Finger v. State

*550OPINION

By the Court,

Becker, J.:

In April of 1996, appellant Frederick Finger was charged with one count of open murder with the use of a deadly weapon. Finger was accused of murdering his mother, Franziska Brassaw, by stabbing her in the head with a kitchen knife. Finger intended to assert legal insanity as a defense. However, at the time of his arraignment, the district court denied Finger’s request to enter a plea of “not guilty by reason of insanity” as that plea had been abolished by the 1995 Nevada Legislature. Subsequently, Finger entered a plea of guilty but mentally ill to a charge of…