Is he claiming that there is a fundamental right to mental illness, firmly rooted in the traditions and history of the country, without which the the concept of ordered liberty would be inconcievable?

I don't know if it's constitutional, but I like the idea of being able to wear my underpants on the outside of my clothes and telling anyone who complains, "What? You got some problem with my fundamental rights?"

"Is it just me, or is there something a little spooky about a decision that's (1) important enough that it can be granted cert by the SCOTUS, but is (2) unpublished?"

Quite possibly it was not an issue of first impression in Arizona.

Right, A. Blogger, but I imagine that the common law had met the insanity defense before M'Naghten. Off the cuff opinions, worth what you paid for them, etc.

It seems pretty obvious that any statute which draws the line so narrowly that you end up convicting/executing somebody who was [insert epithet here] when he committed the crime, is not going to meet any reasonable standard of justice. Crimes require intent, which right there sets a mental standard of sorts.

Medis,

What cases do you have in mind?

IANAL, but from a layman's standpoint, what is inherently wrong with guilty but insane.

Our current system of innocent by mental defect seems to confuse justice and mercy. It is merciful because the person gets help, but the people hurt get no justice.

Guilty, but insane would seem to better balance those two things. Guilty, yes the person did the crime, but they were mentally ill, so instead of prison, they will be sentenced to get the treatment they need.

Rarely do seriously mentally ill people get better without a need for life-long treatment, usually by medication. A guilty, but insane verdict would seem to allow the courts to better monitor this life-long course of treatment.

Just a layman's view point

Orin,

The cases I can actually name off the top of my head are Morissette, Liparota, X-Citement Video, Staples, and Egelhoff.

Anyone know of any place to get the Arizona opinion in this case?

as to Abdul, is there really no 1789-era law about people too crazy to know what the heck they're doing? The summary says the accused wants to plead the insanity defense "as it existed at common law." Not quite on the same level as Abdul's underwear fetish.

I don't have to make sense. I got rights, ya know.

Fascist.

Well, Abdul, if you really do want to wear your underwear on the outside, Madonna might pay for your defense.

An insanity style defense does not negate a scienter requirement. Were it otherwise, the burden of poof for an essential element of murder (at common law this would be malice aforethought) would necessarily be shifted over to the defendant. In other words, the defense would have to prove that the defendant lacked the necessary intent. This obviously cannot be; the prosecution bears the responsibility of proving every element of the crime.

Sanity, not an element of any crime at common law, is presumed of all defendants. The question here is what can be used to rebut that presumption. States that have abolished the insanity defense have provided that nothing may rebut that presumption. Other states courts have considered this question (Idaho v. Searcy being one example), and come to the conclusion that an insanity defense is not constitutionally required. At least in Searcy, the explanation given was that the mens rea requirement for murder allowed the defense to raise a defense as to the mental state of the defendant. Naturally, this is precisely the opposite of what every other state that permits insanity defenses has found.

I blogged about this earlier today. Excerpt:

I don't claim to any particular expertise in this area--just an interest. This article reminds us of why states have limited the insanity defense:

Arizona changed its laws after John Hinckley's acquittal by reason of insanity in the March 1981 shooting of President Reagan and three others outside a Washington hotel.

Arizona assistant attorney general Michael O'Toole said in a filing that "even if the states are required to provide an insanity defense to criminal defendants, this court's prior decisions make clear that no one particular test is required."

In 1994, the court let stand Montana's abolition of insanity as an affirmative defense for criminal defendants. But then three years ago justices refused to review a Nevada Supreme Court decision that defendants have a right to use insanity defenses.

At issue in the Arizona case is the use of evidence in contesting whether a defendant was so mentally ill that he or she did not know the crime was wrong.

The defendant was apparently schizophrenic:

He was a 17-year-old high school student when he shot Officer Jeff Moritz during a traffic stop in Flagstaff, Ariz., on June 21, 2000.

There was evidence that Clark believed his town had been taken over by aliens and that he was being held captive and tortured before the killing.

His lawyer, David Goldberg, told justices that the state insanity law is unconstitutional because it restricts what evidence can be introduced at trial.

"This court has never directly addressed this issue of national importance," Goldberg said.

This is an interesting question. This PBS article about the development of the insanity defense argues that at least as early 1581, English law recognized that "If a madman or a natural fool, or a lunatic in the time of his lunacy do [kill a man], this is no felonious act for they cannot be said to have any understanding...." Even if the Court were to rule that a defendant has a right (presumably a due process right) to raise the question of insanity at trial, the second question would be what standard the courts are required to use. Apparently, the rule in the 18th century was:

what became known as the "wild beast" test: If a defendant was so bereft of sanity that he understood the ramifications of his behavior "no more than in an infant, a brute, or a wild beast," he would not be held responsible for his crimes.

The M'Naughten Rule adopted in 1843 required the defendant to understand right from wrong to be found sane, but American courts later modified this to include uncontrollable impulses and mental illness. If Goldberg is going to argue that there is a due process right to raise insanity as a defense (a position with which I can sympathize), I will be curious to know what test he expects the Court to require the states to allow. Will it be American insanity defense law as it was in 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment required "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"? That would make some sense, I suppose.

Very interesting, Fullerene. I wonder what's the obstacle to a statute that (1) presumes all persons have the physical capacity to commit a crime, and (2) forbids any rebuttal of that presumption?

So the fact that I'm a paraplegic doesn't mean I couldn't have walked upstairs to shoot my wife, and I'm forbidden to put on any evidence to the contrary.

Would such a statute violate due process of law?

Lest anyone be decieved by my post, mistake of fact and self defense do not negate a general intent requirement either.

The really interesting question, one which I was wondering about recently as it's directly relevant to a case I just got, is whether due process permits the state to abolish the defense of diminished capacity to the extent it's used by a defendant to negate mens rea? It appears this is the second question presented here, and a very good argument can be made that the prohibition of the diminished capacity defense (at least to a specific intent crime) blatantly violates due process.

Say you have a mentally retarded person charged with selling alchol to a minor, when the person has such a mental defect that he doesn't know his own age, doesn't know what the drinking age is, doesn't know there is a drinking age, and doesn't know how to calculate a person's age based on their birthdate. If diminished capacity is not a defense (like here in Texas, where we generally don't allow criminal defendants to use defenses other than a plea of guilty) it seems to violate due process as you're basically telling the defendant that he may not legally introduce evidence that proves his innocence (e.g. his inability to have the requisite mens rea). As far as I'm concerned, this is not for the state/the legislature to decide. If they're going to make something a crime based on certain elements being met, then one charged with that crime has a due process right to negate every element any way possible.

If the insanity defense is to mean anything, then weighing it against the behavior a criminal statute is supposed to prevent is disingenuous and a red herring. If we don't want to punish insane people then it doesn't matter if they kill someone or forget to pay their taxes.

The NGI (in any of its forms) is a rarely used and even more rarely successful defense in my experience and the experience of other forensic psychiatrists. In the Clarke case in AZ, there were two expert witnesses who came to opposite conclusions (a common occurance in these trials) and the court had to establish the facts of the case based on all the testimony. This is a typical scenario for a NGI defense.

My experience was a little different, I was chosen as the sole examiner in the 750+ cases that I was allotted (this was a county court but cases ranged from first degree murder to shoplifting) and only found 10 cases that met the required standard, including one first degree murder case. The rest were attempts on the part of the defense attorneys to make a case where there was none.

SCOTUS will deal with a technical aspect of the most common definition of legal insanity (which is a legal term, not a medical term and as such has a different meaning than both the medical and the lay terms describing mental illness) and the outcome of the decision will probably only make sure that there are fewer unwarranted uses of the NGI (or equivalent) defense.

I would like to point out that the case from Mississippi mentioned above has very little in common with the Clarke case in Arizona. In Clarke the defendant drove around the neighborhood inciting the locals to call the police and when he was stopped, he shot the officer. Prior to that act, he told friends that he had intended to kill a policeman sometime in the near future. According to the decision, Clarke chased the policeman and shot him.

In the Mississippi case the defendant was psychotic and had no intention to kill anyone and the death was apparently an accident. The issue of intent is always one that an examiner has to take into account in these cases as the patients are almost always mentally ill by medical standards.