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:
“There’s nothing more irresistible to a man than a woman who’s in love with him.”
—Ernest Lehman (b. 1920)
“In benevolent natures the impulse to pity is so sudden, that like instruments of music which obey the touch ... you would think the will was scarce concerned, and that the mind was altogether passive in the sympathy which her own goodness has excited. The truth is,—the soul is [so] ... wholly engrossed by the object of pity, that she does not ... take leisure to examine the principles upon which she acts.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)