Kahler v. Kansas
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 23, 2020 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Decided
- March 23, 2020
- Term
- October Term 2019
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice Kagan
- Issue area
- Due Process
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice KAGAN delivered the opinion of the Court. This case is about Kansas's treatment of a criminal defendant's insanity claim. In Kansas, a defendant can invoke mental illness to show that he lacked the requisite mens rea (intent) for a crime. He can also raise mental illness after conviction to justify either a reduced term of imprisonment or commitment to a mental health facility. But Kansas, unlike many States, will not wholly exonerate a defendant on the ground that his illness prevented him from recognizing his criminal act as morally wrong. The issue here is whether the Constitution's Due Process Clause forces Kansas to do so-otherwise said, whether that Clause compels the acquittal of any defendant who, because of mental illness, could not tell right from wrong when committing his crime. We hold that the Clause imposes no such requirement. I A In Clark v. Arizona , 548 U.S. 735, 749, 126 S.Ct. 2709, 165 L.Ed.2d 842 (2006), this Court catalogued state insanity defenses, counting four "strains variously combined to yield a diversity of American standards" for when to absolve mentally ill defendants of criminal culpability. The first strain asks about a defendant's "cognitive capacity"-whether a mental illness left him "unable to understand what he [was] doing" when he committed a crime. Id. , at 747, 749, 126 S.Ct. 2709. The second examines his "moral…
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