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).
17.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. Hospital and Community Psychiatry, 29(7), 457–459. Public perceptions of the criminally insane. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 477, 58–71. Empirical research on the insanity defense. Before and after Hinckley: Evaluating insanity defense reform. Implicit theories of criminal responsibility. The social construction of criminal responsibility and insanity. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 16, 151–177. Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law, 7(2), 199–202. Opinions concerning the insanity plea and criminality among mental patients. American Journal of Psychiatry, 139, 892–897. Detention and rearrest rates of persons found not guilty by reason of insanity and convicted felons. American Political Science Review, 77, 175–190. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 8(4), 483–490. Hospitalization versus imprisonment and the insanity plea. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 14, 223–236. Length of detention in matched groups of insanity acquittees and convicted offenders. An analysis of public attitudes toward the insanity defense. New England Journal of Medicine, 305, 901–904. Gerbner, G., Gross, L., Morgan, M., & Signorielli, N. Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law, 19(4), 331–338. The volume and characteristics of insanity defense pleas: An eight state study. The Journal of Psychiatry and Law, Summer, 6, 173–187.Ĭallahan, L. Legal professionals' perceptions of the insanity defense. Detention patterns of successful and unsuccessful insanity defendants. Hospital and Community Psychiatry, 13, 13–14.īraff, J., Arvinites, T., & Steadman, H.
The insanity defense: New calls for reform.
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