M'Naughten Rule

The M'Naghten rule (pronounced, and sometimes spelled, McNaughton) is any variant of the 1840s jury instruction in a criminal case when there is a defense of insanity, "that every man is to be presumed to be sane, and... that to establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong." It emphasizes cognition (knowledge), as compared to the American Law Institute Model Penal Code test (ALI test), which broadened knowledge to include capacity to appreciate the criminality of conduct, and a volitional element as to capacity to conform to the law. In the 1960s, the ALI test mostly replaced the M'Naughten rule in America until the 1980s, when in the aftermath of John Hinckley shooting President Ronald Reagan, many ALI states returned to a variation of M'Naughten.

The rule was formulated as a reaction to the acquittal in 1843 of Daniel M'Naghten on the charge of murdering Edward Drummond, whom M'Naghten had mistaken for British Prime Minister Robert Peel. M'Naghten fired a pistol at the back of Peel's secretary, Edward Drummond, who died five days later. The House of Lords asked a panel of judges, presided over by Sir Nicolas Conyngham Tindal, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a series of hypothetical questions about the defence of insanity. The principles expounded by this panel have come to be known as the M'Naghten Rules, though they have gained any status only by usage in the common law and M'Naghten himself would have been found guilty if they had been applied at his trial. The rules so formulated as M'Naghten's Case 1843 10 C & F 200 have been a standard test for criminal liability in relation to mentally disordered defendants in common law jurisdictions ever since, with some minor adjustments. When the tests set out by the Rules are satisfied, the accused may be adjudged "not guilty by reason of insanity" or "guilty but insane" and the sentence may be a mandatory or discretionary (but usually indeterminate) period of treatment in a secure hospital facility, or otherwise at the discretion of the court (depending on the country and the offence charged) instead of a punitive disposal.

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