Indiana v. Davis: revisiting due process rights of permanently incompetent defendants

With its landmark Jackson v. Indiana (406 U.S. 715 (1972)) decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled that states may not indefinitely confine criminal defendants solely on the basis of incompetence to stand trial. While this decision led to widespread state statutory and procedural changes, the Jackson court left unresolved whether states could indefinitely maintain criminal charges against incompetent defendants. Nearly four decades after the Jackson decision, the Indiana Supreme Court finally revisited this question in Indiana v. Davis (898 N.E.2d. 281 (Ind. 2008)), unanimously ruling that holding criminal charges over the head of a permanently incompetent defendant, when her pretrial confinement extended beyond the maximum period of any sentence the trial court could impose, violated the basic notions of fundamental fairness embodied in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In this analysis of Indiana v. Davis, the facts of the case and the court's rationale for its decision are discussed. This unique ruling is considered in light of the questions resolved and still unanswered since Jackson v. Indiana.