Supreme Court rules states can eliminate insanity defense (6-3)

[JEDI]

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/488996-supreme-court-rules-states-can-eliminate-insanity-defense

Liberal Elena Kagan joined the 5 conservatives in the majority vote.


doesn't say WHY the state (Kansas) eliminated it in the 1st place.
that I would have liked to know more about.

 

[pauldun170]

Breyer wrote in a dissent that the rule effectively administers an arbitrary disparity over who can argue insanity. He presented a hypothetical contrasting two different mentally-ill defendants: the first was shown at trial to have killed someone because they were convinced that the victim was a dog, and the second killed someone out of the belief that a dog ordered them to.

"Under Kansas’ changed law, the defendant in Prosecution One could defend against the charge by arguing that his mental illness prevented him from forming the mental state required for murder (intentional killing of a human being)—just as any defendant may attempt to rebut the State’s prima facie case for guilt," Breyer wrote.

"The defendant in Prosecution Two has no defense," he continued. "Because he acted with the requisite level of intent, he must be convicted regardless of any role his mental illness played in his conduct."

Must resist......must resist. Sounds like an interesting case
Bookmarked for evening reading. Got too much work to do today.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Instead, a mentally ill defendant may try to argue that, because of their mental illness, they lacked general criminal intent, and therefore that the prosecution has failed to prove its case—but that’s it. James Kahler was convicted of murder and sentenced to death after he shot and killed his ex-wife, her mother, and two of their three children. Kahler raised his mental illness—chiefly depression, but also several personality disorders—at trial. But under Kansas law he could only argue that his conditions left him incapable of forming criminal intent, meaning in this context that he knew he was killing another person. His lawyers challenged that law as unconstitutional, and after the Kansas courts rejected his arguments the Supreme Court took the case to consider whether abolishing the insanity defense violates the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause or the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause.