Free Psychiatric Help for Indigent Defendants Ordered by High Court

The Supreme Court extended new constitutional protection Tuesday to indigent criminal defendants, ruling that they are entitled to a psychiatrist at state expense if their sanity will be an issue at trial.

The court, acknowledging the pivotal role psychiatry now often plays in criminal cases, said that such assistance must also be provided at capital-punishment sentencing proceedings in which the issue of whether the defendant is dangerous to society is being argued.

Fair Proceedings

The decision represented a significant addition to court rulings attempting to assure fair proceedings for indigents. Previous holdings, for example, have guaranteed impoverished defendants free legal counsel at trial and on their first appeal. Later this term, the justices will decide whether indigents are entitled to state-paid investigators and fingerprint and ballistics experts in preparing for trial.

Justice Thurgood Marshall, writing the majority opinion in an 8-1 decision, said that there is an “extremely high” risk that often-complex sanity questions would not be correctly decided if defendants were denied a psychiatrist to make independent examinations, present testimony and help the defense prepare to cross-examine prosecution witnesses.

“With such assistance, the defendant is fairly able to present at least enough information to the jury, in a meaningful manner, as to permit it to make a sensible determination,” Marshall said.

Issue of Expense

The court rejected the notion that providing psychiatrists would be too expensive, pointing out that 41 states--including California--as well as the federal court system already give indigent defendants some form of psychiatric assistance.

The attorney who successfully argued the case before the court predicted that the decision would have noticeable impact, even in the states already providing such assistance.

“Judges can be chintzy about providing psychiatric experts, looking at them as a form of ‘grace’ rather than a right,” said Arthur B. Spitzer, legal director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. “Now, they will have to be more careful and therefore more generous, knowing denial could be grounds for reversal of a conviction.”

Spitzer said that the court’s rationale, if applied in other cases, could mean that indigents are constitutionally entitled to other experts--such as handwriting analysts--if such experts are crucial to fair proceedings.

Killed Minister

The justices ordered a new trial for Glen Burton Ake, an Oklahoma man sentenced to death for the 1979 shooting and strangulation murders of a minister and his wife and the attempted murder of their two children during a burglary. The children, who were shot but survived, testified that Ake had said before he turned a .357 magnum pistol on the family that he was “sorry, but I’m in a real jam here--dead men don’t talk.”

Ake was granted free legal counsel but was denied free psychiatric assistance to try to prove that he was legally insane at the time of the crime. He was committed briefly to a mental hospital but was treated and later found competent to stand trial.

The jury convicted Ake, rejecting his sole defense of insanity, in a trial in which the only psychiatrists who testified were for the prosecution. When the prosecution asked for the death penalty, Ake was unable to call any experts who could refute the contention that he was dangerous to society.

In Tuesday’s ruling (Ake vs. Oklahoma, 83-5424), the court concluded that the due process guarantees of the Constitution require the state to provide a competent psychiatrist to an indigent when his sanity at the time of the offense will be a “significant factor” at trial.

In dissent, Justice William H. Rehnquist said he thought that the ruling was “far too broad” and should have been limited to capital punishment cases. He said that indigents should be entitled only to an independent psychiatric “evaluation” and not to a “defense consultant” who would help them prepare a case.

In addition, Rehnquist raised doubt about Ake’s claim of insanity, in light of the brutal nature of the murders--followed by the defendant’s monthlong crime spree through several states, his eventual arrest in Colorado and finally his detailed 44-page confession. There was little evidence of insanity, Rehnquist said, “unless one were to adopt the dubious doctrine that no one in his right mind would commit a murder.”