In May 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Kahler v. Kansas, a case that hinged on the question of whether the defendant, James Kahler, who killed his estranged wife, her mother and his two teenage daughters, could claim that he was not guilty by reason of insanity. Kahler's legal team argued that he suffered from depression, and was so distraught on the night in question that he could not control his actions. They were challenging Kansas' 20-year-old abolition of the insanity defense and effectively asking the court to overrule it.
The court did not, claiming that the state was within its constitutional rights when it decided to outlaw that legal classification...Elena Kagan wrote the majority opinion...The insanity defense is deployed in less than 1 percent of criminal cases and is successful only about a quarter of the time.
Rachel Louise Snyder, "Making a Case," The New York Times Book Review, May 3, 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment