How have courts treated the insanity defense in civil cases?

Next to the actual deprivation of liberty, the greatest harm to a person erroneously committed to a mental institution is the stigma attached to the commitment. Addington v. Texas, supra, 441 U.S. at 426. The harm that such stigma causes an individual provides another cogent reason for "weighting" the standard of proof scales in favor of the ordinary individual faced with civil commitment. It is hard to view the insanity acquittee with the same solicitude. He already has been found to have committed an unlawful act with all the attendant stigmatization and has escaped punishment solely because he convinced the factfinder in the criminal proceeding that there was merit to his claim of insanity. Any

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Finally, we cannot ignore the danger of "calculated abuse of the insanity defense". United States v. Brown, supra, 478 F.2d at 611. We are reluctant to provide criminal defendants with a loophole at society's expense by enabling those who have committed criminal acts first to escape criminal punishment by pleading insanity and then to escape confinement completely if the government fails to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant will continue to be prone to the very same abnormalities that he sought to establish in his past behavior. While imposing the less stringent burden of proof on the state at commitment proceedings for insanity acquittees may not foreclose strategic abuse of insanity pleas by defendants, the heightened risk to a sane defendant that he subsequently will be confined to a mental hospital may reduce his willingness to chance a disingenuous insanity defense. Even if it may be said that such deterrence is slight, we do not believe that the Constitution forecloses the states from making use of it.