Mental Illness Is No Guarantee Insanity Defense Will Succeed. [View all]

The standard is so difficult to meet that few defendants using the insanity defense in New York win at trial. Of 5,910 murder cases completed in the last decade statewide, only seven defendants have been found at trial to be not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect, according to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.

The state does not track how often the defense is raised. But failed attempts at the insanity defense regularly receive public attention, including Andrew Goldstein, a schizophrenic who in 1999 pushed Kendra Webdale to her death in front of a subway train, and Renato Seabra, a Portuguese fashion model who in 2011 murdered and mutilated his lover in a Times Square hotel. Both were found criminally responsible for murder.

The insanity defense is also expected to be used by lawyers defending James E. Holmes, the man accused of killing 12 people inside a movie theater in Colorado last July.

“From the perspective of the prosecution, it’s kind of like shooting fish in a barrel,” said Charles P. Ewing, a forensic psychologist, lawyer and professor at the University at Buffalo Law School. “In terms of responsibility, you have to be extremely mentally ill not to be able to understand what you are doing, or that it’s wrong.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/nyregion/mental-illness-is-no-guarantee-insanity-defense-will-work-for-tarloff.html?hp