Since the beginning of crime, criminals have sought escape from their due punishment.

Like children who claim that the dog drew on the walls with crayons, the excuses for criminal behavior can be just as unbelievable. "I loaned another guy my jacket and when he gave it back to me, it had a pistol and proceeds from a liquor store robbery. Honest!"

Mental illness is the ultimate excuse for crime, and mental illness is often used for the most horrendous crimes. The public perception of the insanity defense as a automatic "escape hatch" for criminals is misguided to say the least. Defense attorneys do not like the insanity plea because their client would have to admit guilt. And pleading insanity is the worst gamble in court, if the jury does not believe that the defendant was legally insane then the defendant will be convicted and would possibly receive the maximum sentence for his crimes. So the insanity defense is generally used when the evidence is overwhelmingly against the defendant. In the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, who tried to escape prison through the guilty but insane defense allowed in Michigan, the evidence was so convincing that no one could argue that he was not guilty. However despite the "craziness" of his actions, Dahmer was found to be legally sane. Thus outlining the difficulty in proving legal insanity. However that does not stop the criminal from trying every avenue of recourse to freedom.

This paper is not a condemnation of the insanity defense. Some people are truly out of touch with reality and are not responsible for their actions. However there are some popular mental illnesses that are unsuitable excuses for criminal behavior and should not be considered as a defense under M'Naughton or "diminished capacity".

The foremost of these defenses is multiple personality disorder. Multiple personality disorder rises out of early childhood abuse. Usually the child is under five years of age at the time of the abuse. And the abuse is severe, both sexual and physical abuse. As a way to cope with the trauma, the child will repress the memory of the abuse into another "personality." The "personality" is either frozen at the age of the trauma or ages behind the "core" personality. No person with multiple personality disorder has "alters" who are older than the "core".

Multiple personality disorder should not be used as a defense for crime for several reasons. First because there is still debate over the existence of such a disorder. Many psychiatrists and psychologists have serious doubts about the diagnosis. Another reason is that multiple personality disorder is so rare, only three hundred people in the world have well documented diagnosis of the disease, that there is no one professional with enough experience with people who have multiple personality disorder to examine a criminal defendant to determine malingering.

Another reason to exclude multiple personality disorder is that documented cases of people with multiple personality disorder also have a tendency toward self- destruction. They will often cut themselves, burn themselves, and try to commit suicide. But they will not harm other people either physically or materially. When they do commit crime, people with multiple personality disorder will choose"victimless" crimes like prostitution and drug abuse. One young woman prostituted herself in order to buy drugs. Her "core" personality was a straight arrow and had no idea what the "alters" were doing. These crimes are so minor in nature that a psychological defense is unnecessary. The prostitute faces a small fine and the drug abuser can go into rehab. If someone makes the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder while during adjudication of these crimes, the defendant can seek appropriate psychiatric help after paying the fine or after drug rehabilitation.

Other crimes would include suicide attempts or false reporting crimes against themselves that "alters" have committed. The false reports are not made with the intention of fooling authorities or harming an innocent person but with the sincere conviction that someone else has committed these misdeeds. Often people with multiple personality disorder will wound themselves in such ways that are nearly impossible to be self-inflicted. As in this unique case presented below, people with multiple personality disorder will direct their violence against themselves and avoid harming others.

Ruth Finely managed to stalk herself for six months, including stabbing herself in the back with a knife. The knife nearly severed her renal artery (artery to the kidneys) which would have killed her before she could reach any assistance. Emergency doctors who treated the woman said that she could not have stabbed herself in such a manner. She also wrote threatening letters to herself from "the Poet" her alternative personality. "The Poet" wrote letters to her utility companies, shutting off her utilities and causing personal havoc, and "The Poet" wrote letters to her friends and acquaintances, the letters slandered Ruth. This "harassment" went on for six months until one officer figured out that Ruth was the "Poet". As soon as the police figured out that she was her own stalker, her "alter" ceased to exist. And she began to reintegrate her memories of what had happened to her as a young child and what she did to herself.

She had suffered both sexual and physical abuse by a family friend when she was three years old. Her mother confirmed this, and confirmed that her father handled the incidents by denying the assailant access to her. This particular case demonstrates that criminality within the multiple personality disorder affected person is self-destructive. She never harmed another person.

However most of the people attempting to use this defense have not committed "victimless" crimes. Kenneth Bianchi and Arthur Shawcross have both tried to use this defense. Bianchi and his cousin, Angelo Buono had killed at least ten victims in the Los Angeles area before Bianchi decided to move to Washington to be with his common law wife, Kelli. Bianchi, in form true to serial killers, murdered three more women by posing as a prospective real estate customer. His defense was that he had an alternative personality named Steve. While Ken was a nice normal guy, Steve used foul language and hated women. Kenneth Bianchi was proven to be a fraud before he went to trial. An expert in hypnosis determined that Bianchi was pretending to be hypnotized when "Steve" talked to investigators.

Another reason to exclude multiple personality disorder from consideration as a psychological defense is that the defendant has to slander his family in order to obtain the diagnosis. Because multiple personality disorder has its roots in childhood abuse, Bianchi claimed that his mother held his hand over a fire and his sister had seduced him into giving her oral sex. Both women denied the allegations, but the rumors were publicized anyway. Bianchi apologized for the treatment of his relatives when he made a plea bargain in order to escape the death penalty.

However the damage he did to his family's reputations and the time wasted by the state in tracking down an expert to prove that he was malingering could have been avoided if he had been forbidden to use the multiple personality defense as an excuse to escape his just desserts.

Arthur Shawcross started his killing career with two children, an eight year old girl and a nine year old boy. After ten years in prison, he was paroled to kill again. Despite the fact that he was in his forties and had been incarcerated for at least ten years, Shawcross tried to assert that multiple personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder caused him to kill people. His war record in Vietnam proved that his claims of being a sniper were phony. However Shawcross managed to have the other half of his insanity plea, multiple personality disorder, heard in court. He had claimed that his mother had sodomized him with a broomstick. Even though the jury found him legally sane, Shawcross managed to waste the court's time and ruin his mother's reputation on a groundless insanity plea.

So far in my research I have not found a murder or other crime that victimized another that involved a true case of multiple personality disorder. All of the defendants who tried that particular insanity defense were malingering.

I believe that justice would best be served if multiple personality disorder would be removed as an option for diminished capacity or M'Naughten defenses. People with multiple personality disorder may have self-destructive tendencies or may need psychiatric care, but they do not meet the standard for legal insanity. Each "alter" has the same moral sense as the "core" and having multiple personalities does not diminish a person's appreciation between right and wrong.