The idea that criminal guilt and subsequent punishment should be imposed only on people who were morally responsible for their behavior has ancient roots ( 9) and strong contemporary support ( 10). To understand the dueling opinions that ultimately emanated from Kahler, it helps to have a sense of the history of criminal defenses based on mental state. Mens Rea and an Affirmative Defense of Insanity But the Supreme Court’s actions can be mystifying, and this time the justices agreed to hear Kahler’s claims. Most observers thought there was little chance that the Court would take the case, because it had declined to review essentially the same question in a case from Idaho in 2012 ( 7, 8). Bethel ( 6), found it unpersuasive, and declared here that it saw no reason to reconsider that decision. The Kansas court had considered a similar claim in 2003 in State v. Kahler appealed on multiple grounds to the Kansas Supreme Court, including arguing that the 1996 statute, by abrogating the state’s previous insanity defense, violated “the Due Process Clause because it offends a principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental” ( 4). Unable to plead that he was incapable of understanding the wrongfulness of his behavior or controlling it, Kahler was found guilty of murder and, in a subsequent hearing, sentenced to death. However, in 1996, Kansas had abandoned its long-standing insanity defense, limiting defenses based on mental state to a narrow claim that “as a result of mental disease or defect, lacked the mental state required as an element of the offense charged” and further specifying that “mental disease or defect is not otherwise a defense” ( 5). The defense expert offered the opinion that Kahler’s “capacity to manage his own behavior had been severely degraded so that he couldn't refrain from doing what he did” ( 4). Psychiatric experts hired by both the defense and the prosecution agreed that he was experiencing a major depressive disorder and had obsessive-compulsive, borderline, paranoid, and narcissistic personality traits. Kahler was spotted by police the next day walking down a country road he surrendered without a struggle and was charged with capital murder ( 4).Īt trial, Kahler wanted to plead insanity.

Over the next several months, he lost his job and became increasingly distraught, until on Thanksgiving weekend 2009, he drove to the house of his wife’s grandmother, where the family traditionally gathered, and shot and killed his wife, her grandmother, and their two daughters but allowed his son to escape. The defendant, James Kahler, was facing a divorce petition by his wife, who while having an affair with her female trainer, had taken their three children and left him.

Kansas, in which the court was asked to rule on the constitutionality of Kansas’s abolition of an affirmative defense of insanity ( 3).

The occasion for the Supreme Court’s consideration of the constitutional status of a defense of not guilty by reason of insanity was Kahler v.

The instanity defense