ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the “product test” of insanity which provides that an accused should be excused from criminal liability if his act was the product of insanity. While irresistible impulse was being urged in English law, the McNaghten Rules were also receiving an onslaught of criticism from the psychiatric profession in the United States. Among commentators there is disagreement about whether New Hampshire requires that the jury find that the defendant’s mental illness caused the criminal act before he can be exculpated. The Royal Commission’s report also influenced developments in the US, and one year later Judge David Bazelon, in Durham v U.S., ruled that if the defendant’s act was the product of mental disease or defect he was not criminally responsible. Where there was agreement on the existence of mental disease the controversy shifted to “product”.
