The Mad, the Bad, and the Psychopath
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ORIGINAL PAPER
The Mad, the Bad, and the Psychopath Heidi L. Maibom
Received: 20 March 2008 / Accepted: 7 April 2008 / Published online: 15 May 2008 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008
Abstract It is common for philosophers to argue that psychopaths are not morally responsible because they lack some of the essential capacities for morality. In legal terms, they are criminally insane. Typically, however, the insanity defense is not available to psychopaths. The primary reason is that they appear to have the knowledge and understanding required under the M’Naghten Rules. However, it has been argued that what is required for moral and legal responsibility is ‘deep’ moral understanding, something that psychopaths do not have either due to their lacking empathy or practical reason. In the first part of the paper, I argue that psychopaths do not lack the abilities required for deep moral understanding, although they have deficits in those areas. According the M’Naghten Rules, therefore, psychopaths are not insane. Under a less strict formulation of the insanity plea, like the Model Penal Code, however, there is a good case to be made for their lacking substantial capacity. I argue that because psychopathy is an essentially moral disorder, and because of the nature of psychopathic violence, psychopaths should not be excused under the insanity plea. It would be tantamount to excusing someone for committing a crime because they are bad. Arguably, this contravenes the entire system of law. H. L. Maibom (*) Philosophy, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords Criminal responsibility . Legal responsibility . Insanity . Psychopathy . Moral understanding . Empathy
[T]o establish a defense on the grounds of insanity, it must conclusively be proved that, at the time of committing the act, the party 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 M’Naghten Rules) Current US legal practice is to regard the psychiatric condition of psychopathy to be irrelevant to a defendant’s legal responsibility. The insanity defense is generally not available to psychopaths.1 This is largely due to the fact that psychopaths are able to correctly identify what actions they are performing, determine whether those actions are right or wrong, and control their actions. They do not suffer from delusions or hallucinations of the sort that usually exculpate other mentally ill defendants. In short, they do not appear to be either cognitively or volitionally impaired in a way relevant to criminal responsibility. Experts tend to agree that psychopaths are, indeed,
1
I henceforth use ‘insanity’ in the legal sense.
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blameworthy for their actions and should be punished accordingly [12, 31].2 Most philosophers, however, think they are not responsible moral agents [3, 20, 23, 28, 52], or at least not ful
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