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S.C. Code Ann. § 17-24-10

Affirmative defense

Applied in 16 court decisions — leading case Rutherford v. Rutherford (1992)

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

1984 Act No. 396, SECTION 1; 1988 Act No. 323, SECTION 1; 1989 Act No. 93, SECTION 1.

How often courts cite this section

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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) It is an affirmative defense to a prosecution for a crime that, at the time of the commission of the act constituting the offense, the defendant, as a result of mental disease or defect, lacked the capacity to distinguish moral or legal right from moral or legal wrong or to recognize the particular act charged as morally or legally wrong.

(B) The defendant has the burden of proving the defense of insanity by a preponderance of the evidence.

(C) Evidence of a mental disease or defect that is manifested only by repeated criminal or other antisocial conduct is not sufficient to establish the defense of insanity.

Official source: South Carolina Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Carolina statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.