non compos mentis
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 82 U.S. 9 - Dexter v. Hall · 1872Most cited · 111 citing opinions
a lunatic, or a person non compos mentis, has nothing which the law recognizes as a mind; he is not amenable to the criminal laws, because he is incapable of discriminating between that which is right and that which is wrong.
How often courts cite the case defining “non compos mentis”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “non compos mentis” — 111 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.