The insanity defense as a legal concept was born in England, in 1843. A man named Daniel M’Naghten attempted to assassinate the British Prime Minister who he believed was conspiring against him. Due ...

As Vinocour, a clinical and forensic psychologist, writes in this moving, well-researched account of the insanity defense, she really didn’t want to get involved in the case of the woman she calls ...

"In 1875 Mary Lincoln, the widow of a revered president, was committed to an insane asylum by her son, Robert. The trial that preceded her internment was a subject of keen national interest. The focus ...

This week’s feature story tells the gruesome tale of convicted killer Thomas Espinoza’s brutal murder of his neighbor, and his subsequent efforts to escape justice by claiming he was insane. Here are ...

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.

A longstanding principle of Anglo-American law is that a defendant shouldn’t be held criminally responsible for his behavior if mental illness made it impossible for him to tell right from wrong. Yet ...

THE book, “Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason” (“Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique,” in the original French) by celebrated French historian ...

As the murder trial of a nanny who fatally stabbed two small children in her care entered its fourth week on Monday, the jury has begun wrestling with one of the most controversial, misunderstood and ...

Psychologists often are called upon to give their opinion about a legal concept, the insanity plea. Criminal cases that involve the insanity plea consistently receive the attention of the media and of ...

The insanity defense as a legal concept was born in England, in 1843. A man named Daniel M’Naghten attempted to assassinate the British Prime Minister who he believed was conspiring against him. Due ...