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insanity
(redirected from Legally insane)

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Legal, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia 0.01 sec.
insanity /in·san·i·ty/ (in-san´it-e) a legal term for mental illness of such degree that the individual is not responsible for his or her acts.insane´
in·san·i·ty (n-sn-t)
n.
1. Persistent mental disorder or derangement. Not in scientific use.
2. Unsoundness of mind sufficient in the judgment of a civil court to render a person unfit to maintain a contractual or other legal relationship or to warrant commitment to a mental health facility.
3. In most criminal jurisdictions, a degree of mental malfunctioning considered to be sufficient to relieve the accused of legal responsibility for the act committed.

insanity
[insan′itē]
Etymology: L, in, not, sanus, sound
,
Usage notes: informal.
a term used more in legal and social than in medical terminology. It refers to those mental illnesses that are of such a serious or debilitating nature as to interfere with one's capability of functioning within the legal limits of society and performing the normal activities of daily living.

Insanity
Forensics A legal and social term for a condition that renders the affected person unfit to enjoy liberty of action, because of the unreliability of his behaviour with concomitant danger to himself and others; insanity denotes, by extension, a degree of mental illness that negates legal responsibility for one’s actions
Psychiatry A vague obsolete term for psychosis

insanity [in-san´ĭ-te]
a medically obsolete term for mental derangement or disorder. Insanity is now a purely legal term, denoting a condition due to which a person lacks criminal responsibility for a crime and therefore cannot be convicted of it. adj., insane´.

insanity
Forensic medicine A legal and social term for a condition that renders the affected person unfit to enjoy liberty of action, because of the unreliability of his behavior with concomitant danger to himself and others; insanity denotes, by extension, a degree of mental illness that negates legal responsibility for one's actions. See Psychosis, Temporary insanity Psychiatry A vague obsolete term for psychosis.


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Prosecutors want to use recorded conversations Odgren had with his family and a friend to challenge his lawyer's claim that Odgren, then 16, was legally insane when he killed Alenson.
He said Connors suffered from schizophrenia at the time and was legally insane.
His family was violently threatened by the Ku Klux Klan; his father may have been murdered by the Klan although it was never proven; he was living in abject poverty; his mother was declared legally insane after suffering a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for 26 years.
 
 
 
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