Criminal insanity : Conflicting intuitions

This paper’s focus is upon the history, and contemporary use, of the ‘Not Guilty By
Reason of Insanity’ plea (alternatively known as ‘Not Guilty By Reason of Mental
Disease Or Defect’ in some jurisdictions) in the Anglo-American criminal justice
system. In the USA, this plea has a varied geographical distribution, and there have
been some quite notorious instances of its deployment—I discuss one these in some
depth: the Andrea Yates case.