This case has the potential to tell us if the Supreme Court has been turned byt the two newest justices. After all, it presents the opportunity for the justices to define an entirely new Constitutional right -- the right to an insanity defense.. Will they take the bait, or will the addition of Roberts and Alito lead to a more restrained decision?

The Supreme Court embarked on a potentially far-reaching review of the insanity defense yesterday, as the justices heard oral arguments in the case of an Arizona man, Eric Michael Clark, who was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time he shot a police officer to death.

At issue in the case is whether Arizona's version of the insanity defense, which requires defendants to prove with "clear and convincing" evidence that they were too mentally ill to understand that their conduct was wrong, is so narrow that it violates the constitutional right to due process of law.

The problem is that such pleas, even to the degree they are rooted in common law, are ultimately shaped and defined by the statutes passed by the legislatures of the 50 states and by Congress. A decision going against the state of Arizona has the potential of pre-empting the right of the states to determine the operation of their own courts. If there is a federal constitutional right to "not guilty by reason of insanity" rather than "guilty but insane", then the principles of federalism and states' rights will have been severely undermined.

Posted by: Greg at 09:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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