In this week’s “Elon Law Now” series, Professor Michael Rich explains Texas requirements to establish legal insanity in the context of the recently concluded trial of Eddie Ray Routh, the man who shot and killed Chris Kyle, subject of the recent Oscar-nominated film American Sniper, and his friend Chad Littlefield at a Texas shooting range.
“Routh admitted to shooting the two men, but argued that he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. Routh’s explanations for why he killed the two men in particular raised the specter of mental illness. At different times, he said he shot the men because they wouldn’t speak to him, because they tried to ‘force feed’ him, and because Littlefield wasn’t shooting at the shooting range where the killings occurred. Routh also told a psychiatrist that he believed that Kyle and Littlefield were ‘pig assassins’ sent to kill him. Yet after the shooting he said, ‘I just shot two guys; that’s terrible.’ Routh was, in Kyle’s own words, ‘straight up nuts.’
“But there is quite some distance from mental illness to legal insanity. Under Texas law, to avoid conviction Routh had to show not only that he suffered from ‘a severe mental disease or defect’ but also that he did not know that shooting Kyle and Littlefield was wrong. That’s hard to do, in large part because a mentally ill person’s mind is so disordered. He may have simultaneously believed that he was defending himself from ‘pig assassins’ and that what he did was ‘terrible.’
“The jury had perhaps an impossible task of applying a bright-line test – did Routh know that what he did was wrong? – to a confused mind incapable of logic. But we may take a little comfort from studies that have shown that juries don’t really understand tests for legal insanity anyway, and simply apply their own sense of justice to the case in front of them.”
A USA Today report on the trial, including video excerpts, is available here.
Information about Elon Law professor and criminal law expert Michael Rich is available here.
“Elon Law Now” is a weekly series of commentary and analysis about current legal news by members of the faculty at Elon Law. Prior “Elon Law Now” commentary is available here.