Can mentally ill defendant forfeit right to defend himself?
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WASHINGTON - Several U.S. Supreme Court justices suggested Wednesday that defendants with a history of mental illness can be judged competent to stand trial or plead guilty, yet forfeit their constitutional right to represent themselves.
The court heard arguments in a case from Indiana in which a judge prevented a defendant from acting as his own lawyer at trial out of concern that the proceedings would be unfair.
Justice Stephen Breyer said that allowing judges' discretion in those cases could increase public confidence in the criminal justice system and reduce the number of "very disturbed people ending up in prison because they are disturbed, not because they're guilty."
The justices appeared to be concerned with the difficulty trial judges would face if forced to allow mentally ill defendants to represent themselves. Even if a judge could step in once the trial had started and order a lawyer to mount a defense, "the damage is done" by that point, Justice David Souter said.
Mark Stancil -- representing Ahmad Edwards, who was found to be schizophrenic but later convicted in a shooting at an Indianapolis store -- said that once a judge decides that someone can be tried, "I think you have to give him a chance to stand up in open court."
After all, Stancil said, Edwards could have entered a guilty plea without raising any constitutional concerns. Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher said the right to self-representation is not absolute.
A decision is expected by summer.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Sick
Do people really have this level of misunderstanding about mental illness? Schizophrenics do not belong in prison. Thought disorders are … read more brain chemistry disorders, the sufferers have as little control over this as someone with cancer or diabetes. This is all the result of tossing the seriously mentally ill out on the street and expecting them to do OK. These cases do not need to go to criminal court, the system needs to deem them mentally ill and dangerous and place them appropriately.
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