WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can prevent criminal defendants from pleading insanity without violating their constitutional rights. The decision could prompt states across the country to toughen standards for defendants who wish to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
The justices’ 6-3 decision came in a case from Kansas, where James Kraig Kahler was sentenced to death for killing his estranged wife, two teenage daughters and his wife’s grandmother.
Kahler wanted to mount an insanity defense, but Kansas is one of four states that eliminated a defendant’s ability to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Idaho, Montana and Utah are the others. Alaska also limits the insanity defense.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court that “Kansas takes account of mental health at both trial and sentencing. It has just not adopted the particular insanity defense Kahler would like. That choice is for Kansas to make — and, if it wishes, to remake and remake again as the future unfolds,” Kagan wrote in upholding a ruling from the Kansas Supreme Court.
Kagan’s three liberal colleagues dissented. Kansas “has eliminated the core of a defense that has existed for centuries: that the defendant, due to mental illness, lacked the mental capacity necessary for his conduct to be considered morally blameworthy,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for himself and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.
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It always sounded to me that not guilty by reason of insanity was a strange notion. It basically says that NO crime has been committed which according to the facts is not true. We know: a crime has been committed, who perpetrated the crime. It’s the reason behind the crime that is the stumbling block. Guilty but insane is a more logical concept because accountability has been established. I really don’t think that it has been used for centuries, back then insane people were dealt with differently!
And if they are that mental, keep them locked up in a psych ward, for the SAME amount of time, they’d have spent in prison.
Exactly. If they weren’t in control of themselves when they committed the act, there’s no way they can credibly promise to never do it again. Keep them locked up forever as a danger to themselves and others.
That is, if they were being intellectually honest about it.
Not guilty by reason of insanity and then let some idiot psychologist or psychiatrist let some murderer or rapist off, with no jail time. . What a joke, especially knowing that many of these psychologists and psychiatrists are nuts and they are excuse makers.
Insanity should never have been a defense. The verdict choices should be innocent, guilty, or guilty but insane. Insanity should be considered for sentencing, not whether the defendant committed the crime.
The basis of our laws originate from the Bible in the Law of Moses. God gave Moses many laws listing particular crimes and various extenuating circumstances for leniency – such as if someone owned an animal that never attacked a human before but then killed someone.
There is no leniency for “insanity” which can be twisted to mean just about anything. You can be good but insane. You can be perfectly sane but irredeemably evil. The crime isn’t based on your feelings at the time (how did that even start?) but on the severity of your actions.
To insert an insanity defense is to say that you know better than God. You don’t. I shouldn’t need to tell people that God is smarter and wiser than they are.
There is a deep irony with the insanity plea. Its the insane who should be given the death penalty before anyone else! For its the only way we can guarantee an insane person will not murder again.
AND no more of this “I was temporarily insane” bull.
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Hmmm . . . did they carve out an exception for Biden?