It would seem it would be an advantage to pretend to be insane to avoid being found guilty so how do they determine if someone is truly insane or just pretending to be?
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It’s actually not as advantageous as you might think. Before any criminal case ever even gets to court there are a lot of preliminaries. I have two criminal counts on my record, thankfully very old now, but know how many days I’ve spent in trial? ZERO. Never been to trial. Because I opted to plea down, preempt charges with my own penances as action, and didn’t waste court time. And for it, I got lesser sentences, never spent a day in jail.
If you plead insanity, it’s on the burden of the person pleaing that at the time of the crime there was a psychological cause that prevented them from understanding either the consequences of their actions in that specific momement. There have been a lot of shifts in standards, the last I know of is the Durham rule, which I imagine is outdated now. But now the standards of guilt are reversed, it’s not innocent until proven guilty, it’s guilty but needed to show why one should be innocent. Because you cannot plea both insanity and innoncence.
Thankfully, I work in mental health, but am never called to do this, but the way it is done is by interviews, and conforming to the criteria of insanity where something occurs. It’s not a federal issue (in the US) it’s a state issue so terms can vary from place to place. But also against the defendant, it generally takes more than a personal statement of mens rea, but there needs to be evidence to show it as well.
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