Does the Constitution Guarantee a Right to an Insanity Defense?
Historians are not quite sure whether Daniel M’Naghten, a Scottish woodworker, intended to kill Edward Drummond or Drummond’s boss, the English prime minister Robert Peel. In fact, he killed Drummond. What is more certain is that he did not intend to bedevil generations of law students and judges, but he has. His ghost will be present in the Supreme Court chamber this Monday, when the Court opens its October 2019 term.
The issue will be whether Kansas and four other American states—Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Utah—can essentially abolish the “insanity defense,” the test for which bears M’Naghten’s name.
[Read more: Sometimes the Supreme Court sticks to the law]
Born in 1813, M’Naghten by 1841 had begun to believe that members of England’s Conservative Party were persecuting him. In 1843—perhaps believing he was shooting the prime minister—M’Naghten shot Drummond, a civil servant, from behind at point-blank range. Drummond died five days later.
At trial in the Old Bailey, medical witnesses testified that M’Naghten’s delusions had left him unable to understand or control his actions. The evidence was so
