McDonald v. United States case brief

 

• McDonald v. United States: The jury should be told that a mental disease or defect includes any abnormal condition of the mind which substantially affects mental or emotional processes and substantially impairs behavior controls.
• American Psychiatric Association: The terms mental disease or mental retardation include only those severely abnormal mental conditions that grossly and demonstrably impair a person’s perception or understanding of reality and that are not attributable primarily to the voluntary ingestion of alcohol or other psychoactive substances.

Notes on the Psychopath

• The Model Penal Code § 4.01(2) “the caveat paragraph” states that “the terms ‘mental disease or defect’ do not include an abnormality manifested only by repeated criminal or otherwise antisocial conduct.”