In the US, the insanity defense is almost never used because it is so rarely successful and because the statutes are so high (especially since laws were passed

In the US, the insanity defense is almost never used because it is so rarely successful and because the statutes are so high (especially since laws were passed in 1984 in response to the acquittal of John Hinckley, the man that shot President Reagan. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital instead and was released in 2016 (though there are strict rules around his release)). The Andrea Yates case [1], was the last time I can remember it being argued in a high profile case. This was the woman that drowned her five children. She was convicted in her first trial (though the jury refused to give her the death penalty) and that was overturned a few years later, after one of the prosecution’s psychiatrist admitted to giving materially false testimony. She was found not-guilty by reason of insanity in the retrial and confined to a state mental health facility. The Yates case is a good example of how high the burden of proof of an insanity defense is in a murder case. No one on either side disputed that she was severely mentally ill at the time of the killings. The state’s argument was that despite that, she knew the difference between and wrong enough to be legally responsible. There was a whole bunch of stuff in that case too — and it is truly tragic situation for everyone involved (there were reports that after Yates was properly medicated in prison awaiting trial and found out/remembered what she did, she became highly suicidal/went into shock), and there is an argument to be made that she was not given the proper care by her doctors leading up to the murders - but my point is more to say, in what as an outsider, appears to be a textbook case for successfully using the insanity defense, it was still unsuccessful until appeal and retrial, in part because of the question of comprehension. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Yates https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Yates