Criminal Justice: Doing in M'Naghten

There was little question that Narcotics Addict Charles Freeman had actually been pushing heroin. And it was hardly surprising that the court found him guilty—despite the defense contention that Freeman may have known that what he was doing was wrong, but had neither the capacity nor the will to be responsible for his acts. The judge was simply following a century-old precedent; he was applying the M'Naghten Rule, which holds that a man may be judged not responsible or insane only if he did not know what he was doing, or did not know that what he was doing was...