WASHINGTON – Eric Michael Clark’s personality began a dramatic transformation in 1999. The promising teenage football player started obsessing about the coming millennium, running up his parents’ credit cards buying supplies and spending hours each day on survival preparation.
After the new year arrived, his behavior became odder. He became convinced aliens had taken over his town. He threatened his brother with a baseball bat.
Then, on June 21, 2001, the 17-year-old exploded. He shot to death Officer Jeff Moritz in Flagstaff, Ariz., after the 30-year-old policeman pulled Clark over for blasting rap music at 5 a.m.
Clark’s lawyers don’t dispute that he killed Moritz but they say as a diagnosed schizophrenic he should be receiving treatment at a state mental hospital rather than serving a 25-years-to-life prison sentence.
The Supreme Court said Monday it will review Clark’s case, jumping into an issue it avoided for nearly two decades under the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.
Clark’s lawyer in the appeal, David Goldberg, said in a filing that Arizona lawmakers made their law too restrictive. It allows a defendant to be found “guilty except insane” and held for mental health treatment, but it restricts what evidence can be used to prove insanity.
It’s the first time the court has dealt with a direct constitutional challenge to insanity defense laws since lawmakers around the country imposed new restrictions following John Hinckley’s acquittal by reason of insanity in the March 1981 shooting of President Reagan, said Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia professor who specializes in psychiatry and the law.
“It comes as a surprise,” Bonnie said.
Most, but not all, states allow insanity defenses. In 1994, the Supreme Court let stand Montana’s abolition of insanity as a defense for criminal defendants. But then three years ago justices refused to review a Nevada Supreme Court decision that defendants have a right to use insanity defenses.
While it is not known how new Chief Justice John Roberts will approach the case, Rehnquist had been skeptical of insanity defenses.
In a case 20 years ago the court ruled 8-1 that poor accused criminals have a constitutional right to a psychiatrist if sanity is a key issue in their case. Rehnquist filed the lone dissent to that 1985 decision, writing: “It is highly doubtful that due process requires a state to make available an insanity defense to a criminal defendant, but in any event if such a defense is afforded the burden of proving insanity can be placed on the defendant.”
Arizona assistant attorney general Michael O’Toole told justices in the latest case that “even if the states are required to provide an insanity defense to criminal defendants, this court’s prior decisions make clear that no one particular test is required.”
The Arizona Supreme Court had refused to review the case, and a state appeals court ruled that Clark had no specific evidence to show that he was not capable of knowing he was killing a police officer.
The case is Clark v. Arizona, 05-5966.
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