Casey v. State of Alabama

On February 28, 2025, John Casey was convicted in Alabama state court for the capital murder of three family members. The prosecution presented evidence that Casey, suffering from severe paranoid schizophrenia, meticulously planned the killings during a psychotic episode. Casey's defense argued he was not guilty by reason of insanity, citing his long-documented mental health history and failure to distinguish right from wrong at the time of the crime. The jury rejected the insanity defense, finding that Casey appreciated the criminality of his conduct. The case escalated to appellate courts as Casey challenged Alabama's narrow insanity standard, claiming it violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments by permitting the execution of the severely mentally ill. The trial drew national attention to the intersection of mental illness and capital punishment.

As of the current appellate stage, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld the conviction and death sentence. The Alabama Supreme Court has granted certiorari to review the constitutionality of the state's insanity defense framework and the proportionality of the death sentence. A final ruling is pending.

Whether Alabama's statutory insanity test, which requires a defendant to prove complete incapacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of an act, is unconstitutional when applied to offenders with severe but partial mental illness, and whether executing a person with chronic paranoid schizophrenia constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

The case ignited widespread debate on mental health and the death penalty, prompting advocacy groups to demand legislative reform of Alabama's insanity standards. It intensified national discourse on executing individuals with severe mental disorders, influencing proposed federal legislation to bar capital punishment for those with documented psychotic conditions at the time of their offenses.