Blythe Leszkay, a successful and experienced criminal attorney and criminal law professor, states, talks about how each state has its own laws, rules, and regulations about its legal definition of insanity(Leszkay, 2012). As a matter of fact there are some general concepts that can be used to understand what it means to be legally insane. Leszkay emphasize the importance of the insanity defense by stating “insanity defense is rarely used and has even been abolished in some states (Leszkay, 2012).” In a word, insanity is generally considered an "excuse" to committing a crime. “An excuse defense is where, even though the defendant engaged in criminal conduct, he is excused from legal responsibility because of some condition in the defendant…show more content… To elaborate, if the defendant can prove that the delusion was true, it would justified the defendant's actions and he could assert the insanity defense. If, however, the delusion was to a fact that, if true, would not have justified the defendant's acts, he may not be considered insane (Leszkay, 2012). For example, the defendant was delusional and believed the victim was holding a gun when in fact he was holding a pen when he shot and killed the victim thinking it was self-defense (Leszkay, 2012). Then the defendant could place in the insanity defense because in this case the victim really pointed a gun at him, he would have been justified in shooting the victim in self-defense. However, if the defendant's delusion was that the victim tricked him out of his money, and he shot the victim in revenge, he would not be considered legally insane because, even if his belief was true, tricking someone out of their money does not justify shooting them. Another example would be, in this case, if Nathaniel Brazill said he shot and killed his teacher thinking it was one of his mother’s male friends, it would a reason of sanity, delusion, and trauma (Leszkay, 2012). On the mental Delusion website “WebMD” they elaborate delusion as a paranoid disorder, which they stretch on the seriousness of this mental illness (Leszkay, 2012). Another name to define it would be “psychosis” in which a person cannot tell what is real from what is fake (Leszkay, 2012). In other words, an unshakeable belief in something that is not true or not based on
