The Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984: Much ado about nothing

The Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984(IDRA), passed in the wake of Hinckley (1981) and after two years of Senate and House testimony and debate, removed the “volitional” prong of the ALI test, leaving only the “cognitive” prong. Prior empirical research and speculation suggested that this corrective would not serve its intended purpose. In this experiment, 54 mock jurors received one of four insanity test instructions: IDRA, ALI, a wild beast/mens rea test, or no instructions. Results showed that the test instructions did not produce significantly different verdict patterns, or effect in any other way the relevant and determinative constructs that jurors used in four different insanity cases.