Crime Solicitors

Operator - “Which Emergency Service would you like?”

Client - “Could I have two pieces of chicken and Chips please”

A real case study

The defence of insanity is one which is rarely touched by Defence lawyers; it is raised in under one percent of criminal trials in the United Kingdom and only a quarter of those raised succeed. If a defendant has been charged with a criminal offence and there is any suspicion that that person is either currently suffering with mental health illness or was suffering from mental health illness at the time of the alleged offences; then there is a potential defence of insanity arising. The burden of proof is reversed onto the defence when insanity is raised. If the defence is successful at trial; the Jury must provide a special verdict of ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’.

The defence of insanity dates back to 1843 when the case of McNaughton [1843] UKHL J16 established the criteria for proving the defence of insanity.

The McNaughton rules criteria states that in order for a defence of insanity to be proved that ‘at the time of the offence the accused was suffering from a defect of reason which is caused by a disease of the mind and that that defect of reason must be such that the defendant did not know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know, he did not know the act was wrong.’

The case is so old that the above criteria are taken from other sources as there are no transcripts of the ruling.

In order to raise the defence of insanity; two S.12 approved forensic psychiatrists in the relevant field should be instructed to assess the client. The medical experts should give their opinions on the client’s mental health at the time that the alleged offences took place and obviously give positive conclusions regarding the client’s insanity at the time of the offence.

The medical experts should subsequently follow-up the assessments in a psychiatric report which complies with the format that is in line with the Criminal Procedure Rules on expert witnesses. The reports will become important medical evidence which in turn will then be served on both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Court prior to arguing the defence of insanity at trial.

In a recent case Duncan Lewis represented a client who suffered from bipolar. The client was charged with a public nuisance offence- namely making 999 calls to the Police several hundred times with no real emergency reason to do so and even requested some fast food (chicken and chips) from the emergency services.

When our client was initially arrested the Police officers believed him to be mentally ill and unfit for interview at the police station therefore they took him to a nearby hospital where the client was then sectioned as an in-patient for the next three months.

The Police did however carry on the investigations and eventually the client was charged with a Public nuisance offence; whilst not serious on its own was aggravated by the particular circumstances of this case.

The Magistrates declined jurisdiction in this case due to the circumstances of the alleged offence and the case was sent for a committal hearing up to the crown court.

Duncan Lewis instructed two medical experts. We instructed one Psychiatrist whom we have previously used in similar cases to establish mental health issues and the consultant of our client whilst he was an in-patient at the mental hospital.

The reports prepared by both Psychiatrists’ were consistent with our client’s instructions and therefore strengthened our case. The client pleaded not guilty at the Crown Court and the case was listed for trial. We proposed to run the defence of insanity with both Doctors giving oral medical evidence to support our case in front of the jury.

Our case was that the client did not dispute making the telephone calls but that he had no recollection of the time in the few months prior to these actions or in fact making the telephone calls as a direct result of his mental ill health. When you apply these instructions with the McNaughton rules we argued that at the time of the alleged offences; our client was suffering from a disease of the mind (namely a relapse of his Bipolar) to the extent that he cannot recall the nature and quality of his actions.

We also made representations to the Crown Prosecution Service when we served the medical reports asking them to review the entire case against our client and to consider withdrawing the charge.

A few weeks before the trial date the Crown Prosecution Service saw sense in the overwhelming nature of the evidence which indicated that he was unwell at the material time and did not appreciate the quality of his actions, offered no evidence and the case was discontinued.

Preparing this case for trial has given me a great insight into how mental health issues can relate to criminal law. The McNaughton rules are currently criticised mainly for the reverse burden of proof being anomalous and there have been several proposals to reform the law but these attempts have so far been ignored. In my opinion the law on insanity following the McNaughton Criteria is sufficient for the time being although there will come a time in the future when reforms will need to be implemented as the current law could be seen as outdated.

By Hayley-Jane Knight