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?
In: 18
There are two kinds of insanity defense.
One is about whether you are competent to stand trial – whether you can behave in court, assist your lawyer in preparing a defense etc. If this is successful, you get committed until you are judged competent, and then you are tried. Not really a benefit to the defendant to fake it just to spend time in an asylum.
The other is claiming that you were temporarily insane at the time you committed the crime. This is basically a guilty plea with a request to consider mitigating circumstances. In this case, your other actions will be used to judge if you were really in your right mind at the time, and things like concealing evidence or anything that indicates that the crime may have been premeditated will work against you. If you try to fake this and fail, you will end up worse off than before, and even if it succeeds, you’ll probably get some psychiatric treatment against your will.
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