Wade v. United States case brief

 

• Wade v. United States: It is practically inconceivable that a mental disease or defect would, in terms of paragraph (2) be manifested only by repeated criminal or otherwise antisocial conduct.
• The Mask of Sanity: rules out those cases in which delinquency and crime have been adopted as a positive way of life – in which the person in an enemy of society but is capable of being a loyal and stable member of a delinquency gang.
  • Although the patient outwardly presents a ‘convincing mask of sanity’ and a ‘mimicry of human life’ he has lost contact with the deeper emotional accompaniments of experience and with its purposiveness.
    • All the pertinent symptoms of the accused should be put before the court and jury and the accused’s criminal responsibility should be developed from the totality of his symptoms. A court of law is not an appropriate forum for a debate as to the meaning of abstract psychiatric classifications.

Diminished Capacity

Justification For the Doctrine

• 1) It ameliorates defects in a jurisdiction’s insanity test criteria;
• 2) It permits the jury to avoid imposing the death penalty on mentally disabled killers who are criminally responsible for their acts; and
• 3) It permits the jury to make more accurate individualized culpability judgments. The Diminished Capacity and Diminished Responsibility Defenses, Peter Arenella.
• Seriously disturbed defendants can avoid an indefinite commitment to a mental hospital for the criminally insane by relying on the diminished responsibility defense which frequently leads to a reduced term in prison.