TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) The U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to consider how far states can go toward eliminating the insanity defense in criminal trials as it reviews the case of a Kansas man sentenced to die for killing four relatives.
The high court planned to hear arguments Monday in James Kraig Kahlers case. He went to the home of his estranged wifes grandmother about 20 miles south of Topeka the weekend after Thanksgiving 2009 and fatally shot the two women and his two teenage daughters.
Not even Kahlers attorneys have disputed that he killed them. Theyve argued that he was in the grips of a depression so severe that he experienced an extreme emotional disturbance that disassociated him from reality.
In seeking a not guilty verdict due to his mental state, his defense at his 2011 trial faced what critics see as an impossible legal standard. His attorneys now argue that Kansas violated the U.S. Constitution by denying him the right to pursue an insanity defense.
The nations highest court previously has given states broad latitude in how they treat mental illness in criminal trials, allowing five states, including Kansas, to abolish the traditional insanity defense. Kahlers appeal raises the question of whether doing so denies defendants their guaranteed right to due legal process.
Maybe they will establish some ground rules, said Jeffrey Jackson, a law professor at Washburn University in Topeka. Theyve been vague about what the standard is, and maybe now theyre going to tell us.
Until 1996, Kansas followed a rule first outlined in 1840s England, requiring defendants pursuing an insanity defense to show that they were so impaired by a mental illness or defect that they couldnt understand that their conduct was criminal. Now Kansas permits defendants to only cite mental disease or defect as a partial defense, and they must prove they didnt intend to commit the specific crime. Alaska, Idaho, Montana and Utah have similar laws.
Christopher Slobogin, a professor of both law and psychiatry at the Vanderbilt University, said even seriously mentally ill defendants typically intend to the commit their crimes, even if their acts result from delusions.
John Hinckley intended to kill President Reagan. He would not have had a defense in Kansas, Slobogin said. Name an insanity case, the person would not have had a defense in Kansas.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt argues that the Supreme Court has previously taken a laboratories of democracy approach so that states can try to improve criminal justice.
Scholars and practitioners have struggled for literally hundreds of years to decide to how to handle evidence of a criminal defendants mental condition, Schmidt said in an interview. Kansas is merely continuing the long tradition of trying different approaches.
Kahlers attorneys contend he snapped under the strain of crumbling personal and professional lives. His estranged wife, Karen, was in a relationship with another woman and was seeking a divorce. He had lost his job as utilities director in Columbia, Missouri, and moved back to Kansas weeks earlier to live with his parents.
Karen Kahler and their three children were spending the Thanksgiving 2009 weekend at the home of Karens grandmother, Dorothy Wight, in Burlingame. James Kahler shot the women, then found his daughters and killed them. His young son, Sean, fled to a neighboring house and later testified at his fathers trial.
Slobogin, who helped write a handbook for attorneys and mental health professionals on psychological evaluations for courts, said insanity defenses typically arise in less than 1% of felony cases, and when those cases go to trial, the defendant loses three out of four times.
Still, Kansas legislators enacted the tougher standard in response to a push by crime victims, family members and friends.
