Word: ruling
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...wide-striped blue suit, stood in Washington's District Court and heard Judge David Pine sentence him to a prison term of one to four years for housebreaking and robbery. The Durham case, already famous among psychiatrists and lawyers, is a direct challenge to the M'Naghten rule...
...Monte Durham was arrested in a petty housebreaking, he had been in and out of St. Elizabeths Hospital four times in six years. Psychiatrist Joseph Gilbert had no hesitation in testifying that Durham was of "unsound mind" at the time of the crime. Under the M'Naghten rule, the question was whether he knew that what he was doing was wrong. Said Dr. Gilbert in effect: this could not be answered yes or no. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia reversed Durham's conviction on a technicality, then held the M'Naghten...
...Appeals Court's ruling echoed a majority of psychiatrists, who have long opposed the M'Naghten rule. Some argue that mental competence is not directly involved in a moral question of right and wrong. Others protest that it is always difficult and sometimes impossible to determine, months or years after a crime, whether the accused knew that it was wrong when he committed it. Over the years, the only major modification of the M'Naghten rule was the addition of the idea that a man might be driven to crime by an "irresistible impulse." But that...
...upon one symptom and so cannot validly be applied in all circumstances . . . The 'irresistible impulse' test is also inadequate, in that it gives no recognition to mental illnesses characterized by brooding and reflection ... A broader test should be adopted." The proposed test, already known as the "Durham Rule": a jury must decide 1) whether an accused was suffering from "a diseased or defective mental condition" when he committed the crime, and 2) if so, whether the crime was the "product" of such abnormality...
Psychiatrists and lawyers see major difficulties in this ruling, e.g., how to define such terms as "disease," "defect," "product." Many fear that it would be too easy for criminals to take refuge in "mental disease." Actually, if properly administered, the Durham rule would not necessarily have such results; in many cases, the defense would have a hard time proving a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the mental illness and the crime. The Durham rule, by allowing freer psychiatric testimony, might also undermine many defense attempts based on "irresistible impulse." which in the past has been responsible for some highly...