In criminal law, irresistible impulse is a defense by excuse, in this case some sort of insanity, in which the defendant argues that they should not be held criminally liable for their actions that broke the law, because they could not control those actions.
In 1994, Lorena Bobbitt was found not guilty when her defense argued that an irresistible impulse led her to cut off her husband's penis.
The Penal Code of the U.S. state of California states (2002), "The defense of diminished capacity is hereby abolished ... there shall be no defense of ... diminished responsibility or irresistible impulse..."
The policeman at the elbow test is a test used by some courts to determine whether the defendant was insane when he committed a crime. It is a variant of the M'Naghten Rules that addresses the situation in which the defendant knew that what he was going to do was wrong, but had no ability to restrain himself from doing it. The test asks whether he would have done what he did even if a policeman was standing at his elbow, hence its name.
Read more about Irresistible Impulse: Irresistible Impulse in English Law
Famous quotes containing the words irresistible and/or impulse:
“When an irresistible force such as you meets an old immovable object like me.”
—Johnny Mercer (1909–1976)
“There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness—to bring him down to the miserable level of “good” men i.e., of stupid, cowardly and chronically unhappy men.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)