SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 9/30/2019
Next week the justices will return to the bench for the first time since the end of June. The new term is already full of interesting cases, including the very first one on Monday, October 7: Kahler v. Kansas, in which the Supreme Court will consider whether the Constitution allows a state to abolish the insanity defense.
In November 2009, James Kahler shot and killed four members of his family. Things had begun to unravel for Kahler earlier in the year, when his wife Karen – who had begun an affair with a woman the previous year – filed for divorce and left him, taking their children with her. In the fall, Kahler was fired from his job working for the city of Columbia, Missouri. On the weekend after Thanksgiving, Kahler drove to the home of Dorothy Wight, Karen’s grandmother, with three or four rifles and ammunition in his car. Kahler entered the home, where he shot Karen, Wight, and his two teenage daughters, Emily and Lauren. The couple’s son, Sean, escaped through the back door and ran to a neighbor’s house. Wight’s medical-alert device recorded audio of the shootings, including Kahler saying, “I am going to kill her.â€
Kahler was charged with four counts of first-degree murder. At his trial, an expert for the defense testified that Kahler had been so depressed at the time of the shooting that he couldn’t help himself, while the prosecution’s expert testified that Kahler had the capacity to form the kind of premeditated intent to kill required for a death sentence.
Under Kansas law, Kahler could not argue that he was insane as a defense to the charges. In 1995, Kansas had replaced the insanity defense with a new law that allows a defendant to argue that, because of mental illness, he could not have intended to commit the crime but makes clear that mental illness “is not otherwise a defense.†The law was a response to several high-profile criminal cases, including the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity. The trial court instructed the jurors in Kahler’s trial that they could only consider Kahler’s mental illness as part of determining whether he intended to kill his victims. The jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death.
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/09/argument-preview-justices-to-hear-challenge-to-lack-of-insanity-defense/
