This is an issue that has gone unaddressed too long in our legal system:
Until now, the high court has avoided challenges to insanity defense laws, even as states around the country toughened their laws following John Hinckley's acquittal by reason of insanity in the 1981 shooting of President Reagan.
It was a surprise when justices agreed to review Eric Michael Clark's case, and they seemed uninterested Wednesday in broadly addressing the constitutional rights of psychotic criminal defendants whose lawyers want them sentenced to psychiatric facilities instead of prisons.
Court members, however, did repeatedly refer to the unusual facts of Clark's case, signaling that they are likely to rule very narrowly. He was a popular football star until he became convinced that aliens had taken over his town, Flagstaff, Ariz., as a "platinum city" and that his own parents were aliens.
If the court does rule "very narrowly," it isn't likely to get the heart of the matter, which is the wide and growing gulf between legal and medical definitions. The criminal justice system's standard is "insanity," a concept not even recognized today by the medical community, which deals with "mental illness" and the ever-expanding research into brain chemistry. You don't have to look any further than Fort Wayne to realize our courts don't have the faintest idea of how to handle crime and mental illness. Consider Judith Noe and Joseph Corcoran. Both committed horrendous acts while in the grip of profound mental illness. One was barely punished at all, and got out early from what she did receive, and the other is sitting on death row.
But at least maybe this will move the conversation about the issue along a little bit.
