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Conn. Gen. Stat. § 53a-13

Lack of capacity due to mental disease or defect as affirmative defense

Applied in 11 court decisions — leading case Sanders v. State (1990)

Most recently applied in 140 S. Ct. 1021 - Kahler v. Kansas (March 2020)

(1969, P.A. 828, S. 13; P.A. 79-49; P.A. 81-301, S. 1; P.A. 83-486, S. 1; P.A. 95-264, S. 64; P.A. 19-27, S. 1; July Sp

How often courts cite this section

19771980199020002010202020
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

(a) In any prosecution for an offense, it shall be an affirmative defense that the defendant, at the time the defendant committed the proscribed act or acts, lacked substantial capacity, as a result of mental disease or defect, either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to control his conduct within the requirements of the law.

(b) (1) It shall not be a defense under this section if such mental disease or defect was proximately caused by the voluntary ingestion, inhalation or injection of intoxicating liquor or any drug or substance, or any combination thereof, unless such drug was prescribed for the defendant by a prescribing practitioner, as defined in section 20-571 , and was used in accordance with the directions of such prescription.

(2) No defendant may claim as a defense under this section that such mental disease or defect was based solely on the discovery of, knowledge about or potential disclosure of the victim's actual or perceived sex, sexual orientation or gender identity or expression, including under circumstances in which the victim made an unwanted, nonforcible, romantic or sexual advance toward the defendant, or if the defendant and victim dated or had a romantic relationship.

(c) As used in this section, (1) the terms mental disease or defect do not include (A) an abnormality manifested only by repeated criminal or otherwise antisocial conduct, or (B) pathological or compulsive gambling, and (2) “gender identity or expression” means gender identity or expression, as defined in section 53a-181i .

Official source: Connecticut General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Connecticut statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.