Word: brawner
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...complaint that the defense is the handmaiden to moneyed justice, Caplan cites the 1972 Brawner decision. The opinion established the standard which holds that a person is not responsible for a crime if, as a result of mental disease, he or she lacks the capacity to "appreciate" the wrongfulness of his or her conduct. But the case also made light of a "well guarded secret." According to the opinion, the majority of responsibility cases concern indigents, not affluent defendants with easy access to legal and psychiatric assistance...
Since 1962 most states, and the federal courts, have adopted variants of a model developed by the American Law Institute. Commonly referred to as the Brawner rule, it acquits a defendant who lacks "substantial capacity" either to know right from wrong or to conform to the law. This is the test that will be used in Hinckley's trial...
...Abraham Halpern, director of psychiatry at United Hospital in Port Chester, N.Y., why shouldn't heredity, poverty and cultural deprivations also be? Others, like University of Chicago Law Professor Norval Morris, contend that jurors cannot make much sense of the tortured language in the M'Naghten and Brawner rules. "Even the so-called experts don't understand them," says Morris. Instead of acquitting defendants with mental problems, some scholars would prefer to have a judge convene a post-trial panel of medical experts to help him decide whether to order a prison sentence or psychiatric treatment...