The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal of an Arizona insanity case. In that case, the defendant argued, inter alia, that : (1) his Due Process rights were infringed because Arizona's insanity law does not exculpate where a defendant does not know "the nature and quality of his acts" (this is the first prong of the famed M'Naghten test); and (2) his due process rights were violated when the trial court did not hear certain allegedly exculpatory evidence that would show that he did not have the requisite mens rea for the crime due to his mental illness.
SCOTUS blog posts here, and the Volokh Conspiracy posts with comments here and here, and offers this link to the unpublished Arizona court of appeals decision where key language starts around p.15. The cert petition is available on Westlaw at 2005 WL 3295166.
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