A longstanding principle of Anglo-American law is that a defendant shouldn’t be held criminally responsible for his behavior if mental illness made it impossible for him to tell right from wrong. Yet ...

No, not the insanity of law. Although, admittedly, if you’ve been locked within its grasp, the inverse of the notion posited in the title may seem equally apt. But the subject here is insanity as ...

Grafton Thomas sits charged with multiple counts of attempted murder and federal hate crimes following the attack on Hannukah celebrants in Monsey, N.Y. last year. Thomas’s case is as complex as it is ...

The time is overdue to reassess how we use and define the insanity defense (NGRI) in our present-day legal system. Medical professionals should determine mental illness, diagnosis, and symptomatology ...

Well, let’s start with some plain English, shall we? Webster’s Dictionary says that competency is the “possession of sufficient knowledge or skill.” To do what, it doesn’t say. Insanity, on the other ...

Thirty-five years after shooting President Ronald Reagan, John W. Hinckley Jr. is a free man, having been released from a mental institution by a federal judge who concluded that Hinckley no longer ...

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