LAW : Insanity as a Defense Faces Tougher Burden of Proof : The legal landscape has shifted since John Hinckley was found not guilty. New federal statutes ease the task of prosecutors.

When John W. Hinckley Jr. was tried a dozen years ago for his attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, federal prosecutors felt their case against the gunman was a sure winner.

Hinckley’s lawyers mounted a defense of “not guilty by reason of insanity.” But prosecutors presented evidence that Hinckley had known right from wrong, including testimony from government psychiatrists that he realized the illegality of his act and had expected the Secret Service to kill him on the spot.

Most legal experts--including the presiding judge--were shocked when jurors endorsed the insanity defense and cleared Hinckley of criminal conduct.

The jury apparently put heavy emphasis on conclusions by psychiatrists summoned by the defense that Hinckley was a troubled young man, as well as testimony by family members that they had nearly committed him to a mental hospital several weeks before the shooting.

Now a similar prosecution is developing against Francisco Martin Duran, the Coloradan who has been indicted for attempted assassination in spraying the White House with semiautomatic rifle fire in October.

Duran’s government-provided attorney, Leigh Kenny, is expected to decide soon whether to raise the insanity defense. If such a defense were successful, it would send Duran to a mental hospital until such time as he could be cured.

Hinckley has been committed 12 years. He can only be released if, based on psychiatric examinations, a judge determines that he is no longer a danger to himself or others.

But if Duran’s attorney chooses the insanity defense, she will face a different set of legal standards than did Hinckley’s lawyers.

Until recent years, the insanity judgment for more than a century was based on two questions: Could the defendant tell right from wrong and was he able to control his own behavior?

The question of knowing right from wrong is called the “cognitive” standard or the M’Naghten Rule. It is named after Scottish woodsman Daniel M’Naghten, who, in 1843, killed a man he mistook for the British prime minister. Found to be suffering from delusions of persecution, M’Naghten was judged not guilty by reason of insanity.

But such an uproar occurred after the verdict that the House of Lords decided that a successful insanity defense must show that the accused had “a defect of reason from disease of the mind” that would render him unable to distinguish right from wrong at the time of the crime.

For many years the other determining question, called the “volitional” standard, said that for a defendant to be found not guilty because of insanity he also must show he could not control his violent action. This grew out of a 19th-Century belief that mental illness was marked by “irresistible urges.”

In Hinckley’s case, prosecutors tried to convince jurors that there was no “uncontrollable” conduct. For example, a government psychiatrist testified that Hinckley, in recounting the shooting, said he almost gave up waiting on a sidewalk for Reagan to leave a hotel function because it was starting to rain. But he quoted Hinckley as saying to himself when he finally saw Reagan appear: “I will never have a better opportunity than this.”

Like the uproar in Britain after the M’Naghten case, a similar public outcry in this country followed the Hinckley verdict in June, 1982. Many Americans felt that a man who had wounded the President in broad daylight at nearly point-blank range had “beat the rap.”

Some members of Congress pointed to trial testimony that Hinckley had stalked Reagan for months after his 1980 election, and even had followed former President Jimmy Carter for a limited period before that. How, they asked, could a man who was so deliberate be judged insane?

In the wake of the verdict, Congress set about changing insanity-defense laws to elevate the standards of proof for such a defense.

Enacted in 1984, the new federal statutes shift the burden of proof from the government to the defense, as well as incorporating other changes. Some states have also adopted the new standards.

At the time of Hinckley’s trial, for example, prosecutors had the burden of showing Hinckley was sane, that he could determine right from wrong and that he could control his behavior.

Now, the defense bears the burden of showing insanity “by clear and convincing evidence.” The defense also must show that the accused has a serious mental disorder--not just a personality defect--that prevented him from knowing right from wrong. There no longer is any behavioral standard.

Roger M. Adelman, who prosecuted the Hinckley case and is now a Washington defense lawyer, says defendants like Duran, if they choose to claim insanity, will find “an entirely new legal landscape.”

“It will be more difficult for them to find medical support for their case since the new guidelines require a showing of severe, abnormal mental condition,” Adelman said.