temporary insanity
Brief mental break
Temporary insanity is a legal defense claiming the defendant was mentally incapacitated at the time of a crime but has since recovered.
The defense argues that because the person couldn't distinguish right from wrong during the act, they shouldn't be held fully responsible.
It gained notoriety in 19th-century American trials and remains controversial—critics see it as a convenient excuse that's difficult to disprove: His lawyer argued temporary insanity, claiming the affair drove him to violence.
- delusionStubbornly held false belief
- hysteriaUncontrollable emotional excess
- mental breakdownAcute psychological crisis
- fugue stateTemporary identity loss disorder
- traumaLasting psychological wound
not guilty by reason of · diminished capacity · heat of passion · fit of rage · mania · grief · emotional distress · dissociation · blacked out · culpability · forensic psychology · mitigating circumstances · psychosis · lost my mind · stress · automatism · shock · intoxication
- Sentencing Factorsmitigating factors, aggravating factors, extenuating circumstances, criminal history, prior record
- criminal defensesdiminished capacity, mental incapacity, irresistible impulse, mens rea, criminal responsibility
- legal defensesself-defense, alibi, affirmative defense, duress, entrapment
- marriage barriersbigamy, prior marriage, lack of consent, duress, underage
temporary insanitypremeditation
Advance planning of action
malice aforethought · premeditated murder · criminal intent · mens rea · forethought
temporary insanitysanity
Mental soundness
sound mind · mental competence · rational thinking · lucidity · rationality
temporary, insanity, temporal, temporally, temporarily, temporariness, tempo, contemporary, contemporaneous