Ake v. Oklahoma

US Supreme Court decision of 1985 dealing with the right of indigent defendants to the ‘raw materials’ needed for an adequate defense. The case was an appeal of the conviction of Glen Ake, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, who had been denied psychiatric assistance by the court during his trial. The Supreme Court ruled that Ake had not been granted due process because his unstable condition, which could have been remedied by treatment, had helped to determine his sentence. The case used the same constitutional grounds to require court-appointed psychiatrists for indigent defendants as an earlier decision had to guarantee court-appointed attorneys.