Legal Question in Criminal Law in North Carolina

Re: Jury Instruction

"Diminished capacity" can arise in different contexts. In general, when it is used as a defense to a crime, a portion of the jury instruction states "The test of insanity as a defense is whether the defendant, at the time of the alleged offense, was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease or deficiency of the mind, as to be incapable of knowing the nature and quality of the act or, if he did know this, whether he was, by reason of such defect of reason, incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong in relation to that act." This general issue, however, can arise in different contexts, but this would be a general instruction in NC for diminished capacity.