronner was arrested. The court 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:20.080 tested for insanity using a standard that's now known as 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:24.040 the Bronner rule, and the rule states a person is 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:27.760 not responsible for criminal conduct if, at the time of 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:31.320 the action, as a result of mental disease or defect, 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:36.359 he or she lacks the substantial capacity either to appreciate 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:41.680 the criminality of his conduct, or to conform his conduct 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:45.280 to the requirements of the law. The key thing about 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:49.879 the Bronner rule is that expert witnesses no longer decided 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:53.399 whether the crime resulted from a mental defect. Instead, that 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:58.000 was now up to the jurors. If a defendant wanted 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:00.840 to claim that he wasn't liable for a crime, his 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:04.280 argument had to meet two prongs. He has to lack 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:07.840 the capacity to appreciate that his conduct was wrongful, and 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:11.240 he has to lack the capacity to conform his conduct. 0:19:12.160 --> 0:19:14.359 So why have I told you this whole history of 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:19.000 the insanity defense. It's because this illustrates a really key point, 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:22.560 which is that it's not easy to take something as 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:26.879 complex as mental life and reduce it cleanly into a 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:31.080 yes or no decision in the courtroom. The endeavor to 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:36.040 build the right definition relies on a collaboration of psychiatry 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.959 and legal scholarship and the public, and because of the 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:46.520 inherently diversified goals, the road to definitive rules didn't even 0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:50.520 end with the Broader rule. Over a century after McNaughton 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:54.400 committed his homicide, there was a troubled twenty five year 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:59.320 old American named John who was developing an increasing obsession 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:04.000 with the actress Jody Foster, and so he repeatedly watched 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:08.359 this movie Taxi Driver, in which the young Foster played 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:11.600 a twelve year old prostitute. And in the movie, the 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:15.160 protagonist Travis Bickle, who is played by Robert de Niro, 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:20.840 hatches a plot to assassinate a politician for public admiration. 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:26.719 So John, with his unshakable love for Jody Foster, began 0:20:26.840 --> 0:20:30.000 to send letters to her and stalk her, and he 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:32.360 somehow got a hold of her phone number, and he 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:34.800 rang her several times, and every time she hung up. 0:20:35.480 --> 0:20:39.560 And he wrote in his final letter to her, quote, 0:20:39.680 --> 0:20:42.240 as you very well know by now, I love you 0:20:42.440 --> 0:20:45.520 very much. The past seven months, I have left you 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:50.080 dozens of poems, letters, and messages in the faint hope 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:52.919 that you would develop an interest in me. Although we 0:20:53.040 --> 0:20:55.560 talked on the phone a couple of times, I never 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:59.359 had the nerve to simply approach you and introduce myself. 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.280 Desides my shyness, I honestly did not wish to bother 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:06.760 you with my constant presence. I know that many messages 0:21:06.840 --> 0:21:09.880 left at your door and in your mailbox were a nuisance, 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:12.679 but I felt it was the most painless way for 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:16.200 me to express my love to you. I will admit 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:19.000 to you that the reason I'm going ahead with this 0:21:19.040 --> 0:21:22.960 attempt now is because I just cannot wait any longer 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:28.200 to impress you. End quote. Now. The attempt he's referring 0:21:28.240 --> 0:21:33.399 to there was the assassination of President Ronald Reagan. So 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:37.520 on March thirtieth, nineteen eighty one, John Hinckley fired six 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:41.479 shots as the president and his entourage exited the Hilton 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:45.560 Hotel in Washington, d c. None of Hinckley's bullets directly 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:48.320 hit Reagan, but one ricochet off the limousine and hit 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:51.919 the president under his left armpit, and three other people 0:21:51.920 --> 0:21:55.600 in the party were wounded, including the Press secretary James Brady, 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:58.560 who spent the rest of his life partially paralyzed on 0:21:58.600 --> 0:22:01.879 the left side of his body. Now, this act of 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:07.560 senseless violence led to a national uproar, people thirsted for 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:12.320 a swift and effective punishment for Hinckley. The federal trial 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:15.199 was quickly set into motion, and at the end the 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:18.919 jury gathered in their room with their coffee cups and 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:22.200 spent a long time deliberating over everything they had seen, 0:22:22.800 --> 0:22:28.240 and they agreed that Hinckley was indeed deeply psychotic. He 0:22:28.400 --> 0:22:32.480 was disconnected from reality and was unable to conform to 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:36.320 the requirements of the law. So on June twenty first, 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:40.920 eighty two, Hinckley was declared not guilty by reason of insanity. 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:45.800 But this pill was a jagged one for the public 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:49.840 to swallow, just as in Queen Victoria's Day, which I 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:53.040 talked about in the last episode, the air was filled 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:59.119 with outcries and citizens had just witnessed an assassination attempt 0:22:59.160 --> 0:23:02.359 on their president, and they were enraged. They felt that 0:23:02.720 --> 0:23:07.159 they were being denied their right to see punishment. After all, 0:23:07.359 --> 0:23:11.439 people asked, how do we know if Hinckley truly had 0:23:11.720 --> 0:23:17.320 an impulse that was irresistible or simply an impulse not resisted. 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:23.679 All this national anger sparked action at the congressional level. Lawmakers, 0:23:24.080 --> 0:23:27.800 responding to all this ire came together to pass the 0:23:27.840 --> 0:23:32.399 Insanity Defense Reform Act of nineteen eighty four. The act 0:23:32.520 --> 0:23:37.000 stripped the insanity defense back to a simpler version. A 0:23:37.040 --> 0:23:41.280 defendant could now escape criminalizability only if he was unable 0:23:41.320 --> 0:23:45.359 to appreciate the nature and quality, or the wrongfulness of 0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:47.879 the Act. In other words, it got rid of the 0:23:47.960 --> 0:23:51.920 irresistible impulse prong. It brought it back to the McNaughton rules. 0:23:52.359 --> 0:23:56.120 It got rid of the consideration of whether you were 0:23:56.320 --> 0:23:59.920 able to appropriately conform your behavior. All that mattered now 0:24:00.119 --> 0:24:03.840 is whether a defendant could appreciate right from wrong. If 0:24:03.880 --> 0:24:07.520 there was some reason he couldn't help himself, from frontal 0:24:07.520 --> 0:24:11.119 low problems to psychosis, he was out of luck and surfing. 0:24:11.160 --> 0:24:13.920 On top of this wave of national anger, Congress went 0:24:13.960 --> 0:24:19.040 even further beyond removing this volitional component. They also added 0:24:19.080 --> 0:24:22.200 conditions to raise the bar for the insanity defense. They 0:24:22.640 --> 0:24:26.000 specified that the defendant has to suffer from a severe 0:24:26.119 --> 0:24:29.439 mental illness, and the defendant has to prove by clear 0:24:29.560 --> 0:24:34.040 and convincing evidence the alleged insanity, which was higher than 0:24:34.080 --> 0:24:37.520 before which was just a preponderance of evidence. So, in 0:24:37.560 --> 0:24:40.919 addition to raising the standard of proof, the Act further 0:24:41.040 --> 0:24:44.600 complicated things by shifting the burden of proof from the 0:24:44.640 --> 0:24:48.760 prosecution to the defense. In other words, before Hankley, the 0:24:48.760 --> 0:24:53.359 prosecution had to prove that the defendant was not insane, 0:24:53.680 --> 0:24:58.000 but now the defendant had to prove that he was insane. 0:24:58.080 --> 0:25:00.080 And part of the difficulty here is that a. The 0:25:00.280 --> 0:25:05.639 central feature of psychosis is a lack of insight. So 0:25:05.920 --> 0:25:10.239 consider the unibomber ted Kaczynski, who killed three people and 0:25:10.400 --> 0:25:14.640 injured twenty three others by sending them explosives in the mail. 0:25:14.680 --> 0:25:19.520 Although he clearly had paranoid schizophrenia, he took offense to 0:25:19.600 --> 0:25:24.280 any suggestions or implications that he was mentally ill. He 0:25:24.359 --> 0:25:28.520 wouldn't follow his lawyer's suggestion to take the insanity plea 0:25:29.000 --> 0:25:32.080 because he was angered that anyone would be suggesting that 0:25:32.240 --> 0:25:36.080 something was wrong with his thinking. So a lack of 0:25:36.200 --> 0:25:40.639 insight is a hallmark characteristic of people with psychosis. They 0:25:40.640 --> 0:25:45.440 have no discernment that something is strange about their behavior. Instead, 0:25:45.840 --> 0:25:49.240 they believe they're seeing the world correctly while others are not. 0:25:50.040 --> 0:25:54.040 So it's no surprise that many defendants have a mental 0:25:54.080 --> 0:25:58.480 illness but will not take an insanity plea because they 0:25:58.560 --> 0:26:02.240 see a full justification for their actions, whether that was 0:26:02.720 --> 0:26:09.200 divine commandment or revenge for imagined political wrongdoings, or other 0:26:09.600 --> 0:26:29.680 fantastical reasons. So I'm telling you all this to make 0:26:29.720 --> 0:26:34.280 it clear that the legal definition of insanity is more 0:26:34.720 --> 0:26:39.360 complicated than the road which began with Daniel McNaughton. In America, 0:26:39.680 --> 0:26:42.960 if a defendant suffers from a mental disease, you might 0:26:43.000 --> 0:26:47.520 have four different tests used in different places, and cases 0:26:47.960 --> 0:26:51.520 can conclude very differently depending on which test is employed. 0:26:52.119 --> 0:26:55.720 Some jurisdictions still use the McNaughton rule. One still uses 0:26:55.760 --> 0:26:59.000 the Durham rule almost half free line on the broader rule. 0:26:59.240 --> 0:27:03.080 The Federal Core and several other jurisdictions employ the Insanity 0:27:03.160 --> 0:27:08.199 Defense Reform Act, and the state by state bespoke nature 0:27:08.760 --> 0:27:13.160 doesn't even end there. In nineteen ninety five, Kansas abolished 0:27:13.440 --> 0:27:17.199 the affirmative insanity defense and established what's known as the 0:27:17.600 --> 0:27:22.200 mensrea approach. Under this approach, mental illness is only considered 0:27:22.560 --> 0:27:26.320 to the extent that it prevents the defendant from having 0:27:26.400 --> 0:27:31.320 the required mensrea or guilty mind. For example, if a 0:27:31.400 --> 0:27:35.800 defendant knowingly commits a crime but couldn't know what she 0:27:35.920 --> 0:27:39.280 was doing because of her mental illness, that would satisfy 0:27:39.320 --> 0:27:43.639 the mens rea approach. The defendants act to judge the 0:27:43.720 --> 0:27:48.000 wrongfulness of her acts just doesn't matter. So Kansas's decision 0:27:48.200 --> 0:27:51.160 rose to the US Supreme Court in twenty twenty after 0:27:51.200 --> 0:27:54.720 a guy named James Craig Kaylor killed his wife and 0:27:54.840 --> 0:27:58.959