The insanity defense might be a popular trope in fiction, but it is actually used in less than one percent of court cases and has only a 25 percent success rate. Some US states don’t even allow it anymore, but despite all that, it has worked on occasion, as you are about to see.

To be clear, we are not saying these people faked their mental illnesses or that they deserved to go to prison. Just that they all avoided prison or even death sentences because they were certified too insane to be responsible for their actions or, in some cases, even to stand trial.

10. Roderick Maclean

Queen Victoria was a real die-hard, in the truest sense of the word, having survived no fewer than eight attempts on her life during her long reign. By far, the most bizarre incident came courtesy of Roderick Maclean, who wanted to kill the queen because she didn’t like his poetry.

On March 2, 1882, the Royal Train arrived at Windsor rail station and Maclean was one of the many spectators waiting to see the queen. But he wanted to do a bit more than to shoot a glance her way. As Victoria was making her way across the platform to a waiting carriage, Maclean pulled out a revolver and fired at her. The first shot missed and two Eton schoolboys tackled the gunman before he was able to fire again.

Maclean stood accused of high treason, the most serious charge in the land which carried with it a death sentence. However, he had already been medically certified insane before the assassination attempt. Therefore, the jury only needed a few minutes of deliberation to find him “not guilty, but insane.”

Roderick Maclean had evaded a date with the hangman’s noose, although he spent the rest of his life at Broadmoor Asylum. A short while later, the Trial of Lunatics Act 1883 was passed by Parliament, which changed the verdict for future similar cases to “guilty, but insane.” 

9. Jeffrey Arenburg

In 1995, Canadian hockey fans were left stunned when they found out that former NHL player Brian Smith had been killed while leaving the CJOH television station in Ottawa where he worked as a sports anchor. The killer was Jeffrey Arenburg, a man with paranoid schizophrenia who believed that broadcast stations were transmitting thoughts into his head. Arenburg had a history of threatening violence against these stations, having previously been convicted for attacking a radio employee.

On August 1, 1995, he went to the CJOH TV station armed with a 22-caliber rifle. He had no grudge against Smith personally, Arenburg later admitted as much, but the sportscaster was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The gunman recognized Smith as he was leaving the building and shot him in the head.

Arenburg was charged with first-degree murder but was found “not criminally responsible” due to his mental state and placed in a mental care facility where he spent the next decade of his life before being released.

8. George Roden

Everyone remembers the bloody siege at Waco, Texas, in 1993 when the ATF, FBI, and Texas law enforcement officers surrounded the compound of the Branch Davidians sect led by David Koresh. What many people might not know is that Koresh got the job of cult leader by usurping the previous guy, George Roden.

Roden was the son of the man who founded the Branch Davidians, Benjamin Roden. He lost his position as leader in 1987 following a shootout with Koresh and his followers. He then lost legal ownership of the property due to unpaid taxes which the Branch Davidians paid off themselves, who then named Koresh their new head honcho.

Two years later, Roden murdered his roommate, a man named Wayman Dale Adair, ostensibly because he believed that Adair had been sent there by Koresh to kill him. Roden was found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent the final years of his life in several mental hospitals. In 1998, Roden escaped from the Big Spring State Hospital in Texas but was found by the side of the road a few days later, likely dead of a heart attack.

7. James Hadfield

Just to preempt a few comments, we are not talking about James Hetfield, lead singer of Metallica, but James Hadfield, the guy who tried to kill King George III in 1800.

A former dragoon in the British Army, Hadfield had sustained multiple head injuries while fighting in the War of the First Coalition against France. After that, he began suffering from various delusions, including that he was the true King George, that he was the biblical character Adam, or that he was even the “Supreme Being.” As to why he wanted the king dead, Hadfield believed that his own death would save the world, but that it could not be done by his own hand. Therefore, killing the king would ensure a swift meeting with the executioner.

His “foolproof” plan failed on two counts. First, he didn’t kill the king. On May 15, 1800, George III attended a show at the Theater Royal. Hadfield shot at him in the royal box but missed and was quickly tackled by the crowd. Second, he was not sentenced to death. Hadfield was defended by one of the best lawyers in all the land, Thomas Erskine, future Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, who successfully used the insanity defense for his client and got him a permanent stay at Bedlam.

6. Izola Curry

Ten years before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray, the civil rights activist survived another attempt on his life at the hands of a woman named Izola Curry. 

And yes, we might as well mention the first thing people notice whenever they hear about her – Izola Curry was Black. Her animosity towards Dr. King and the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had nothing to do with race. Instead, she was a paranoid schizophrenic who suffered delusions that King and other civil rights groups all banded against her to cost her jobs and that they were, in her own words, “mixed up with the Communists.”

On September 20, 1958, the 42-year-old Curry attended a book signing by King at Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem and, when she approached him, stabbed the civil rights leader in the chest with a seven-inch letter opener. She also had a gun on her, in case the blade didn’t get it done, but she was tackled to the ground before she could finish the job.

King was rushed to the hospital where doctors saved his life. The tip of the blade was resting on his aorta, and one cough or sneeze could have punctured it and caused him to bleed out. Meanwhile, Izola Curry was found not competent to stand trial and committed to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

5. Richard Dadd

Most people remember Victorian artist Richard Dadd for his paintings, particularly the ones involving fairies. However, many of those people might not be aware that Dadd did most of his work while incarcerated in two of England’s most notorious mental institutions, Bedlam and Broadmoor.

His problems started in 1842 when the 25-year-old Dadd embarked on a grand tour of Europe and the Middle East. While in Egypt, he suffered a personality change which, at first, was attributed to sunstroke. However, Dadd developed a delusion that he was the son of Osiris and that his actual father must have been some kind of demonic impostor. Back in England, Dadd murdered his father as the two went on a walk together. He tried to flee to France but was arrested in Paris after assaulting another man and sent back to England.

Dadd was certified a “criminal lunatic” and evaded a death sentence. Instead, he was committed to psychiatric hospitals where he spent the next four decades of his life, quietly working on his paintings.

4. Laura Fair

The case of Laura Fair was a highly publicized and controversial one because it had a lot of elements that still shocked 19th-century America whenever they were brought up in public: women’s rights, mental illness, extramarital affairs, and even menstruation. 

On the surface, it looked like a standard tale of revenge from a jilted lover. On November 3, 1870, 33-year-old Laura Fair boarded a San Francisco ferry and shot her married paramour, lawyer Alexander Crittenden, after finding out that he intended to leave town with his family instead of divorcing his wife and marrying her as he promised.

Her trial became somewhat of a media sensation. Her defense team claimed that the shooting was the result of temporary insanity caused by a severely painful menstrual cycle. They even brought in medical experts to testify, but the jury was more swayed by the prosecution who portrayed Fair as an immoral woman and a homewrecker. They found her guilty and sentenced to hang.

However, with the help of several prominent suffragettes who took up Laura Fair’s cause, her lawyers successfully appealed and got the first trial thrown out on the grounds that the way the prosecution portrayed their client prejudiced the jury. The second trial went in her favor as the jury found her innocent and Laura Fair became a free woman, one of the few people on this list who did not end up in a mental institution.

3. Daniel Sickles

Daniel Sickles was a Major General in the Civil War, later serving as a member of Congress and an ambassador to Spain. But before all of that, Sickles was also the first American to successfully use the “temporary insanity” defense after he killed his wife’s lover in broad daylight, right across from the White House.

Sickles’ wife Teresa was having an affair with lawyer Philip Barton Key II, the son of Francis Scott Key, the man who wrote the words to the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Then, on February 27, 1859, Sickles approached Key in Lafayette Square and shot him three times. Key died a short while later while Sickles surrendered peacefully.

The case seemed like a slam dunk. After all, Sickles confessed to the deed and plenty of people saw him do it. However, his top-notch defense team had other ideas. They not only argued that Sickles went temporarily mad upon discovering the affair, but that he acted justified to protect his wife’s honor. As his lawyer put it, “the death of Key was a cheap sacrifice to save one mother from the horrible fate.”

As it turned out, the jury agreed. They returned a verdict of “not guilty” after an hour of deliberation to the raucous cheers of the courtroom, who were now firmly on Sickles’ side. 

2. John Hinckley Jr.

John Hinckley Jr. earned worldwide notoriety on March 30, 1981, when he tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. He ended up wounding Reagan and three other men before being restrained and then attacked by onlookers.

The reason for his actions seemed to be an obsession with the movie Taxi Driver, specifically its young star, Jodie Foster. Hinckley started acting like protagonist Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro – talking like him, dressing like him, writing a diary like him, and developing a fascination with guns. He also began stalking Jodie Foster, even moving to New Haven, Connecticut while she was attending Yale. Although he never approached her, Hinckley wrote numerous letters and poems to Foster, but when these failed to make an impression, he decided he needed to do something more drastic – assassinate the president.

During his trial, Hinckley’s only chance was the insanity defense. Both sides argued in their favor. The defense diagnosed him with schizophrenia. The prosecution argued that his actions were clearly premeditated and came from a sound mind.

After much back and forth, the jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity. He was institutionalized for almost 35 years before being released in 2016. His verdict caused a huge uproar in America and brought on the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984 which made it much harder for this defense to be used during trials, while some states abolished it altogether.

1. Daniel M’Naghten

We finally arrive at the guy who started it all… at least in modern times – Daniel M’Naghten, a Scottish woodworker who tried to assassinate British Prime Minister Robert Peel in 1843 and ended up killing Peel’s personal secretary, Edward Drummond.

M’Naghten had developed paranoid delusions that he was being persecuted by the Tory Party because he voted for the opposition. His police statement after shooting Drummond said this:

“The Tories in my native city have compelled me to do this. They follow and persecute me wherever I go and have entirely destroyed my peace of mind. They followed me to France, into Scotland, and all over England; in fact, they follow me wherever I go. I cannot sleep nor get no rest from them…. I believe they have driven me into consumption. I am sure I shall never be the man I was. I used to have good health and strength, but I have not now. They have accused me of crimes of which I am not guilty; in fact, they wish to murder me. It can be proved by evidence. That’s all I have to say.”

M’Naghten’s legal team argued that their client had a case of monomania – an insane fixation on a certain issue or person – and that it was so severe that it eradicated his ability to tell right from wrong. The prosecution brought in two doctors of their own, but they also concluded that M’Naghten was insane, and therefore the jury found him to be not guilty by reason of insanity.

This set a legal precedent in British law history and the appearance of the M’Naghten Rule, which stated that, in order for a defendant to use the insanity defense, it must be proved that they were acting under a defect of reason caused by a “disease of the mind” which made them not understand the nature of their actions or that they were wrong.

Tirades, meltdowns, outbursts; call them what you like. The fact is that none of us can honestly say we’ve never once lost our cool. It happens to everyone, and unfortunately for these people, it happened when either a camera or tape machine were rolling. So I invite you to sit back quietly in your chair and enjoy listening to 10 people totally flying off the handle. WARNING: the clips herein contain language that may offend.

Dennis Green was the usually level-headed coach of the Arizona Cardinals from 2004 to 2006. However, he revealed quite a different side to the press after an embarrassing loss to the Chicago Bears in which they blew a 20-point lead in less than 20 minutes. The incident was later mocked in a well-known commercial for Coors Light.

At a press conference for his film “A History of Violence”, Ed Harris kills the laughter in the room by demonstrating his own concept of violence. The footage has been cropped, so there is seemingly no explanation for his sudden change of character.

This clip was taken from the 1965 documentary “Don’t Look Back”. A casual party in Dylan’s hotel room turns ugly when someone comes to the door inquiring about glass that has been thrown into the street. At first the rock icon seems out of line, but then you come to find that he’s really just concerned that someone might get hurt.

Tensions were certainly high on the set of the film “I Heart Huckabees” as seen in this clip. Actress Lily Tomlin and director David O. Russell had been at odds from the first day of shooting. Keep your eye on Jason Schwartzman sitting in the chair. He doesn’t even flinch as props go flying right over him!

Popstar, actress, trendsetter, and apparently, animal. Björk’s primal instincts got the best of her while at the Bangkok International Airport when she assaulted this reporter like a mother bear protecting its young. Björk later apologized for the incident.

Sometimes the best outbursts are the ones from people who you could never imagine losing their cool. As is the case with Casey Kasem and the late Snuggles.

Before he had his own show, Bill O’Reilly was an anchor for Inside Edition, and had a decent head of hair to boot. His behind-the-scenes temper tantrum has been widely circulated since the inception of YouTube, becoming a favorite of liberals and conservatives alike.

Buddy Rich’s reputation for being a hot head almost eclipses his work as a celebrated jazz drummer, thanks to a series of tapes secretly recorded by his band. These tapes, which feature explosive tirades of Rich horribly insulting and actually threatening members of his band, eventually fell into the hands of comedians like Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. Based on the absurdity of some of Rich’s “florid, inspired rants of pure rage”, certain lines were lifted right out of the tapes and used in dialogue for the Seinfeld show.

Speaking of Seinfeld, here is an man who ruined his entire reputation/career in a matter of 3 minutes at a comedy club back in November of 2006. Unlike most on this list, there’s nothing funny about this clip, just shocking footage.

Once the golden boy of Hollywood, poor Orson Welles was eventually reduced to narrating commercials for a line of TV dinners late in his life. Welles’ career might have plummeted, but his ego never did. In this most infamous clip of them all, Welles is recording his voice-over to a screen showing the corresponding video footage.

This clip comes from the Pinky & Brain show featured on Animaniacs (the 7th Most Popular ’90s Cartoon). Seeing as how the character of Brain was partially based on Orson Welles himself, it makes sense that the writers would feature a show with Brain doing a word-for-word parody of the Frozen Peas recording.

Emotion and physicality are cornerstones of any sport, but when competition is fierce and tensions are high, things can sometimes get out of hand. Bad blood, nationalistic pride, and revenge can all result in chaotic situations on the pitch, ice, court, or even in the stands. Other times, it’s simply a matter of hotter heads prevailing.

Indeed, no game can claim to be immune to the possibility of being mired by violence. But, when it comes to team sports, the potential for chaos is multiplied, thanks to the more significant number of individuals involved and the group mentality that binds teammates together. Here, we’ll be looking at some of the biggest and most infamous brawls to ever occur in sport.

Related: Top 10 Most Brutal Modern Fight Sports

10 Boston Bruins vs. New York Rangers (1979)

Brawls are all part of the hockey experience, but not when they occur between fans and players. But that’s what happened in 1979 when the New York Rangers hosted the Boston Bruins.

Players were already scuffling when Bruins player Al Secord decked Ulf Nilson following the game’s final buzzer—an apparent receipt for an earlier sucker punch. But when a fan reached over the glass to hit and then steal the stick of Boston player Stan Jonathan, things took a scary turn that saw all but one of the Bruins players head over the glass and into the stands. After that, players began throwing punches, and Rangers defensemen Mike Milbury would infamously end up beating the thieving fan with his own shoe.

Considering the hostile crowd that night, this one could have been a lot worse. Nonetheless, the incident resulted in suspensions and lawsuits and provoked the NHL to install higher glass panels for all future hockey games.^[1]

9 New York Knicks vs. Denver Nuggets (2006)

It all started with the breaking of an unwritten basketball rule—you don’t keep your starters in when you’re leading comfortably in the closing seconds, and you don’t go dunking on a well-defeated team. Some take such playing as an insult, and Mardy Collins of the New York Knicks certainly seemed to when he flagrantly fouled J.A. Smith of the Nuggets on a turnover break in the closing moments of a one-sided game.

The result was a bench-clearing brawl that saw players fighting on-court and off and would see rising star Carmelo Anthony claw at Mardy Collins’s face just as things were starting to cool down. For better or worse, the NBA, still trying to cast off the shadow of a previous fight (oh, we’ll get to that), came down hard on the incident, with fines of $500,000 for each franchise and multiple suspensions.^[2]

8 Italy vs. Chile (1962)

The 1962 FIFA World Cup may be the most violent in history. The first two days alone resulted in three broken legs, a fractured ankle, cracked ribs, and many disciplinaries. But it would be the match between Italy and the tournament hosts, Chile, that would go down in infamy as “the battle of Santiago.”

Things were already tense going into this one, not helped by the fact that the Italian press had taken issue with the decision to let Chile host the tournament. And things didn’t take long to get heated. The first foul would occur only 12 seconds in; the first send-off after four minutes. Armed police made their way onto the pitch for the first time during the match moments later. Violence continued throughout the affair, with players spitting, punching, and kicking at each other at every opportunity, resulting in bloodied faces and broken bones.

Interestingly, the referee for the match would be none other than Ken Aston, the man who would invent the concept of red and yellow cards. We can only suspect that this match may have influenced his idea.^[3]

7 Hawthorn vs. Essendon (2004)

We’ve all heard stories of half-time addresses inspiring teams to change their fortunes in the second half. But the words spoken by Hawthorn club director Dermott Brereton during a 2004 AFL match encouraged something very different—words that were something along the lines of “it’s time to draw a line in the sand.”

Hawthorn, whom Essendon was dominating in the first half, came out quite literally swinging in the game’s second half that night. The result was several minutes of violent chaos that saw headbutts, knees, and big tackles shared out between players that left players bloodied and groggy. Unsurprisingly, the tribunal that followed would be one of the biggest in AFL history, resulting in hefty fines and multiple suspensions.^[4]

6 Athletic Bilbao vs. FC Barcelona (1984)

Relations were low between Athletic Bilbao and Barcelona going into the 1984 Copa del Rey final, not least because Bilbao’s Anton Goikoetxea had broken Barcelona’s Diego Maradona’s ankle the year prior. What followed would be a scuffy encounter that saw seven yellow cards, and Bilbao shut out the Barcelona strikers for a tight 1-0 victory.

The ever-controversial Maradona, who likely imagined a very different result, took little time to vent his frustrations, attacking Bilbao-sub Miguel Angel with a flying knee to the face—one that knocked Angel out cold. Soon, the scenes on the pitch seemed to emulate something from a kung-fu movie, with players attacking each other with jumping kicks. It would take riot police armed with shields to end the violence and escort the Barcelona players out while fans threw trash onto the pitch.^[5]

5 Atlanta Braves vs. San Diego Padres (1984)

It all started when starting pitcher Pascual Perez hit San Diego’s leadoff man, Alan Wiggins, in the back, during the game’s first pitch. The Padres, out for payback, later started to throw beanballs at him, eventually hitting him on his last at-bat. The result was a bench-clearing brawl that also saw fans try to get involved (and get taken away in handcuffs for their efforts).

Things didn’t end there, though, with other fights occurring later. As a result, the game would see no fewer than three brawls and five fans arrested. Amazingly, no one was seriously injured, but Padres manager Dick Williams got a hefty $10,000 fine.^[6]

4 Miami Hurricanes vs. FIU Golden Panthers (2006)

It was supposed to be the beginning of a friendly rivalry, but the first-ever game between the Miami Hurricanes and the FIU Panthers proved to be anything but friendly. The trash-talking would begin before the game started and proved to be low on scores and high on fouls early on.

But tensions reached a fever pitch when one Miami player taunted the FIU bench following a touchdown. A successful conversion later, and hell broke loose, resulting in a bench-clearing brawl that saw 13 players ejected from the game. Miami would win 35-0, but no one was left talking about the game.^[7]

3 Soviet Union vs. Canada (1987)

Generally speaking, international hockey tends to be a little tamer in violence compared with the NHL. However, such would certainly not be the case when Canada met the Soviets toward the end of the World Junior Hockey Championships.

You’ve heard of bench-clearing, but this was a 20-minute free-for-all that seemingly no one had control over. Desperate officials would even turn off the arena lights to put the fight to a stop, but it did little to end the hostilities. Unsurprisingly, officials later ejected both teams from the tournament—a bitter blow for the Canadians, who went into the game assured of a medal.^[8]

2 Montreal Canadiens vs. Quebec Nordiques (1984)

Let’s be honest, we could have filled this list with just ice hockey brawls, but the “Good Friday Massacre” playoff game between the Monreal Canadiens and the Quebec Nordiques might take precedent over them all. The fight had everything—a social-political backdrop (thanks to disputes over Quebec’s sovereignty), a storied and tense sports rivalry (“The battle of Quebec”), spectacle, cleared benches, and an incredible finale from the actual game itself.

Scuffles broke out throughout the game, but when Pale Hunter of the Nordiques drove Guy Carbonneau into the ice after time expired on the second third, a 40-man brawl erupted. Several more fights broke out in the 3rd that even saw brothers Mark and Dale Hunter trading blows. However, the game’s incredible finale would cement its place in Hockey Lore, which saw the Canadiens score five goals in quick succession to overturn Quebec’s lead and take the win.^[9]

1 Indiana Pacers vs. Detroit Pistons (2004)

In November 2004, the traveling Indiana Pacers found themselves with a comfortable lead over the Detroit Pistons. With only 45 seconds left on the clock, a fight broke out between players following a Ron Artest foul on Indiana center Ben Wallace. The scuffle itself was nothing too noteworthy. But when a fan threw a drink at Artest, things got ugly. Artest charged into the stands and started throwing punches—at the wrong fan, no less—leading to a full-blown brawl between fans and players, with other Pacers jumping into the crowd to save their teammates.

The last 45 seconds of the game never occurred, with the refs choosing to call it and demand the players to return to their locker rooms. The Pacers eventually would leave, being pelted by beers and sodas on their way out.

Suspensions, fines, and assault charges followed. Then, the NBA implemented new rules concerning the level of security around events and limitations regarding the sale of alcohol. Nothing quite like it has been seen again. However, the incident—dubbed the “Malice at the Palace“—continues to live on in infamy, becoming the subject of a 2021 Netflix documentary.^[10]