![]() ![]() ![]() The opinion began with a simple statement of the Court’s test for due process in substantive criminal law: “ state rule about criminal liability. 31 Writing for the majority, Justice Kagan 32 held that the statute did not violate constitutional due process. 30 The Court focused on a narrow question - whether the Kansas statute, which limited the insanity defense to negating mens rea ( cognitive capacity), was unconstitutional. the jury’s determination to impose the death penalty.” 29 28 At a minimum, Justice Johnson urged that the court should have “independently analyze whether the procedure of replacing the insanity defense with the mens rea approach undermines. 27 Justice Johnson drew a sharp distinction between the precedent the majority had thought dispositive, Bethel, and the current case because the death penalty was not on the table in Bethel. 25 Although he largely agreed with the court’s dismissal of Kahler’s numerous procedural challenges, 26 he disagreed with the majority’s constitutional analysis of the statute. Justice Johnson dissented 24 from the court’s holding. 22 In the absence of any novel arguments by Kahler that would alter the precedent in Bethel, the court reaffirmed the statute’s constitutionality. is not so ingrained in our legal system . . . fundamental” and thus was not mandated by due process. Bethel, 21 where it had reasoned that a non–mens rea, “affirmative insanity defense. The court referred back to its earlier decision in State v. 20 The Kansas legislature had abandoned the second prong, the test of whether a defendant knew what she was doing was morally “wrong.” Could the legislature constitutionally deprive defendants of the ability to argue this prong? The Kansas Supreme Court held that it could. This statute is a notable departure from the widely accepted M’Naghten 19 formulation of the insanity defense, which applies when the defendant lacks either the (1) cognitive or (2) moral capacity to understand her actions. 15 Kansas law provided that a mental illness may negate mens rea, but “ental disease or defect is not otherwise a defense.” 16 In Kansas, a mentally ill defendant who lacks “cognitive capacity” (who, for example, thinks the person she is killing is a hat 17) can argue that she lacked mens rea, but a defendant who lacks “moral capacity” (who, for example, believes she is justifiably drowning her children to save them from eternal hell 18) has no “insanity defense.” 14 The Kansas Supreme Court, in a per curiam decision, rejected his challenges and affirmed his murder conviction and death sentence. Kahler appealed, arguing, among other things, that Kansas’s statutory approach to the insanity defense was a violation of constitutional due process. 12 At the sentencing phase, the same jury recommended the death sentence. 10 According to the defense, these events had all triggered a “severe major depression” that had “degraded so that he couldn’t refrain from doing what he did.” 11 Despite Kahler’s insanity plea, the jury convicted him of capital murder. 9 Kahler had also been fired from his job. 8 In the year leading up to the shootings, Kahler’s wife had engaged in an extended affair, filed for divorce, and then filed a battery complaint against Kahler, resulting in his arrest. 6 At trial, the defense made no attempt to dispute that Kahler had shot the victims 7 but rather argued the insanity defense. 5 But only a year later, during the Thanksgiving weekend of 2009, Kahler fatally shot his wife, his wife’s grandmother, and his two daughters - leaving only his son unharmed. In 2008, James Kahler was living with his “perfect family” in Weatherford, Texas. In the process, however, it missed troubling signs that Kansas’s law and others like it represent the type of political process failure that modern constitutional law seeks to prevent. The Court refused to constitutionalize moral incapacity as an insanity defense, focusing on the limited question of whether history established a substantive due process right to this version of the insanity defense. Kansas, 4 the Supreme Court neglected this charge. Who better to protect these unpopular individuals in the majoritarian legislative process than the judiciary, which is tasked with enforcing “those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities”? 3 Last Term, in Kahler v. 2 Coalition-pleasing lawmakers may be afraid to defend a broad insanity defense, even if they know their constituents’ fears are unfounded. Regardless, fear that a successful insanity plea would unleash “dangerous” individuals back onto the street could outweigh any empathy the public might have for either defendant. In the first, the accused “thought the victim was a dog” in the second, the accused “thought that a dog ordered him to kill the victim.” 1 One might think that one, both, or neither of the defendants should have the right to raise insanity as a defense. ![]()
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