Today in our criminal justice system, when someone commits a crime they may use insanity as a defense. This is called an insanity plea. In theory this seems somewhat fair if that person is insane, but in reality how so we truly know if that individual is insane. It is difficult to determine if someone is telling the truth about their mental state. .
In our justice system a lot depends on how well a person is defended. If a defense attorney sees no serious signs of mental illness, he will not attempt to defend his client in this fashion. When using the insanity plea an attorney must project what his client was or was not thinking at the time of the crime. That is a major reason why this defense does not work. We can never be truly certain that what you see in court is the real thing.
As much as I feel that this defense is flawed, I realize that there are times when defenses legitimate. Truly mentally ill criminals need special help compared to regular criminals. If we just stick them into general prisons we are shooting ourselves in the foot. They will not get the right services that they need. In the end, anyone that commits a crime has to do the time. We need to be careful how we hand out sentences, but to be fair, we have to allow an insanity defense to be submitted.
