The defense in the Kim Blackhall murder case has informed the Court that it intends to claim that Ms. Blackhall was not criminally responsible for her actions when she allegedly beat her mother to death. This is not a surprise to those of us who live in the North Shore area and have been following the case. Blackhall has a history of severe mental illness. According to her lawyer, Jeffrey Karp, a court-ordered evaluation performed on Blackhall following her arrest concluded that she was not criminally responsible for her actions at the time of the killing. A court psychologist who met with Blackhall prior to her arraignment reached a similar conclusion, saying Blackhall had apparently stopped taking her anti-psychotic medications before the killing.
It will be interesting to see how the Essex County District Attorney's Office will respond.
The United States Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in Clark v. Arizona, No. 05-5966. The first issue the case presents is whether the Constitution requires states to allow an individual to claim that, because of mental defect, he could not know the nature and quality of the crime he is accused of committing. Arizona eliminated that aspect of the insanity defense, permitting individuals only to claim that a mental defect kept them from knowing right from wrong. The second issue is whether a state may strictly limit or eliminate the right of a defendant to offer evidence of mental defect in order to rebut prosecution evidence of intent.
See SCOTUSblog's analysis of the arguments here.
