(Hansen 1-5).
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In 1954 the case of Durham versus the United States established the rules for using the insanity plea. One of the rules is that several tests have to be performed on the defendant. The tests include the defendant going to a psychologist various amounts of times. Also to establish a defense on the grounds of insanity, it must be proven that at the time of committing the act, the accused was in such a mental state that he or she did not know the nature or quality of the act that they were committing was wrong. (Simon).
In 1983 the Supreme Court ruled that the courts are allowed to keep a mentally ill defendant hospitalized longer than the maximum sentence for their crime. Some say that the insanity defense merely allows criminal to escape imprisonment. (Simon).
One of the strangest serial murderers in American History plead insane. Jeffery Dahmar said that he brutally murdered seventeen you men, because he enjoyed the thrill of killing. Dahmar cooked some of the young men's body parts and ate them. When Dahmar was thirty one years old he plead guilty but insane to fifteen of the murders. Dahmar was found guilty. (World Report 1).
States have been making it harder to prove guilty but insane, since the 1982 acquittal of John Hinckley who tried to assassinate then former President Ronald Regan. Twelve states have done away with the guilty but insane verdict while others have become very strict of what is considered as insane. (World Report 1).
Jessie White is a man who was accused of sexually assaulting and beating his three-year- old step granddaughter to death. White's attorney asked the courts to allow White to use the guilty by reason of insanity, but the courts declined. The reason why the courts declined is for this reason; White had an appointment with a psychologist. The psychologist said that White may have not known right from wrong, but he did indeed know that what he was doing at the time was wrong.