Also known as: losses of control · loss of self-control
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
An inability to restrain one's actions or refrain from conduct due to mental illness. Under the traditional M'Naghten test this condition alone supplies no defense to criminal liability even when the defendant proves a disease of the mind.
Lars Lindstrom suffered from schizophrenia that produced auditory commands to assault a neighbor. He proved the disease caused a complete inability to refrain from the attack. The court held that this loss of control supplied no acquittal because the M'Naghten test requires only a defect of reason preventing knowledge of the act's wrongfulness.
Lily Lopez knew she had epilepsy yet drove to work. A seizure caused her car to cross the centerline and strike a pedestrian. The prosecution established that her prior knowledge of the condition made the loss of vehicle control foreseeable, supporting a reckless-driving conviction despite the involuntary nature of the blackout.
On March 14, 1955, at about 3:30 p.m., defendant Emil A. Decina was driving his car alone in a northerly direction on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo when the vehicle swerved left across the center line and then sharply right, mounting the easterly curb at high speed. The car struck six schoolgirls walking on the sidewalk. Three children aged 6 to 12 were killed on the scene and a fourth child died two days later in the hospital from injuries sustained in the accident. After the collision, the car continued, struck a lamppost, and crashed through a brick wall into a grocery store, where Decina was found stooped over the wheel appearing dazed. Decina was taken to E. J. Meyer Memorial Hospital at 5:30 p.m. A pink slip from the Buffalo Police Department accompanied him, requesting examination and noting the fatal accident and the recommendation of the District Attorney. There, Dr. Wechter, a resident physician, spoke with Decina in the presence of a police guard and obtained his medical history of epilepsy, including prior treatment, operations, seizures, and medication. Decina was indicted for violating section 1053-a of the Penal Law. Following conviction after his demurrer was overruled, the Appellate Division reversed on the law and granted a new trial on the ground that the transactions with Dr. Wechter were privileged, while sustaining the overruling of the demurrer. Both the People and the defendant appealed.
View caseLuke Latham spent eighteen months in prolonged isolation. Expert testimony showed the confinement produced paranoia and hallucinations that eroded his ability to maintain behavioral control. The dissent cited these documented psychological harms as evidence that extended solitary confinement can induce loss of control over impulses and cognition.
Oklahoma has long used a three-drug protocol for executions. The first drug, a barbiturate, is intended to induce a state of unconsciousness. The second drug, a paralytic, is intended to paralyze the inmate and stop breathing. The third drug, potassium chloride, is intended to stop the heart. In 2009, Oklahoma began using a three-drug protocol consisting of sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. In 2010, after the sole American manufacturer of sodium thiopental announced that it would no longer produce the drug, Oklahoma began using pentobarbital in place of sodium thiopental. In 2013, after that manufacturer also ceased production of pentobarbital, Oklahoma announced that it would use midazolam in place of the barbiturate. On January 15, 2014, Oklahoma executed Charles Warner using the new protocol. Warner had filed a §1983 action challenging the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol, but the District Court denied his motion for a preliminary injunction, and the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed. On the day of Warner’s execution, petitioners, all Oklahoma death row inmates, filed a §1983 action in federal district court. They contended that the use of midazolam in Oklahoma’s execution protocol violates the Eighth Amendment because it is incapable of rendering a person insensate to pain. In December 2014, after discovery, the District Court held a 3-day evidentiary hearing on the preliminary injunction motion. The District Court denied the motion for a preliminary injunction. The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed. Oklahoma executed Warner on January 15, 2015, but the Supreme Court subsequently stayed the executions of Glossip, Cole, and Grant pending the resolution of this case.
View caseLillian Locke faced a terminal disease that would soon strip her of the ability to swallow, speak, or control basic bodily functions. She sought medication to hasten death while still competent. The Court noted that such impending loss of control over physical and mental faculties forms part of the factual backdrop for debates over assisted suicide.
Washington has prohibited assisting suicide since its territorial days. In 1854, the first Territorial Legislature outlawed assisting another in the commission of self-murder. The current statute, Wash. Rev. Code § 9A.36.060, provides that a person is guilty of promoting a suicide attempt when he knowingly causes or aids another person to attempt suicide, and classifies it as a class C felony punishable by up to five years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. Washington's Natural Death Act, enacted in 1979, states that the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment at a patient's direction shall not constitute a suicide, but the state has consistently rejected efforts to legalize physician-assisted suicide, including a 1991 ballot initiative defeated by voters. The respondents in this case are four physicians who practice in Washington and treat terminally ill patients, three terminally ill patients who sought to end their lives with physician assistance and have since died, and Compassion in Dying, a nonprofit organization that counsels people considering physician-assisted suicide. The physicians declared that they would assist their patients in ending their lives if not for the assisted-suicide ban. Petitioners are the State of Washington and its Attorney General. In January 1994, the respondents filed this action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. They sought a declaration that Wash. Rev. Code § 9A.36.060 is unconstitutional on its face and an injunction against its enforcement. The District Court held that the statute was unconstitutional. A panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed that decision, but the full court sitting en banc reversed the panel and affirmed the District Court. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case.
View caseLayla Lane was arrested for public intoxication after repeated episodes in which alcohol rendered her unable to control her movements or remain upright. The defense argued the condition was a disease that produced involuntary loss of control. The Court held that the Eighth Amendment does not bar criminal punishment for the resulting public conduct.
In late December 1966, appellant Leroy Powell was arrested and charged with being found in a state of intoxication in a public place in violation of Texas Penal Code, Art. 477 (1952). He was tried in the Corporation Court of Austin, Texas, found guilty, and fined twenty dollars. He appealed to the County Court at Law No. 1 of Travis County, Texas, where a trial de novo was held. At the county court trial without a jury, the defense presented testimony from psychiatrist Dr. David Wade, who had examined Powell and testified that he is a chronic alcoholic with an uncontrollable compulsion to drink and that he loses the power to control his drinking. Powell testified that he works at a tavern shining shoes, makes about twelve dollars a week which he uses to buy wine, drinks wine every day, gets drunk about once a week, and usually goes to sleep in public places such as the sidewalk when drunk. The arresting officer testified that Powell staggered when he walked, that his speech was slurred, and that he smelled strongly of alcohol. The trial court entered findings of fact that chronic alcoholism is a disease which destroys the afflicted person's will power to resist the constant, excessive consumption of alcohol, that a chronic alcoholic does not appear in public by his own volition but under a compulsion symptomatic of the disease of chronic alcoholism, and that Powell is a chronic alcoholic who is afflicted with the disease. The court nevertheless convicted Powell and fined him fifty dollars. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction. Powell appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which noted probable jurisdiction. The record shows Powell had been convicted of public intoxication approximately one hundred times since 1949 and that he works shining shoes, earns about twelve dollars a week, and uses his earnings to buy wine, getting drunk about once a week usually in public places.
View caseNo. The traditional M'Naghten test requires a defect of reason that prevents the defendant from knowing the nature and quality of the act or that the act is wrong. Inability to control behavior caused by mental illness is irrelevant and supplies no defense.
Supporting sources
The UK statute replaces provocation with a partial defense requiring that the killing resulted from loss of self-control triggered by a qualifying event, judged against a person of the defendant's sex and age with normal tolerance and self-restraint. The defense is no longer limited to sudden loss of temper provoked by words or conduct.
Courts weigh the length of time the owner is deprived of the chattel when deciding whether the interference is serious enough to require payment of full value. Prolonged dominion inconsistent with the owner's rights supports conversion rather than mere trespass to chattels.
Supporting sources
…us. For many, the last days will be spent in physical pain and perhaps the despair that accompanies physical deterioration and a loss of control of basic bodily and mental functions. Some will seek medication to alleviate that pain and other symptoms. The Court frames the issue in Washington v. Glucksberg as whether the Due…