Defense: Mental Disease or Defect

A person is not criminally responsible for conduct if at the time of such conduct, as a result of mental illness, disease or defect, he lacked substantial capacity to know or understand what he was doing, or to know or understand that his conduct was wrongful, or to control his actions. SOURCE: Guam PC, § 26 Subsection (3) and (4); M.P.C. § 4.01; *Cal. § 530 (T.D.2 1968); Cal. § 535 (1971); Mass. ch. 263 § 26; N.J. § 2C:4-1. People v. Wolff, 61 Cal. 2d 795, 40 Cal. Rptr. 271 (1964). COMMENT: § 7.16 is based upon the California version of the M’Naghten Rule as it is stated in People v. Wolff. In the Wolff case the California Supreme Court made a conscious effort to broaden the exclusive emphasis on the cognitional element of the mind to which the M’Naghten formula is restricted. It did this by emphasizing mere knowledge of the difference between right and wrong is not the proper standard for judging responsibility but that a capacity or ability to understand is also required. The California test tends to place illogical limits on psychiatric testimony. The last clause of the Section “or to control his actions” is directed specifically to this element volitional capacity in accord with The American Law Institute’s approach. The Ninth Circuit has adopted another form of this ALI standard. However, now that Guam has a substantive statutory test for mental responsibility, it would appear that the Ninth Circuit would follow substantive Guam Law as it has in the past. The words “mental illness, disease or defect” are intended to make it clear that the Section in concerned solely with lack of responsibility resulting from an involuntary condition of the mind which excludes capacity to have criminal intent or control behavior. There is comparable terminology used in the United States Manual for Courts-Martial as well as the words used in the Statutes or decisional law of jurisdictions which have followed the pattern of the Model Penal Code. See California Joint Legislative Committee for Revision of the Penal Code, Penal Code Revision Project 72-73 (Tentative draft No. 2, June 1968).