C
a criminal act triggered by criminal intent (p. 164)
What is criminal conduct
Special hearings to determine if defendants who have used the insanity excuse defense are still insane
What is Competency Hearings
You have to retreat from an attack if you reasonably believe (1) that you’re in danger of death or serious bodily harm; and (2) that backing off won’t unreasonably put you in danger of death or serious bodily harm
What is Retreat Rule
We can’t blame or deter people who, because of a mental disease or defect know, that what they’re doing is “wrong” but can’t bring their actions into line with their knowledge of right and wrong
What is Irresistible Impulse Test
Mental disorder that develops in victims of domestic violence as a result of serious, long-term abuse
What is Battered Woman’s Syndrome (BWS)
The legal term that refers to a mental disease or defect that impairs the reason and/or will to control actions
What is Insanity
If you didn’t start a fight, you can stand your ground and kill
to defend yourself without retreating from any place you have a right to be
What is Stand-Your-Ground Rule
When attacked in your home, you have no duty to retreat and can use deadly force to fend off an unprovoked attack, but only if you reasonably believe the attack threatens death or serious bodily injury
What is Castle Exception
Acts that are the “products” of mental disease or defect excuse criminal liability
What is Product-Of-Mental-Illness Test (also called the Durham rule)
The area immediately surrounding the home
What is Curtilage
Psychologists call it “cognition”; the capacity to tell right from wrong
What is Reason
The defendant suffered a defect of reason caused by a disease of the mind, and, consequently, at the time of the act didn’t know what she was doing or that the act was wrong
What is Right-Wrong Test (McNaughtan Rule)
A defense that argues an imminent danger of attack was prevented
What is Necessity
A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality [wrongfulness] of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law
What is Substantial Capacity Test (the MPC Test)
Also called the general defense of necessity justifies the choice to commit a lesser crime to avoid the harm of a greater crime
What is Choice-Of-Evils Defense
Psychologists call it “volition,” most of us call it “willpower”; in the insanity tests
it refers to a defendant’s power to control their actions
What is Will
Most courts define it as psychosis, mostly paranoia and schizophrenia
What is Mental Disease
Someone who provokes an attack can’t then use force to defend herself against the attack she provoked
What is Initial Aggressor
A failure-of-proof defense in which the defendant attempts to prove that the defendant, incapable of the requisite intent of the crime charged, is innocent of that crime but may well be guilty of a lesser one
What is Diminished Capacity
When juvenile court judges use their discretion to transfer a juvenile to adult criminal court
What is Judicial Waiver
When a defendant fails in the full defense but is found guilty of a
lesser offense
What is Imperfect Defense
Refers to mental retardation or brain damage severe enough to make it impossible to know what you’re doing, or if you know, you don’t know that it’s wrong
What is Mental Defect
In the jurisdictions that follow the retreat rule, people who live in the same home don’t have to retreat
What is Cohabitant Exception
A defense of excuse in which the defendant argues, “What I did was wrong, but under the circumstances, I’m less responsible."
What is Diminished Responsibility
Excuse that argues government agents got people to commit crimes they wouldn’t otherwise commit
What is Entrapment