Durham v. United States (1954)
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Durham v. United States, 214 F.2d 862 (D.C. Cir. 1954), is a criminal case articulating what has become known as the Durham rule for juries to find a defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity, that "an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect".[1] It was to enable psychiatrists to "inform the jury of the character of [the defendant's mental disease" so that a jury could be "guided by wider horizons of knowledge concerning mental life"; so that juries could make determinations based on expert testimony about the disease.[2] It was patterned on State v. Pike.[2] It was adopted by only two states, for a short time, but has and continues to be influential on debate over legal insanity.[2] The decision was criticized for leaving a jury with no standard to judge impairment of reason or control, did not define mental disease, and left the jury dependent on expert testimony.[2]
References
- ^ Criminal Law - Cases and Materials, 7th ed. 2012, Wolters Kluwer Law & Business; John Kaplan, Robert Weisberg, Guyora Binder, ISBN 978-1-4548-0698-1, [1]
- ^ a b c d Insanity, Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice, 1983; Abraham Goldstein; pp736-40
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