''Durham v. United States'', 214 F.2d 862 (D.C. Cir. 1954), is a
criminal case articulating what became known as the
Durham rule for juries to find a defendant is
not guilty by reason of insanity: "an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect."
[''Criminal Law - Cases and Materials'', 7th ed. 2012, ]Wolters Kluwer Law & Business
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; John Kaplan, Robert Weisberg, Guyora Binder,
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It was to enable psychiatrists to "inform the jury of the character of [the defendant's mental disease" so that a jury could be "guided by wider horizons of knowledge concerning mental life" so that juries could make determinations based on expert testimony about the disease.[Insanity, Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice, 1983; Abraham Goldstein; pp736-40] It was patterned on ''State v. Pike''.[ It was adopted by only two states, for a short time but is still influential on debate over legal insanity.][ The decision was criticized for leaving a jury with no standard to judge impairment of reason or control, for not defining mental disease, and for leaving the jury dependent on expert testimony.][
]
References
External links
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{{US-case-law-stub
1954 in United States case law
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit cases
United States federal criminal case law