Court Opinion

ID: 9429916
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:28:16.534839+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:22.125157
License: Public Domain

CHIEF Justice Burger,
concurring in the judgment.
This is a capital case in which the Court is asked to decide whether a State may refuse an indigent defendant “any opportunity whatsoever” to obtain psychiatric evidence for the preparation and presentation of a claim of insanity by way of defense when the defendant’s legal sanity at the time of the offense was “seriously in issue.”
The facts of the case and the question presented confine the actual holding of the Court. In capital cases the finality of the sentence imposed warrants protections that may or may not be required in other cases. Nothing in the Court’s opinion reaches noncapital cases.