Supreme Court To Decide On "Insanity Defense" Case
WASHINGTON, DC--The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last week in an Arizona case that could affect how states handle the "insanity defense" by suspects that have mental illness.
The case involves Eric Michael Clark, who was a 17-year-old high school junior when he shot and killed Flagstaff Police Officer Jeff Moritz on June 21, 2000.
Clark had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and admitted to killing Moritz, but said he believed the officer was actually one of a number of alien life forms that had taken over the town. In his 2003 non-jury trial, he pleaded "guilty but insane", and his attorney said that he should receive treatment in a psychiatric facility.
Arizona law only allowed Clark to argue that his mental illness made him unable to know at the time that what he did was wrong, but not whether he intended to kill Moritz.
The trial judge convicted Clark of first-degree intentional murder and sentenced him to life in prison.
Clark's attorney appealed the conviction, arguing that Arizona's law on the insanity defense is so restrictive that it violates the defendants' due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Attorneys for the state argued that the law holds criminals accountable for their crimes, and that having a mental illness does not necessarily mean the person should be treated differently if they knew that what they did was wrong at the time.
In January, the American Association on Mental Retardation, The Arc of the United States, the National Disability Rights Network, and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law filed a "friend of the court" brief supporting Clark's position. The advocacy groups argued that states must consider defendants' mental disabilities when determining whether a person is guilty of a crime.
The Supreme Court's decision, which is expected in a few months, could impact dozens of states that currently allow some form of an insanity defense.
Related:
"U.S. justices look at Ariz. killing" (Arizona Republic)
"U.S. Supreme Court Weighs Arizona's Insanity Defense Laws" (PBS NewsHour)
Eric Michael Clark v. Arizona (U.S. Supreme Court)
Amicus brief filed by AAMR, et. al (NAPAS)
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BS"D
It is offensive that disability rights organizations would support the insanity defense. The insanity defense is deeply offensive and stigmatizing to law-abiding psychiatric survivors like myself, whom are stigmatized as dangerous maniacs when psychiatrists label killers as mentally ill and claim that their "mental illness" made them do it. Rights and responsibilities cannot be disjoined. If we want the same rights as all other people, then we have to assume the same responsibilities as well, including to obey the laws of the land and to be held equally accountable for failure to obey them.
The insanity defense is merely the flip side of the coin of its evil twin, forced psychiatric treatment. Do you support forced drugging, forced electroshock, involuntary outpatient commitment laws, and other totalitarian psychiatric practices? If not, then you need to call for the abolition of the insanity defense as well.
Posted by: Stephen Mendelsohn | May 15, 2006 06:56 PM