Psychiatric Help

The vote was 8 to 1, and the majority opinion was cast in the sort of expansive language not usually found in the fractionated Supreme Court of late. "A criminal trial is fundamentally unfair," wrote Justice Thurgood Marshall, "if the state proceeds against an indigent defendant without making certain that he has access to the raw materials integral to the building of an effective defense." Specifically, said the court, defendants who plead not guilty by reason of insanity are entitled to a psychiatrist's help in preparing and presenting their cases.

The decision overturned the conviction and death sentence of Glen Burton Ake, who killed a minister and his wife in Oklahoma in 1979 at the start of a monthlong crime spree. Ake pleaded insanity and asked for a psychiatric examination to evaluate his mental state at the time of the crime. The state refused and unsuccessfully argued before the Supreme Court that providing psychiatrists would prove too costly. Ake now faces a new trial. The wider effect of the court's ruling was not immediately clear. Forty-two states as well as the Federal Government already make psychiatrists available to poor defendants in certain circumstances.

Criminal-law experts are unsurprised by the seemingly liberal thrust of the decision. "I would have been surprised if they had gone the other way," says University of Chicago Law Professor Philip Kurland. The right of everyone to an effective defense is endorsed by virtually all political factions, notes Yale Kamisar of the University of Michigan Law School. "People dig in their heels only when protections are extended that appear to handcuff police search and confession procedures."

While focusing on the right to psychiatric help, Marshall's opinion hinted that states may be required to provide poor defendants with other experts. Ballistics specialists, for example. Nor did Marshall restrict aid to indigents accused of crimes carrying the death penalty. Chief Justice Warren Burger, in a concurring opinion, would have made such a distinction, guaranteeing psychiatric aid only for capital cases.

The lone dissenter, Justice William Rehnquist, criticized the decision as "too broad," giving poor defendants what amounts to a new "defense advocate." An indigent may be entitled "to an independent psychiatric evaluation," wrote Rehnquist, but "not to a defense consultant." Kamisar found Rehnquist's dissent "the surprising thing about this case. He could have concurred but said the right should be limited to capital cases or to cases when a showing of psychiatric need has been made. But he dissented instead." Chided Kamisar: "He's determined to show he's the Clint Eastwood of the Supreme Court."