State of Georgia v. Wierson
What's at Stake
This case asks whether Georgia’s insanity defense statutes can be construed to contain an exception for cases where defendants allegedly triggered their own insanity by discontinuing their medication weeks before the alleged crimes. The State argues for such an exception, even though the text of the insanity defense statutes expressly pins the availability of the defenses to the defendant’s mental condition “at the time of” the alleged crimes. The ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative, along with the ACLU of Georgia, filed an amicus brief arguing that even if the State’s interpretation of the statutory text were reasonable, its argument should still be rejected because it contradicts the rule of lenity. The rule of lenity is a well-established canon of statutory construction requiring that, if a criminal statute can reasonably be interpreted in different ways, courts must adopt the interpretation most favorable to the accused.
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Summary
The defendant in this case, Michelle Wierson, allegedly discontinued the medication that treats her bipolar disorder and then, some weeks later, caused a fatal accident while suffering from the effects of her disorder. Ms. Wierson was criminally charged and pleaded an insanity defense. Both the court-appointed expert and expert retained by the defense agreed that she met the statutory definitions of insanity at the time of the accident. The State challenged Ms. Wierson’s insanity defense by filing a motion for the jury to consider her alleged medication noncompliance when determining her criminal responsibility. The trial court granted the State’s motion to consider medication noncompliance.
Ms. Wierson appealed, and the Court of Appeals held that Ms. Wierson’s medication noncompliance cannot defeat her insanity defense because Georgia’s insanity defense statutes do not contain an exception for medication noncompliance. Instead, the Court explained, those statutes make clear that the availability of the insanity defense hinges on the defendant’s mental condition “at the time of” the alleged crimes. The State appealed this decision to the Georgia Supreme Court.
While the plain statutory text makes clear that the Court of Appeals holding is correct, the ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative and the ACLU of Georgia filed an amicus brief arguing that the rule of lenity further supports the Court of Appeals decision. The rule of lenity provides that if a statute is open to multiple reasonable interpretations, the one most favorable to the accused must be adopted. Our brief argues that, at a minimum, the phrase “at the time of” in the insanity defense statutes can be read to foreclose the possibility of denying those defenses based on the defendant’s conduct at some time before the alleged crime. Because the statutes can be read that way, the rule of lenity requires that they must. We point out that the rule should apply with special force where the State seeks to impose criminal liability on a defendant population comprising people with mental illness.
Our brief further explains that the rule of lenity rests on two important constitutional principles: due process and the separation of powers. The rule of lenity ensures that only legislatures—not courts—create criminal offenses and prescribe their punishments. Not only this, but the rule of lenity ensures that individuals with mental illness are not forced to speculate about whether their medication decisions will trigger increased criminal exposure.