On Monday The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the capital murder conviction of James Kraig Kahler, who murdered four members of his family in Osage County in November 2009. In a release from Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt says the high court ruled that the Kansas statute for handling evidence of a criminal defendant’s mental disease or defect does not violate the due process of law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. Put another way, the Kansas law governing the “insanity” defense is constitutional.
“Contrary to Kahler’s view, Kansas takes account of mental health at both trial and sentencing,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority opinion. “It has just not adopted the particular insanity defense Kahler would like. That choice is for Kansas to make — and, if it wishes, to remake and remake again as the future unfolds.”
In the 1990s, Kansas adopted a revised form of insanity defense, which is now referred to as the “mental disease or defect” defense. Under Kansas law, a criminal defendant may not be held culpable if he lacks the cognitive capacity to know that his actions violate the law. But, unlike in the majority of states, a criminal defendant in Kansas may be held culpable if he does not understand that his actions, although against the law, are also morally wrong. Kansas is one of five states that does not allow acquittals of defendants who do not recognize that their actions are morally wrong.
The Kansas Supreme Court in February 2018 upheld the Kansas approach. The U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 opinion today affirmed the Kansas Supreme Court’s ruling.
Kahler was convicted of capital murder by an Osage County jury in August 2011 in connection with the 2009 murders in Burlingame of his wife, Karen Kahler, their two teenage daughters, Emily and Lauren, and Karen Kahler’s grandmother, Dorothy Wight. Kahler was sentenced to death by Chief District Court Judge Phillip Fromme in October 2011.
With today’s ruling, Kahler has now exhausted his direct appeals, and his capital murder convictions and death sentence have been affirmed. Further appeals are possible, however, through collateral attacks on the conviction or sentence in both state and federal court.