The insanity defense is all the rage these days.
Jared Lee Loughner, who's accused of shooting former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, is still being held in a prison hospital in Missouri while doctors try to ensure he's "mentally fit" to stand trial, the Associated Press reported in June.
And in the case of Anders Breivik, the man accused of shooting 77 people to death in Norway, many of whom were teenagers, prosecutors had called for an insanity ruling, the Associated Press reported in June. In an unusual twist, Breivik's lawyers attempted to portray him as a political militant rather than a madman.
Most recently, the media has questioned the sanity of notorious Colorado movie-theater shooting suspect James Holmes following a pair of bizarre court appearances.
A panel of doctors determined John Schrank was insane after he shot President Teddy Roosevelt.
The case began when Roosevelt decided to run for his third term in office.
Schrank shot the former president while he was campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisc., according to the Smithsonian. The bullet hit Roosevelt in the chest.
Schrank later told police former President William McKinley appeared in a dream and said he had been assassinated by Roosevelt.
"I looked upon his plan to start a third party as a danger to the country; my knowledge of history, gained through much reading, convinced me that Colonel Roosevelt was engaged in a dangerous undertaking," Schrank told police, according to the Smithsonian. "I was convinced that if he was defeated at the Fall election he would again cry ‘Thief’ and that his action would plunge the country into a bloody civil war.”
Doctors eventually declared Schrank insane, and a judge sentenced him to life in an asylum, according to PBS.
A Virginia jury declared Lorena Bobbitt temporarily insane after she chopped off her husband's penis.
Bobbitt chopped off her husband's penis and tossed it out the car window while driving along a Virginia highway.
She said she did so because her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, emotionally, physically, and sexually abused her during their marriage, according to The Los Angeles Times, which covered her acquittal in 1994.
She also claimed her husband raped her on the night she cut off his penis.
Jurors acquitted Lorena Bobbitt of the crime, agreeing with the defense that she suffered an "irresistible impulse" caused by the abuse, the Times reported.
Bobbitt was ultimately committed to a mental hospital. However, the judge ordered her released from the hospital five weeks after her acquittal, according to the LA Times.
American poet Ezra Pound was declared insane after he used a radio show to praise Hitler and Mussolini during World War II.
Pound allegedly received money from the Italian government during World War II to create pro-Fascist radio broadcasts.
He went on anti-American and anti-Semitic rants all the while idolizing Hitler and Mussolini and calling President Roosevelt "that Jew in the White House," according to PBS.
Pound was extradited to the U.S. following Mussolini's death where he was ultimately declared unfit for trial. He was committed to St. Elizabeth's Hospital, an asylum, for 12 years.
However, that decision later sparked some controversy years after the fact, with historians and psychiatrists alike questioning whether Pound was actually insane.
Professor Stanley Kutler told The New York Times back in 1981 that Pound was "eccentric" but not insane.
"The judgment of the doctors was that he had personality-trait disturbance and a narcissistic personality - but that is not a psychiatric judgment," Kutler told the Times. "Nobody ever actually said he was insane. He himself chose to plead that way."
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