Hi, I am Elle, and this is Quid Pro Quo, your friendly neighborhood forensics-like podcast. Successfully resisting the urge to binge watch a 20-year-old true crime show in order to bring you this episode, but only just barely. The Quid Pro Quo podcast deals with crime, psychology, and related themes, lesson or discretion is advised. Remember how a long, long time ago, far far away in the mystical reaches of January?
I mentioned that insanity was kind of a big deal and that there were going to be other insanity episodes? I didn't expect that to happen right away, but after I finished the literally insane episode, I felt I still had more to say on the subject and wasn't satisfied where I had left off. So congratulations, you get another insanity episode. Today I want to give you a bit more information on the difference between the major insanity tests in the US.
I don't know that you have to listen to the last episode for this one to make sense, but it would probably help. So if this is your very first episode of Quid Pro Quo, consider skipping back to episode 6 before listening to this one. None of you are actually being tested on this, and I don't expect you to memorize anything, so here's a refresher from last time. There are two major tests for insanity in the US, and there is a subtle sounding, but absolutely critical functional difference between them in practice.
Most of the states in the US are split between two tests for insanity, the McNaughton rule, and the ALI Model Penal Code rule. I mentioned last time that the original outcome of the Andrea Gates murder trial is emblematic of that difference, but I felt like I needed to dig deeper into the particulars of the tests for that to really make sense, so that's what I'm going to tackle today. According to the McNaughton rule, a defendant may be found not guilty by reason of insanity if, at the time of committing the act, he was laboring under such a defective reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know it that he did not know what he was doing was wrong. What that translates to in real life terms is that the entity who makes the final decision, whether that's a judge or a jury, has to consider two questions.
Did the defendant know what they were doing when they committed the crime, and or did the defendant understand that their actions were wrong? The defendant had to prove that they were completely disconnected with some aspect of reality in a critical way to pass this test. As long as the defendant understands the moral consequence of the action, mental illness does not matter. Imagine you have a son in his early teens who chronically sleep walks and his bedroom is on the second floor.
This is a very long-term condition, and even though he is no longer a baby, you maintain a safety gate on the steps so he cannot fall down the stairs. You wake to the familiar noises of his sleepwalking late at night, and suddenly you realize you forgot to latch the gate when carrying some laundry to the bedroom earlier in the evening. You race to the landing just in time to see him get to the steps. He is clearly in the midst of a sleepwalking episode and totally oblivious to his surroundings.
You realize he is in immediate danger of falling, but there is no time for the gate. You lunge and grab for him as he is about to tumble down the steps and he reacts by pushing you away. He is strong and not holding back, and you are off-balance in your haste so you take the nasty fall down the steps instead. He pushed you.
That much is indisputable. So the question is now, did he know what was happening and was his response intended to injure you? His lawyer would present information regarding the sleepwalking diagnosis in general, and the history of the Son's case in particular. They would outline the level of awareness observed in sleepwalkers and discuss the current theory of intentionality of acts committed while sleepwalking.
If the judge or jury deciding the case in any state thought he was making the sleepwalking condition at the time of the push, he would be judged guilty. But if they are in a state with a sanity provision and find that he lacked the necessary awareness of his surroundings and, or, the consequences of his action, to consider that push to be in any way intentional, he would be considered not guilty by reason of insanity. Okay, that's pretty straightforward. If you believe that the kid was sleepwalking, the fall down the stairs was barely distinguishable from pure dumb bad luck.
At that point, you might as well ask if a deer intended to total a car in a crash or a tree made a conscious decision to fall on a particular house. But obviously, it gets way more complicated. So imagine instead of sleepwalking, the son was suffering from psychotic delusions, and even though he was looking straight at you and is responding to his surroundings, he did not recognize you, much less realize you were there to save him from falling down the stairs. Again, he reacts to your grab by pushing you away, and again, you fall.
This adds a thick, gooey layer of subjectivity for a judge or jury to wade through. How do you determine intent or cause when you're talking about a person who is clearly able to take in information, but may not be able to interpret much less act on it in a generally understandable way? And then you have a whole added series of legal interactions which may very well alter the final outcome. A sleepwalking teen who accidentally hurt their parent is likely to be horrified and remorseful, and odds are that they will move through the legal system in a way meant to better their eventual chances of freedom.
But that may not be the case with someone in the midst of psychosis. Is this son likely to react calmly to being detained, and how will that reflect on his treatment by the legal system? Is he going to be clear headed enough to assist his counsel? How likely is it that he is going to be able to articulate what he was experiencing at the time in a way that is believable?
How do you prove something like that to the satisfaction of uninformed and probably rather suspicious strangers? Despite the added layer of challenges, the judge or jury may still feel that he did not know what he was doing or intend to harm anyone, so this is still certainly a situation which could lead to a not guilty by reason of insanity or NGRI verdict under a McNaughton test. As you might remember, this is a pattern courts are pretty familiar with, and these are often negotiated between councils before the person ever gets to trial. It's sad to say, but for a person in that position, sometimes the very thing that cements their access to continuing care rather than incarceration is the judicial acknowledgement across the board that their situation is just that undeniably messed up.
So for further contrast, let's change the scenario again. Another son, in the same neighborhood, but this one is suffering from an unmedicated, paranoid psychotic break as a result of his first bout of schizophrenia. He's delusional and feels his life is threatened. He takes steps to protect himself from his attacker in accordance with this delusion, and he intentionally hurts someone, but in reality this person he attacked is not a threat to him by any objective measure.
In a McNaughton state, this is a pretty cut and dry ruling. He made an active choice to hurt someone who was not a threat to him by the standards of any normally observant person. It doesn't matter what the reason was in his head, he made a deliberate decision to hurt someone, he is guilty. This again is why Andrea Yates was initially convicted under the McNaughton test in Texas.
Her decision to time the killings to avoid interruption by her husband and her immediate confession was presented as proof she knew her actions were morally wrong. So what is the difference in an ALI state? Under the ALI model penal code rule, a defendant is not held criminally responsible. If at the time of his conduct, as a result of mental disease or defect, he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law.
Thus, under ALI, there is understanding that a defendant could absolutely know that they were doing something their society considers wrong, but they do it anyway because they are lacking some critical ability to make the right decisions. Let's say this third son is in his late teens and has been generally personable, if slightly odd, throughout his life. But in recent months he has become increasingly strange and withdrawn. Though a generally non-violent person, he has developed upsetting, violent, frightening thoughts which do not seem to come from his own head, and they are framed within a paranoid delusion that a particular neighbor is the one interfering with his thoughts.
The things he feels are being put into his head are horrible, and they have destroyed his ability to function and he cannot figure out how to stop them, if anything they are escalating. He has requested the neighbor stop, but of course these conversations are increasingly bizarre, confusing, and confrontational. The neighbor of course has no idea what's going on, and now openly regards the son with suspicion, which does not do much to counteract the delusion. The neighbor has a satellite dish installed, and the teen sees this as a critical moment.
He knows this dish has been installed to focus this mind attack, and is convinced that if he does not do something immediately, his mental suffering will increase beyond his ability to bear. The neighbor walks outside to check on the progress of the installation, and is attacked by the kid next door, suddenly, violently, and without apparent provocation. The son undertook a voluntary action intended to hurt someone who was not a threat by any objective measure. In a McNaughton state, he is guilty, but in an ALI state, his counsel has the ability to discuss why and how his state of mind may have altered his ability to understand the reality and consequence of his actions.
To all reasonable observers, this is a heinous and vicious unprovoked attack, but the son describes it as a desperate act of self-defense against someone who has been torturing him and who is now escalating this torture. All of his senses tell him that this is so. The alteration of his reality has scrambled his interpretation of the situation so much that he could not know or appreciate the innocence of his neighbor, much less the unreasonable nature of his response to the installation of a simple satellite dish. This is of course still a very difficult thing to prove, even in a state where it is allowed as an argument, especially since the Hinckley trial which shifted the burden of proof for people claiming NGRI to rest squarely on the shoulders of the defense.
Andrea Yates' first trial, as it was presented, was considered pretty much unwinnable under the McNaughton rule. This was because of the overwhelming amount of evidence presented at trial according to the prosecution's narrative that she had plotted to kill the children to get them out of the way. A piece of testimony which was considered critical at the time cited an episode of the television show Law & Order involving a nearly identical but clearly calculated murder as an inspiration for the crime. It later turned out that this supposedly inspirational Law & Order episode was a complete fabrication by the prosecution's witness, and this false testimony was considered so prejudicial that the first trial was completely thrown out.
Once that testimony went away, the thrust of the evidence indicated that she honestly thought there was a demonic plot to corrupt the children, and that she was doing the best possible thing for them and in fact sacrificing herself in a roundabout way for their eternal salvation as she expected to receive the death penalty in response. But under the Texas laws it simply didn't matter that her understanding of the consequence of death was based on profound delusions and shaped by religious ideology and severe suicidal levels of depression because at trial it was still presented as an intentional killing for personal gain. Even after reading juror comments, the exact nuance of the critical difference for the jury between the first and second trial is still a bit unclear to me. But it seems that the second jury considered the extent of her delusion so strong they felt she did not know the nature and quality of the act she was doing, so basically the first prong of the McNaughton Test.
A note on her religion. Religiosity and religiously-themed delusions add yet another layer of murky confusion to these questions, the cultural context of extreme belief system can be incredibly hard to tease apart from delusion. Questions of religiosity are best handled on a case-by-case basis, in this case while the shape of her delusions were clearly informed by her religion, her acts were not in keeping with its teachings and the expectations of her society. I feel a little better about the groundwork I've laid down to explain the not-kilty-by-reason of insanity defense.
I'm going to switch topics for a bit, but I am so not done. Please keep your ears open for the three quilt to this series, Insanity Trek 3, The Search for Hinkley. If you are interested in a brief history of sleepwalking as a defense for murder, check out the link I've put in the episode write-up, What Happens If You Commit a Murder While Sleepwalking? If you want to weigh in on the not-guilty-by-reason of insanity plea, or if you have other questions about true crime and forensics psych, seek me out at quidproquocast on Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, at the dot com, and wherever fine internets are sold.
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