Answer:
They were unable to be defended according to the McNaughton rule because they confessed their guilt and knew the nature of the crime and still executed it.
Explanation:
McNaughton Rule was the rule established in 1843 by the English House of Lords. The rule was named after Daniel McNaughton who was suffering from, what we name it today as paranoia. Paranoia is a mental disorder in which a person suffers from the delusions of persecution. The McNaughton Rule states that a person will only be defended if he/she held the ground of insanity while committing the crime.
Under this rule, the defendant will not be charged accused of the crime they have committed if they did not know the nature of the crime they were committing and were not in the frame of mind to acknowledge the difference between right and wrong.
The novel "In Cold Blood" penned by Truman Capote, is a non-fictional novel that narrates a true story of a murder case of the Clutter family in 1959.
In the story, the murder crime committed by Hickock, Perry Smith, and Lowell were the cases of insanity. But McNaughton Rule could not worked as a defensive rule for them because they knew that it was wrong when they committed the crime and still executed it.
