English Law Commission Discussion Paper on Insanity and Automatism Defences

The English Law Commission has published a discussion paper examining the rules governing the defences of insanity and automatism.

Law Commissioner David Ormerod:

"In our 2012 scoping paper and fact-finding exercise we asked whether the law governing the insanity defence was causing problems in practice. From the responses we received, it is clear that there are indeed problems, but that practitioners largely work round them. However, it is also clear that practitioners think the work the Law Commission is doing to reform the law on unfitness to plead is more urgently needed and, for this reason, we are prioritising our work in this area. We would like, in due course, to return to our investigation of the insanity defence. In the meantime, we offer this paper to inform the continuing discussion on whether the law has the right test to distinguish between those who should be held criminally responsible for what they have done, and those who should not."