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160 MANITOBA LAW JOURNAL |VOLUME 35 NUMBER 1
The last two classes are of particular interest for the purposes of this paper.
The third class appears to refer to, among other things, people with treatable
mental disorders or otherwise those with intermittent positive psychotic
symptoms. The fourth class refers to self-induced intoxication but could arguably
be interpreted as failure to adhere to one’s medication schedule for treating their
mental disorder. Though the passage emphasizes “by his own act”, there is no
principled reason to exclude omissions. The combined effect of the third and
fourth classes seems to suggest, quite intuitively, that if a person commits an act
(or an omission) while he is of sound mind which has the effect of depriving him
of said soundness of mind, then the act (or omission) leading to the deprivation
“shall not be given privilege”. The precise meaning of “privilege” is not critical, as
the passage suggests, in a general sense, that this particular brand of “unsoundness
of mind”, that being self-induced, would not be a legitimate defence for the
accused. Despite the fact that the use of medication and pharmacotherapy was
likely not anticipated by Coke in his writings, it is a coherent interpretation of the
classes of non compos mentis that they would not offer protection to the omission of
taking one’s medication.
In 1724, Arnold’s Case 52 set a very high bar for reliance on the insanity
defence, seemingly requiring a complete lack of reasoning capacity. Arnold was
under the delusional belief that the person he had shot at, Lord Onslow, was
responsible for the problems of the country and that he caused monsters to
appear in his bedroom. The Court held that in order to make use of the insanity
defence, the accused must “[be] totally deprived of his understanding and
memory, and doth not know what he is doing no more than an infant, than a
brute, or wild beast. Such a one is never the object of punishment.” 53
C. England in the 19th Century
Up until this point in history, the standards of insanity were high if one
sought to rely on the insanity defence, as Arnold’s Case decreed that to be
acquitted one’s insanity must be fairly all-encompassing, and transient delusions
would seem not to suffice.
A substantial change to the understanding of the insanity defence came in
1800, after the trial of James Hadfield 54 , which marked the first significant
expansion of the defence. Hadfield had suffered brain damage in the Franco-
British wars of the 1790s, which left him delusional. Hadfield sought to commit
suicide because he thought it would save the world, but recognizing suicide as a
sin, he tried to engineer his death as a penalty for attempting regicide. His attempt
on the King’s life failed and at trial his lawyer, Thomas Erskine, successfully
52
53
54
Arnold’s Case (1724), 16 State Tr 695.
Ibid at p 765, as cited in Quen, supra note 48 at 3.
R v Hadfield (1800), 27 State Tr 1281.