SUPREME COURT Justices to hear appeal to insanity defense law

It's not known how Chief Justice John Roberts will approach the case.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- How hard can states make it for criminal defendants to prove insanity?
The Supreme Court, jumping into an issue it avoided for nearly two decades under the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, said Monday it would hear an appeal filed on behalf of a teenager who apparently thought he was being pursued by aliens when he killed an Arizona police officer. The justices will take up the case next spring.
The young man's lawyer, 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.
Past cases
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, Justice 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. Justice 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 case
The latest Supreme Court case involves Eric Michael Clark, who was a standout football player and popular student until he started acting bizarrely. In 1999, he began obsessing about the millennium. He ran up his parents' credit cards buying survival supplies and then became convinced that aliens had taken over his town.
Clark, who has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, shot Officer Jeff Moritz in Flagstaff, Ariz., on June 21, 2000. Moritz, a 30-year-old father of a toddler, had pulled Clark over as the 17-year-old drove around his neighborhood in a truck playing loud rap music about 5 a.m.