Are insanity defenses often successful?
No, despite public perceptions to the contrary. One eight-state study of criminal cases in the early 1990s concluded that less than one percent of defendants pleaded insanity and, of them, only a quarter won aquittals. “In the real world, it just doesn’t happen,” said Maryland Attorney General Joseph Curran, who as lieutenant governor in 1983 chaired a task force that helped tighten that state’s insanity defense. Then why are they controversial? Critics argue that some defendants misuse it, effectively faking insanity to win acquittals or less severe convictions. And often the trials involving an insanity defense get the most attention because they involve “crimes that are bizarre within themselves,” said Baltimore defense attorney Cristina Gutierrez, who has defended a dozen such cases in as many years. But studies by the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law have concluded that “the overwhelming majority” of defendants acquitted by reason of insanity suffer from schizophrenia or
