CNN.com - Supreme Court reviews insanity defense

Teen shot and killed police officer he thought was an alien

By Bill Mears
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- There was little doubt that Eric Clark, then 17, shot and killed a police officer six years ago in Flagstaff, Arizona.

And prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed that the killer had some degree of mental illness -- he was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who believed he was being constantly watched by aliens from outer space.

But the two sides strongly disagree on his punishment. Should Clark spend the rest of his life in prison or should he be sent to a psychiatric center for treatment?

It was left to the Supreme Court on Wednesday to wrestle with a larger constitutional issue that goes to the heart of the young man's defense: What legal limits can states place on criminal defendants who claim insanity or severe mental illness?

Such limits have been tightened significantly in the past quarter-century, and this case could force the 46 states that allow an insanity defense to significantly revise their laws.

Only Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Kansas prohibit the insanity defense.

The justices appeared to have a hard time Wednesday determining whether Clark and others like him have a constitutional right to an insanity defense.

No constitutional precedents currently support such a standard, but the insanity defense has been a well-established part of common law in the United States.

Arizona argues it should be left to the states to establish guidelines for insanity defenses.

First-degree murder conviction

A judge convicted Clark of first-degree murder in the 2000 shooting death of Officer Jeff Adam Moritz, who responded to a late-night call of someone circling through a Flagstaff neighborhood with rap music blasting from a car radio.

The 30-year-old policeman stopped Clark's pickup truck. Trial testimony indicated the teenager then shot Moritz in the head.

The truck was found nearby and Clark was arrested a day later, charged with intentionally causing the death of an on-duty police officer. Moritz remains the only police officer killed in the line of duty in Flagstaff.

The defendant was a high school student who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia the year before the shooting. After he acted strangely, his parents had him arrested and sent to a psychiatric hospital for a time. (Full story)

Trial testimony indicated that Clark believed Flagstaff had been taken over by aliens, who had held him captive and tortured him.

Prosecutors argue Clark knew his actions were wrong, that he bragged to friends months before that he planned to lure police so he could shoot them, and that he fled the crime scene after the shooting.

His trial was delayed for three years while courts debated whether he should be declared mentally incompetent to face the charges.

Arizona law says that defendants can qualify for a verdict of "guilty except insane" if at the time of the commission of a criminal act the person was afflicted with a mental disease or defect of such severity that the person did not know the criminal act was wrong.

Other states also use the "guilty except insane" standard, while some allow "not guilty by reason of insanity."

Arizona bans defense claims of "diminished capacity" to form criminal intent, and much of the focus in the high court's oral arguments was on whether that violates the due process protections of the Constitution.

Attorney: 'Eric was delusional'

"Eric was delusional," Clark's appellate attorney, David Goldberg, told the justices. "He believed he was killing an alien that occupied the officer's body, that aliens had invaded his town."

"What if he knew right from wrong, and knew it was wrong to kill aliens?" asked Justice David Souter, "Would he still have (an insanity) defense?"

Justice John Paul Stevens followed up, "Does it make a difference whether he knew it's wrong to kill aliens? Does he have to think it's wrong to kill aliens" for reasonable doubt to be raised about his culpability?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked the state's attorney, Randall Howe, "How can you charge him with intentionally killing a police officer if he thought it was an alien?"

"The state has the right to define insanity as it sees fit," replied Howe.

Goldberg complained that Arizona's statutes place the burden of proving insanity on the defendant, as do most other states.

Several justices worried whether a victory for Clark would mean a wave of insanity claims by criminal defendants, where "everybody is going to have an excuse," as Souter put it.

Justice Department statistics show the insanity defense is used only in approximately 1 percent of criminal cases and fewer than a quarter of those eventually prove successful.

Most states tightened their insanity defense laws in the wake of the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan. John Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity and is confined to the federal government's St. Elizabeths Hospital, where he is receiving mental health treatment.

Arizona revised its laws in 1993 and specifically excluded defendants from trying to prove they did not know the nature or quality of their criminal acts.

Sixteen states and the Bush administration are backing Arizona. A number of mental health groups support Clark.

CNN.com gives you the latest stories and video from the around the world, with in-depth coverage of U.S. news, politics, entertainment, health, crime, tech and more.

CNN.com gives you the latest stories and video from the around the world, with in-depth coverage of U.S. news, politics, entertainment, health, crime, tech and more.