Fifth Amendment Protections in Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity Adjudications

Facts of the Case

Damian McElrath was adopted and raised by his mother, Diane McElrath, from the age of two. Mr. McElrath was diagnosed with a mental illness from a young age and was noted to be experiencing paranoid delusions, including the belief that his mother was poisoning him with ammonia and pesticides. A few weeks before the death of his mother, Mr. McElrath had been psychiatrically hospitalized and diagnosed with schizophrenia. One week following his discharge from the hospital, on July 16, 2012, Mr. McElrath stabbed his mother to death. It was noted that Ms. McElrath was stabbed more than 50 times during this attack. Mr. McElrath admitted to killing his mother in a written note, when he called the 911 dispatcher, and later during police interrogation. During the interrogation, he stated, “I killed my mom because she poisoned me” (McElrath p 91, citing McElrath v. Georgia, 839 S.E.2d 573 (Ga. 2020), p 575). The state charged Mr. McElrath with three crimes stemming from his mother’s death: malice-murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault.

During his trial, Mr. McElrath did not dispute his actions and set forth an insanity defense. According to Georgia law, if a criminal defendant “did not have mental capacity to distinguish between right and wrong” or committed the crime “because of a delusional compulsion as to such act which overmastered his will to resist committing the crime,” then a jury may render a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity (McElrath, p 91, citing Ga. Code Ann. §§16-3-2, 16-3-3, 17-7-131(c)(1) (2019)). On December 11, 2017, a jury rendered a split verdict, finding Mr. McElrath not guilty by reason of insanity for the charge of malice-murder and guilty but mentally ill on the charges of felony murder and aggravated assault, all of which pertained to the same time frame and acts involving the killing of his mother. The Georgia court accepted all verdicts set forth by the jury and subsequently sentenced Mr. McElrath to life in prison on the felony murder conviction.

Following the split verdict, Mr. McElrath appealed to the Supreme Court of Georgia. He argued that the felony murder conviction should be vacated under Georgia’s repugnancy doctrine. This doctrine dictates that a state court can vacate a verdict as repugnant when the jury makes affirmative findings that cannot legally and plausibly exist concurrently.

The Supreme Court of Georgia agreed with Mr. McElrath that the verdicts were repugnant because they required him to have different mental states at the same time and that there was no way to reconcile the inconsistent verdicts. Instead of vacating only the felony murder conviction, as requested by Mr. McElrath, the court vacated both the malice-murder and the felony murder verdicts pursuant to Georgia’s repugnancy doctrine and remanded the case for retrial. On remand, Mr. McElrath argued that the Double Jeopardy Clause established under the Fifth Amendment prohibited Georgia from retrying him for the malice-murder charge based on the jury’s prior not guilty by reason of insanity verdict, as it constituted an acquittal despite the charge being vacated. The trial court rejected his argument, and Mr. McElrath again appealed to the Supreme Court of Georgia. The court affirmed the trial court’s decision and held that all the verdicts rendered by the jury in Mr. McElrath’s case were null, and thus, no acquittal had taken place, likening the verdict to a mistrial. The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Ruling and Reasoning

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed and remanded the Supreme Court of Georgia’s decision. The Court noted that the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides that “[n]o person shall…be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb,” and it has also been established “that a verdict of acquittal is final, ending a defendant’s jeopardy” (McElrath, p 94, citing Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184 (1957), p 188). The Court ruled that whether or not an acquittal has taken place for the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment is a question of federal, not state, law. The Court disagreed with the state supreme court’s judgment of the jury’s acquittal as null. It maintained that, in the Court’s view, an acquittal is “any ruling that the prosecution’s proof is insufficient to establish criminal liability for an offense” (McElrath, p 96, citing Evans v. Michigan, 568 U.S. 313 (2013), p 318). The Court also noted that, had the not guilty by reason of insanity verdict been considered in isolation, it would have been sufficient for an acquittal under state law. For double jeopardy purposes, a jury’s determination of not guilty by reason of insanity concludes that “criminal culpability had not been established,” much the same as in any other type of acquittal (McElrath, p 95, citing Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1 (1978), p 10).

The Court also noted that a jury’s acquittal is final and cannot be reviewed on error or otherwise, barring any speculation on the jury’s rationale for the verdict. The Court described that the rule exists to preserve the jury’s responsibility to protect the accused from “a potentially arbitrary or abusive Government that is in command of the criminal sanction” (McElrath, p 94, citing United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U.S. 564 (1977), p 572). The Court noted that the status of Mr. McElrath’s vacated conviction for felony murder may still be retried by the state courts on remand.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Alito expressed that the scope of the unanimous decision was limited to cases wherein the trial judge had accepted inconsistent verdicts, which is not at odds with federal law. He emphasized that this situation is different from a trial judge refusing inconsistent verdicts and requiring further jury deliberation, which some states practice and is also not inconsistent with federal law (McElrath, p 98).

Discussion

McElrath is a medicolegally unique case in which repugnant verdicts by a jury were considered. The jury found Mr. McElrath both not guilty by reason of insanity and guilty but mentally ill regarding charges associated with events that occurred simultaneously. The inconsistent verdicts implied the existence of two different mental states occurring at the same time. Although a forensic evaluator must acknowledge that mental states can evolve over time, even over the course of several hours, it is also important that the testifying forensic psychiatrist emphasize for the jury that only one mental state can exist at the moment in time a criminal act is committed. Although three charges were brought against Mr. McElrath, the acts occurred simultaneously and all constituted the same offense; therefore, only one mental state could have been present during the commission of the one crime.

McElrath establishes a precedent for affirming verdicts in insanity acquittals and provides safeguards against retrial. It clarifies that a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity constitutes an acquittal, even in the context of inconsistent verdicts, and should be treated similarly when applying the Double Jeopardy Clause under the Fifth Amendment. This principle remains steadfast even if other verdicts rendered regarding the same time frame by the same jury may appear inconsistent with the acquittal.

As is central to this case, the insanity defense and applicable criminal statutes vary by state. The Court’s ruling in McElrath serves as an important precedent, particularly in states that recognize a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. This ruling provides further protections to a marginalized and vulnerable population, those with mental illnesses who were found not guilty by reason of insanity, by barring their retrial on charges for which they have been acquitted despite variations in state law. According to this ruling, once an acquittal is rendered, it is final on that specific charge, regardless of the type of acquittal, the rationale of the jury, or any conflicting verdicts. For Mr. McElrath, the not guilty by reason of insanity adjudication constitutes the acquittal necessary for protection under the Double Jeopardy Clause with the potential for the other charges to be retried.