Can a State Abolish the Insanity Defense?
Big-agenda, partisan issues—the census, reapportionment and gerrymandering, the Second Amendment, abortion—are bearing down on the Supreme Court like a ship with black sails. I am not optimistic that a majority will defy Republican orthodoxy on any of these—and if that is correct, the Court will emerge next spring as both a very live political issue and a shadow of its former self.
Not every case is an agenda case, though. On Monday the Court granted certiorari in four new criminal-justice cases that, by and large, lack a strong partisan valence. These cases will involve the Court doing, well, you know, law, and in particular cleaning up some loose ends of its criminal jurisprudence.
Did I mention that they are really, really interesting?
The four cases test:
- Whether a state can make it a state crime for an undocumented immigrant to use a stolen Social Security number that has been used to find a job;
- Whether a state can simply abolish the insanity defense in criminal cases;
- Whether a state jury can convict a criminal defendant by a vote of 11–1 or 10–2, rather than unanimously; and
- Whether Lee Boyd Malvo, one of the most infamous multiple murderers in American history, must receive a new sentencing hearing because he was a juvenile at the time he participated in the
