State the facts, judgment, and principles laid down in Reg v. Mc Naughten, (1843) 10 CI & F 200.

Question: State the facts, judgment, and principles laid down in Reg v. Mc Naughten, (1843) 10 CI & F 200.

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Answer

The House of Lords laid the foundation for the law of insanity in 1843, in what is popularly known as the case of Reg v. Mc Naughten, (1843) 10 CI & F 200.

The defendant Daniel M’Naghten suffered from a misconception that he was hurt by Sir Robert Peel, Britain’s then Prime Minister. He mistook Sir Robert Peel’s Secretary to the Prime Minister, Edward Drummond, and shot him down and killed him. The defendant accepted the insanity plea. The medical evidence revealed that M’Naghten was operating under a dark paranoia which pushed him beyond his own control’s capacity.

The issue involved in the case was what is the proper instruction for the jury in a case where the insanity defense is used? He was found to be not guilty owing to insanity or being an insane person. M’Naghten Rule has generally been presented to the jury as a standard in determining whether the accused at the time of doing the act knew the difference between right and wrong.

The following are the important observations made by the fifteen Judges Bench in the present case:

1. Every man is presumed to be sane and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes, until the contrary to be proved to the satisfaction of a jury.
2. To establish a defense on the ground of insanity it must be clearly shown that at the time of committing the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from the disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and the quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know this, not to know what he was doing was morally wrong.
3. As to his knowledge of the wrongfulness of the act, the judges said: If the accused was conscious that the act was one which he ought not to do and if that act was at the time contrary to the law, he is punishable.
4. Where a criminal act is committed by a man under some insane delusion as to the surrounding facts, which conceals from his the true nature of the act he is doing, he will under the same degree of responsibility as of the facts had been as he imagined them to be. He may, for instance, kill under the imagination either that is an executioner lawfully earring out a judicial sentence; or, on the other hand merely that the person killed had once cheated him at cards.

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