Clark v. Arizona

• Decision Date: 29 June 2006
• Docket Number: No. 05–5966.,05–5966.
• Citation: 126 S.Ct. 2709,165 L.Ed.2d 842,74 USLW 4560,548 U.S. 735
• Parties: Eric Michael CLARK, Petitioner, v. ARIZONA.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

548 U.S. 735

126 S.Ct. 2709

165 L.Ed.2d 842

74 USLW 4560

Eric Michael CLARK, Petitioner,

v.ARIZONA.

No. 05–5966.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued April 19, 2006.

Decided June 29, 2006.

Syllabus^*

Petitioner Clark was charged with first-degree murder under an Arizona statute prohibiting “[i]nten[tionally] or knowing[ly]” killing a police officer in the line of duty. At his bench trial, Clark did not contest that he shot the officer or that the officer died, but relied on his own undisputed paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the incident to deny that he had the specific intent to shoot an officer or knowledge that he was doing so. Accordingly, the prosecutor offered circumstantial evidence that Clark knew the victim was a police officer and testimony indicating that Clark had previously stated he wanted to shoot police and had lured the victim to the scene to kill him. In presenting the defense case, Clark claimed mental illness, which he sought to introduce for two purposes. First, he raised the affirmative defense of insanity, putting the burden on himself to prove by clear and convincing evidence that, in the words of another state statute, “at the time of the [crime, he] was afflicted with a mental disease or defect of such severity that [he] did not know the criminal act was wrong.” Second, he aimed to rebut the prosecution's evidence of the requisite mens rea, that he had acted intentionally or knowingly to kill an officer.

Ruling that Clark could not rely on evidence bearing on insanity to dispute the mens rea, the trial court cited the Arizona Supreme Court's decision in State v. Mott, 187 Ariz. 536, 931 P.2d 1046, which refused to allow psychiatric testimony to negate specific intent and held that Arizona does not allow evidence of a mental disorder short of insanity to negate the mens rea element of a crime. As to his insanity, then, Clark presented lay testimony describing his increasingly bizarre behavior over the year before the shooting. Other lay and expert testimony indicated, among other things, that Clark thought that “aliens” (some impersonating government agents) were trying to kill him and that bullets were the only way to stop them. A psychiatrist testified that Clark was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia with delusions about “aliens” when he killed the officer, and concluded that Clark was incapable of luring the officer or understanding right from wrong and was thus insane at the time of the killing. In rebuttal, the State's psychiatrist gave his opinion that Clark's paranoid schizophrenia did not keep him from appreciating the wrongfulness of his conduct before and after the shooting. The judge then issued a first-degree murder verdict, finding that in light of the facts of the crime, the expert evaluations, Clark's actions and behavior both before and after the shooting, and the observations of those who knew him, Clark had not established that his schizophrenia distorted his perception of reality so severely that he did not know his actions were wrong.

Clark moved to vacate the judgment and life sentence, arguing, among other things, that Arizona's insanity test and its Mott rule each violate due process. He claimed that the Arizona Legislature had impermissibly narrowed its insanity standard in 1993 when it eliminated the first of the two parts of the traditional M'Naghten insanity test. The trial court denied the motion. Affirming, the Arizona Court of Appeals held, among other things, that the State's insanity scheme was consistent with due process. The court read Mott as barring the trial court's consideration of evidence of Clark's mental illness and capacity directly on the element of mens rea.

Held:

1. Due process does not prohibit Arizona's use of an insanity test stated solely in terms of the capacity to tell whether an act charged as a crime was right or wrong. Pp. 2718–2724.

(a) The first part of the landmark English rule in M'Naghten's Case asks about cognitive capacity: whether a mental defect leaves a defendant unable to understand what he was doing. The second part presents an ostensibly alternative basis for recognizing a defense of insanity understood as a lack of moral capacity: whether a mental disease or defect leaves a defendant unable to understand that his action was wrong. Although the Arizona Legislature at first adopted the full M'Naghten statement, it later dropped the cognitive incapacity part. Under current Arizona law, a defendant will not be adjudged insane unless he demonstrates that at the time of the crime, he was afflicted with a mental disease or defect of such severity that he did not know the criminal act was wrong. Pp. 2718–2719.

(b) Clark insists that the side-by-side M'Naghten test represents the minimum that a government must provide, and he argues that eliminating the first part “ ‘offends [a] principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental,’ ” Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197, 202, 97 S.Ct. 2319, 53 L.Ed.2d 281. The claim entails no light burden, and Clark does not carry it. History shows no deference to M'Naghten that could elevate its formula to the level of fundamental principle, so as to limit the traditional recognition of a State's capacity to define crimes and defenses. See, e.g., Patterson, supra, at 210, 97 S.Ct. 2319. Even a cursory examination of the traditional Anglo–American approaches to insanity reveals significant differences among them, with four traditional strains variously combined to yield a diversity of American standards. Although 17 States and the Federal Government have adopted recognizable versions of the M'Naghten test with both its components, other States have adopted a variety of standards based on all or part of one or more of four variants. The alternatives are multiplied further by variations in the prescribed insanity verdict. This varied background makes clear that no particular formulation has evolved into a baseline for due process, and that the insanity rule, like the conceptualization of criminal offenses, is substantially open to state choice. Pp. 2719–2722.

(c) Nor does Arizona's abbreviation of the M'Naghten statement raise a proper claim that some constitutional minimum has been shortchanged. Although Arizona's former statement of the full M'Naghten rule was constitutionally adequate, the abbreviated rule is no less so, for cognitive incapacity is relevant under that statement, just as it was under the more extended formulation, and evidence going to cognitive incapacity has the same significance under the short form as it had under the long. Though Clark is correct that applying the moral incapacity test (telling right from wrong) does not necessarily require evaluation of a defendant's cognitive capacity to appreciate the nature and quality of the acts charged against him, his argument fails to recognize that cognitive incapacity is itself enough to demonstrate moral incapacity, so that evidence bearing on whether the defendant knew the nature and quality of his actions is both relevant and admissible. In practical terms, if a defendant did not know what he was doing when he acted, he could not have known that he was performing the wrongful act charged as a crime. The Arizona appeals court acknowledged as much in this case. Clark adopted this very analysis in the trial court, which apparently agreed when it admitted his cognitive incapacity evidence for consideration under the State's moral incapacity formulation. Clark can point to no evidence bearing on insanity that was excluded. Pp. 2722–2724.

2. The Arizona Supreme Court's Mott rule does not violate due process. Pp. 2724–2737.

(a) Mott held that testimony of a professional psychologist or psychiatrist about a defendant's mental incapacity owing to mental disease or defect was admissible, and could be considered, only for its bearing on an insanity defense, but could not be considered on the element of mens rea. Of the three categories of evidence that potentially bear on mens rea—(1) everyday “observation evidence” either by lay or expert witnesses of what Clark did or said, which may support the professional diagnoses of disease and in any event is the kind of evidence that can be relevant to show what was on Clark's mind when he fired his gun; 2) “mental-disease evidence,” typically from professional psychologists or psychiatrists based on factual reports, professional observations, and tests about Clark's mental disease, with features described by the witness; and (3) “capacity evidence,” typically by the same experts, about Clark's capacity for cognition and moral judgment (and ultimately also his capacity to form mens rea )— Mott imposed no restriction on considering evidence of the first sort, but applies to the latter two. Although the trial court seems to have applied the Mott restriction to all three categories of evidence Clark offered for the purpose of showing what he called his inability to form the required mens rea, his objection to Mott's application does not turn on the distinction between lay and expert witnesses or the kinds of testimony they were competent to present. Rather, the issue here is Clark's claim that the Mott rule violates due process. Pp. 2724–2729.

(b) Clark's Mott challenge turns on the application of the presumption of innocence in criminal cases, the presumption of sanity, and the principle that a criminal defendant is entitled to present relevant and favorable evidence on an element of the offense charged against him. Pp. 2729–2732.

(i) The presumption of innocence is that a defendant is innocent unless and until the government proves beyond a reasonable doubt each element of the offense charged, including the mental element or mens rea. The modern tendency is to describe the mens rea required to prove particular offenses in specific terms, as shown in the Arizona statute requiring the State to prove that...