Insanity Plea Essay, Research Paper

Do you think it?s right for a person to murder someone and say that they did it because they are insane? I think it?s wrong for a person to get off without getting in trouble just because of the insanity plea. If someone commits a crime and had no record of being insane, how could he suddenly become insane? The only reason that people plead insanity is to get off the hook for committing a crime.

The issue of using the insanity plea is fairly a new strategy used in law. This means that we have no history of these types of cases to judge from. To better determine the issue of being insane or not, there should be new laws passed to protect the people who are actually insane and convict those who aren’t and punish them accordingly. One of the biggest concerns is how the plea effects society. If you have people get off the hook for saying they had no control over what they did, then those are more people who are among us doing who knows what. They could go kill more and more people and blame it on being insane. An example of this is if O.J. Simpson had been found guilty of the murder of his spouse, but pleaded temporarily insane what would his penalty be? He would probably get off without being punished like he already did. That is just wrong and it’s not fair to everyone who has been put away for the same thing.

The majority of the people who use the insanity plea, in fact, are not insane and have no record of it. If they do something wrong and they know they are either going to be put away in jail for the rest of their lives or given the death penalty, why wouldn?t they just plead for insanity to maybe get off of the hook.

The big disadvantage of using the insanity plea is the guilty people that have committed crimes are not being put in jail when they should be. Now more and more people are doing things that aren?t legal because they think they are invincible and they can get away with anything.

All of the criminals that commit crimes should be convicted and locked up. All that the insanity plea accomplishes is protecting bad people. This is not fair to the people whom the crimes are committed against, and it isn?t serving justice to anyone.

It?s not fair for me to say everyone who is pleading for insanity is faking it, but the majority of the people have no record of being insane and all the sudden claim to be. In certain cases I do believe in using the insanity plea but most of the time the people aren?t really insane.

I really believe that it?s not fair to get off for a crime they committed, especially if it?s a serious crime. It?s just not fair because the people should be locked up and put away. They should be responsible to stand up and know they did something wrong, and take the penalty.