The Mcnaughton and Durham Rules.
I find it absolutely amazing when meeting students on the ward's that some of them have little understanding of what forensic nursing is all about . I would have thought that they would have been some preparation knowing that secure units are highly specialized areas and presents with distinctive challenges .So what I do generally is try to have teaching sessions with students at a basic level to give them a general understanding of Forensic Nursing Practice .Now significantly I believe that before you get into the mental health act,sections ,rights,tribunals etc. ,you must first go back to where it all started .The core concepts that shaped modern day forensic psychiatry .
Now for centuries English law has stated emphatically that a mentally ill person is not responsible for his actions.The lunatics act 1800 provided that in all cases where it shall be given in evidence upon the trial of any person charged with treason, murder, or felony, that such person was insane at the time of the commission of such offence, and such person shall be acquitted, the jury shall be required to find specially whether such person was insane at the time of the commission of such offence, and to declare whether such person was acquitted by them on account of such insanity; and if they shall find that such person was insane at the time of the committing such offence, the court before whom such trial shall be had, shall order such person to be kept in strict custody, in such place and in such manner as to the court shall seem fit, until His Majesty's pleasure shall be known. ...Now things have changed somewhat since those days,but in Barbados and other colonized counties ,his Majesty's Pleasure is never known .Offenders who have comitted offences such as those stated above,usally remain in hospitals until death.
The first famous legal test for insanity came in 1843, in the McNaughton case. Englishman Daniel McNaughton shot and killed the secretary of the British Prime Minister, believing that the Prime Minister was conspiring against him. The court acquitted McNaughton "by reason of insanity," and he was placed in a mental institution for the rest of his life. However, the case caused a public uproar, and Queen Victoria ordered the court to develop a stricter test for insanity.
The "McNaughton rule" was a standard to be applied by the jury, after hearing medical testimony from prosecution and defense experts. The rule created a presumption of sanity, unless the defense proved "at the time of committing the act, the 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 what he was doing was wrong."
The McNaughton rule became the standard for insanity in the United States and the United Kingdom, and is still the standard for insanity in almost half of the states.
Monte Durham was a 23-year-old who had been in and out of prison and mental institutions since he was 17. He was convicted for housebreaking in 1953, and his attorney appealed. Although the district court judge had ruled that Durham's attorneys had failed to prove he didn't know the difference between right and wrong, the federal appellate judge chose to use the case to reform the McNaughton rule.
Citing leading psychiatrists and jurists of the day, the appellate judge stated that the McNaughton rule was based on "an entirely obsolete and misleading conception of the nature of insanity." He overturned Durham's conviction and established a new rule. The Durham rule states "that an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect."
The Durham rule was eventually rejected by the federal courts, because it cast too broad a net. Alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, and drug addicts had successfully used the defense to defeat a wide variety of crimes.
