Defendant acquitted by reason of insanity can’t be retried, despite inconsistency, SCOTUS rules in Jackson opinion

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Defendant acquitted by reason of insanity can’t be retried, despite inconsistency, SCOTUS rules in Jackson opinion

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 21, 2024, 3:13 pm CST

The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that Georgia can’t retry a defendant who was found not guilty of malice murder by reason of insanity, even though the verdict was inconsistent with jury findings on other charges.

“The jury’s verdict constituted an acquittal for double jeopardy purposes, and an acquittal is an acquittal notwithstanding its apparent inconsistency with other verdicts that the jury may have rendered,” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court in a Feb. 21 decision.

The defendant, Damian McElrath, was accused of malice murder, felony murder and aggravated assault for the 2012 killing of his adoptive mother. McElrath was diagnosed with schizophrenia during a two-week hospitalization, and he killed his mother one week after his discharge.

McElrath told police that he killed his mother because he thought that she was poisoning his food. Jurors found McElrath not guilty by reason of insanity for malice murder. But on the other charges, jurors found McElrath guilty but mentally ill. The assault conviction was a predicate for felony murder and merged into the felony murder conviction.

A defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity in Georgia if, at the time of the crime, he did not have mental capacity to distinguish between right and wrong or he committed the crime because of a delusional compulsion to act that overcame his will to resist committing the crime. A defendant acquitted on this basis is committed to a state mental health facility until a court determines he may be released.

A defendant who is found guilty but mentally ill may, at the discretion of the corrections department, be referred for mental health treatment.

The verdicts were inconsistent because they required different mental states that can’t exist at the same time, the Georgia Supreme Court said.

The state supreme court determined that both murder verdicts should be set aside under the state’s repugnancy doctrine, which says a verdict can be set aside if it involves affirmative findings by the jury that are not legally and logically possible. The state supreme court authorized a retrial on all charges.

The Supreme Court rejected Georgia’s reasoning and held that McElrath can’t be retried on the malice murder charge.

“Georgia is mistaken,” Jackson wrote. “Once there has been an acquittal, our cases prohibit any speculation about the reasons for a jury’s verdict—even when there are specific jury findings that provide a factual basis for such speculation. … We simply cannot know why the jury in McElrath’s case acted as it did, and the double jeopardy clause forbids us to guess.”

On remand, the Supreme Court said in a footnote, Georgia courts can address the status of McElrath’s vacated felony murder conviction under state law.

Bloomberg Law and the Equal Justice Initiative covered the decision, while SCOTUSblog covered the opinion announcement on its live blog. The Washington Post had previous coverage of the case.