Clark v. Arizona

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Clark v. Arizona

Argued April 19, 2006
Decided June 29, 2006

Full case name:	Eric Michael Clark v. State of Arizona
Docket #:	05-5966

Citations:	548 U.S. 735; 126 S.Ct. 2709; 2006 U.S. LEXIS 5184; 2006 WL 1764372

Prior history:	Defendant convicted, Coconino County Superior Court, Sept. 3, 2003; affirmed, Ariz. Ct. App., Jan. 25, 2005; review denied, Ariz., May 25, 2005; cert. granted, 126 S. Ct. 797 (2005)

Holding

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. The state could also constitutionally limit a defendant's evidence of mental defect to only what is relevant to that insanity test, even when mens rea is an element of the charged crime. Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed.

Court membership

Chief Justice: John Glover Roberts, Jr.
Associate Justices: John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito

Case opinions

Majority by: Souter
Joined by: Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito; Breyer except parts III-B, III-C, and ultimate disposition
Concurrence/dissent by: Breyer
Dissent by: Kennedy
Joined by: Stevens, Ginsburg

Laws applied

U.S. Const. amend. XIV; Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 13-502(A)

Clark v. Arizona, 548 U.S. 735 (2006), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, in which the Court upheld the constitutionality of the insanity defense used by the State of Arizona. The ruling affirmed the murder conviction of a man with paranoid schizophrenia, for the killing of a police officer. The man had argued that his inability to understand the nature of his acts at the time they were committed should be a sufficient basis for an insanity defense. Arizona only allows an insanity defense if a defendant is unable to tell right from wrong.