No person having a mental illness or cognitive impairment so as to be incapable of understanding the proceedings or making a defense shall be tried, sentenced, or punished for any crime; but the person shall not be excused from criminal liability except upon proof that at the time of committing the alleged criminal act the person was laboring under such a defect of reason, from one of these causes, as not to know the nature of the act, or that it was wrong.
Minn. Stat. § 611.026
CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY OF PERSONS WITH A MENTAL ILLNESS OR COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT.
Known as the Incarceration and Exoneration Remedies Act
The act spans §§ 611–611 (61 sections).
Applied in 52 court decisions — leading case Clark v. Arizona (2006)
Most recently applied in 140 S. Ct. 1021 - Kahler v. Kansas (March 2020)
(9915) RL s 4756; 1971 c 352 s 1; 1986 c 444; 2013 c 59 art 3 s 18
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Reproduced from public-domain Minnesota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.