Case Title: Hill v. State

Citation: 339 So. 2d 1382

Docket Number: 

State: mississippi

Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Date: 1976-12-07T00:00:00Z

Document:
339 So. 2d 1382 (1976) Billy Dale HILL v. STATE of Mississippi. No. 48985. Supreme Court of Mississippi. November 16, 1976. As Modified On Denial of Rehearing December 7, 1976. Lawrence Chandler, Calhoun City, Ottis B. Crocker, Jr., Bruce, James L. Robertson, Greenville, for appellant. A.F. Summer, Atty. Gen. by Ben H. Walley, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee. Before PATTERSON, P.J., and ROBERTSON and BROOM, JJ. *1383 BROOM, Justice, for the Court: Capital murder under Mississippi Code Annotated section 97-3-19(2)(e) (Supp. 1976) was the offense for which Hill was convicted in the Circuit Court of Calhoun County. He appeals from the conviction and death sentence imposed upon him. The indictment charged that on September 5, 1974, he murdered Mrs. Minnie Hamilton while engaged in the commission of the crime of rape. Chief issues relate to: (1) how the trial court is to decide if a defendant is competent to stand trial, (2) how to determine criminal responsibility at the trial on the merits when the defendant pleads insanity, and (3) jury instructions. Upon the record before us, the case must be reversed. The trial court having determined that Hill was an indigent, on September 25, 1974, appointed Ottis B. Crocker, Jr., of *1384 Bruce, Mississippi, and Lawrence Chandler of Calhoun City, Mississippi, to defend Hill. Through his court-appointed attorneys, the defendant filed numerous pre-trial motions, including a motion that he be transferred to the Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield for psychiatric examination. After a hearing, the motion was overruled and a full trial was had on October 10 and 11, 1974. The jury returned a verdict of "Guilty as charged," and the court sentenced the defendant to death in the gas chamber. Before the trial of the defendant, because the state did not resist the motion "that the Court order him transferred to the State Mental Hospital at Whitfield, Mississippi where he may be examined by psychiatrists on the question of his sanity," the circuit court on September 27, 1974, found that the motion was well taken and should be sustained. However, the court, instead of ordering the defendant to be transferred to the Mississippi State Mental Hospital at Whitfield for psychiatric examination, as requested in the motion, merely ordered Hill to be examined by Dr. Charles H. Hubbert, a psychiatrist employed by Region II Mental Health Clinic in Oxford, Mississippi. On September 28, 1974, Dr. Hubbert orally examined the defendant for one hour and fifteen minutes. As to tests administered, Dr. Hubbert testified: Dr. Hubbert did not know the defendant nor had he ever examined or observed him except on this one occasion. He did not talk to any members of the defendant's family, nor did he get any previous history of the defendant's behavior, except what he elicited from the defendant himself in this one hour and fifteen minute interview. On October 2, 1974, the court heard testimony of Ottis B. Crocker, Jr., court-appointed attorney, as to his complete inability to communicate with the defendant and his opinion that the defendant was not capable of helping his attorneys prepare a rational defense to the charge against him. Tommy Hill, Jr., brother of the defendant, and Dorothy Conner, aunt of the defendant, testified as to the defendant's aberrant behavior and conduct. Sheriff Richard E. Mooneyham, Mrs. Edna Byars, jailor at Pittsboro where defendant was confined, and Mrs. June Mooneyham, wife of the sheriff of Calhoun County, who took down the confession of the defendant, all testified that, in their opinion, the defendant knew the difference between right and wrong. Dr. Hubbert's written report, which consisted of four single-spaced typed pages, was filed and considered at this hearing. Dr. Hubbert, in his report, stated that in his opinion the defendant knew the difference between right and wrong. Dr. Hubbert closed his written report with this conclusion and recommendation: *1385 In spite of Dr. Hubbert's recommendation that the defendant undergo further psychiatric examination preferably at a state hospital, the trial court overruled the renewed motion to transfer the defendant to Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield. Assignments of error 7 and 8 were: The overruling of the motion to transfer the defendant to Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield for psychiatric and psychological examination constituted reversible error. Upon the record as it now appears, before the defendant is again tried, he should either be (1) sent to Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield for a careful and thorough examination, or (2) otherwise afforded appropriate and adequate determination of his sanity, and mental competency to conduct a rational defense pursuant to Mississippi Code Annotated § 99-13-11 (1972). Stevenson v. State, 325 So. 2d 113, 117 (Miss. 1975); Robinson v. State, 223 Miss. 70, 77 So. 2d 265 (1955); McGinnis v. State, 241 Miss. 883, 133 So. 2d 399 (1961). While considerable discretion is to be vested in trial judges applying § 99-13-11, in the present case the examination by the psychiatrist was inadequate as demonstrated by the fact that the examining psychiatrist himself testified that further examination of the defendant was needed. This 18-year-old defendant was charged with the commission of a horrible and heinous crime, the crime of murdering an 87-year-old woman by stabbing her five times while committing the crime of rape. Her home had been broken into and her completely nude body was found early the next day in a pool of blood. The defendant could suffer death for this crime; yet the only psychological and psychiatric examination that was made of this defendant was an hour and fifteen minute interview by a psychiatrist who did not know the defendant and had never examined or observed him before. As has been done many times in prior criminal cases where the issue of the defendant's sanity is raised, we are urged to abandon the M'Naghten Rule as to the determination of criminal responsibility. In place of the M'Naghten Rule, we are asked to accept and adopt the rule set forth in 4.01 of the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code (1962). That section would relieve a defendant of responsibility for criminal conduct: Such a rule in effect would provide for the acquittal of those who commit criminal acts and assert that they did such act or acts because of so-called uncontrollable urges or irresistible impulses. Though the M'Naghten Rule may not be a perfect means to test criminal responsibility, as this Court (including this writer) has said before, it is the safest of the rules proposed. M'Naghten better protects society's needs than the American Law Institute's proposed rule, supra, which the court has examined in earlier cases and found to be unsatisfactory. In making our decision we have carefully read and considered the views expressed in United States v. Freeman, 357 F.2d 606 (2d Cir.1966), and do not consider it persuasive. Language in that opinion which says of M'Naghten that "the expert is thereby compelled to test guilt or innocence by a concept which bears little relationship to reality" is simply not an expression of logic. Though M'Naghten may have had "Victorian origins" as said in Freeman, supra, we reject the thesis that it is not "grounded in reason" though admittedly the subjective *1386 aspects of sanity or insanity present difficult problems. In Assignment of Error No. 26, the defendant contends that the trial court erred when it refused to grant these instructions: Mississippi Code Annotated section 99-13-7 (1972) is the statutory authority for the giving of these instructions. That section provides: Upon a retrial of this case, instructions embodying these statutory directions should be granted. Defendant also contends that Mississippi's capital murder statutes [Mississippi Code Annotated sections 97-3-19, 97-3-21 and 99-17-20 (Supp. 1976)] are unconstitutional. Defendant's contentions were specifically answered and decided adversely to the contentions of defendant in Jackson v. State, 337 So. 2d 1242, Miss., in an opinion handed down October 5, 1976. We adhere to our opinion in Jackson. We have carefully considered the other assignments of error and find them to be without merit or not likely to recur on a retrial of this case. The judgment of the trial court is reversed and this cause remanded for a new trial. This case was considered by a conference of the Judges en banc. REVERSED AND REMANDED. GILLESPIE, C.J., and SMITH, SUGG, WALKER and LEE, JJ., concur. PATTERSON and INZER, P. JJ., and ROBERTSON, J., specially concur. ROBERTSON, Justice (specially concurring): I concur in this opinion in every respect, except in our continued adherence to the archaic, outmoded and illogically limited M'Naghten rule. I feel that this is the case and this is the time for this Court to abandon the M'Naghten rule (that a defendant is criminally responsible if he knew the difference between right and wrong at the time he committed the offense) and adopt the more modern and enlightened rule set forth in Section 4.01 of the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code (1962). The *1387 United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in adopting this rule, said: I was impressed with this reasoning of the Court of Appeals in United States v. Freeman, supra: The court continues: The Court continued: The "mental defect" concept set forth in Section 4.01 supra, has been a part of the statutory law of Mississippi for many years (since 1920), in everything but name only. Mississippi Code Annotated section 99-13-9 (1972) provides: The term "feeble-mindedness" used in Sec. 99-13-9 and other statutes under Chapter 13, styled Insanity Proceedings, means, in modern parlance, "mental retardation". So Sec. 99-13-9 could be read as authorizing acquittal on the ground of mental retardation. Now re-read the standard set forth in section 4.01: I think that the jury should be informed of any mental disease or mental defect that a psychiatrist or psychologist has found in the defendant, even though the testimony *1389 might fall short of proving the defendant insane, or that he didn't know the difference between right and wrong. The courts of New Hampshire, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and Idaho have abandoned the M'Naghten rule. Arizona, Minnesota and Hawaii have severely criticized it. The M'Naghten rule was abolished by statute in Illinois, Maryland, Montana, Missouri, New York, and Vermont. The Federal judiciary has been unanimous in its rejection of the M'Naghten rule. The time has come for Mississippi to join her sister states in abandoning this archaic, outmoded and unreasonably limited formula for testing criminal responsibility. PATTERSON and INZER, P. JJ., concur in this opinion.