Cruelty to the mentally ill: an Eighth Amendment challenge to the abolition of the insanity defense.

This Comment addresses the present gap in insanity-defense laws created by the defense’s abolition and offers an Eighth Amendment based remedy. Part I reviews the history and evolution of the insanity defense in Anglo-American law. It then describes how four states have statutorily abolished the defense. It concludes with a discussion of Clark v. Arizona, the Court’s most recent decision on the constitutionality of the insanity defense. Part II turns to the Eighth Amendment, examining its historical understanding and the contemporary evolving-standards-of-decency analysis, through which the Court assesses the constitutionality of modern-day punishments. Part II concludes with a discussion of Robinson v. California and Powell v. Texas, two non-death-penalty Eighth Amendment decisions that illustrate contrasting approaches to Eighth Amendment