When the state Supreme Court denied earlier this year an Iraq War veteran’s plea to allow an insanity defense in his Altoona murder trial, Justice Seamus P. McCaffery promised a dissenting statement would follow, and he delivered late last month with a commentary on how the court should recognize a likely increase in veterans with PTSD coming through the courts.
“While this court has not often been called upon to exercise plenary jurisdiction over the denial of a criminal defendant’s right to present a particular defense to capital murder charges, there is ample reason to anticipate that when members of our armed forces return from combat duty and are charged with the commission of criminal offenses, there will be an increased incidence of an accused’s seeking to present an insanity defense based upon mental infirmities related to his or her military service,” McCaffery said in his five-page dissent in Commonwealth v. Horner .
