Mens Rea, Competency to Stand Trial, and Guilty but Mentally Ill

Abstract

The recent U.S. Supreme Court case of Kahler v. Kansas determined that the Kansas mens rea laws were sufficient to stand as the state’s only insanity defense statute. In this issue of The Journal, Landess and Holoyda describe the legal reasoning that led to this decision and the persistent concerns about the wisdom of the decision. This commentary is meant to serve as a mirror image to Landess and Holoyda’s article, as it focuses on the impact of Kahler on severely mentally ill individuals faced with criminal charges in the four mens rea states: Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Kansas. The authors assert that the absence of a traditional insanity defense disrupts the criminal justice process, adds the pressure of greater numbers of individuals pushed into the competency-to-stand-trial and competency-restoration systems, resurrects the guilty but mentally ill verdict from the condemnation of history, and forces people with serious mental iillness into prisons without any evidence that the prisons are up to the task of adequately caring for them.