The Sleepwalker is Not Insane
The Court of Appeal in R v Burgess l decided that violence occurring when the appellant was sleepwalking amounted to insanity under the M'Naghten Rules and was not non-insane automatism, even though the possibility of the recurrence of serious violence was unlikely. The court was uncomfortable about its conclusions, as was the trial judge. It was admitted that it is incongruous to label this sort of disability as insanity as Lord Diplock said in R v Sullivan2: