CRI365H1 Lecture Notes - Insanity Defense, The Dilemma, Mens Rea
8 Aug 2022
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Document Summary
Last week"s lecture 2 views of the m"naghten rules. 1) tightly formulated, legally relevant resolution of challenge of introducing psychological/psychiatric knowledge into legal arena. Only embraces psychiatric phenomena of delusions/hallucinations when they create circumstances like established mens rea defences (mistake of fact, self defence) Replica gun at bank clerk mistake of fact. Hallucinates someone pointing gun at bank clerk. Maintain voluntaristic view of how accused should respond to delusions/hallucinations. 2) incoherent once you accept delusions/hallucinations are not just errors of thought but direct products of defects in inner workings of the mind, no longer any viable rationale for ignoring wider range of psychological & psychiatric knowledge. Would being with adjacent phenomena such as delusions/hallucinations that do not happen to give rise to states analogous to established defences, but drive. Also no reason to restrict consideration to defects of reason might be so called defects of emotion or will. Other kinds of psychological defects causing crimes.
