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Timestamp: 2016-12-09 21:24:28
Document Index: 501922519

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 3637', '§ 14', '§ 14', '§ 14', '§ 14', '§ 14', '§ 14', '§ 3637']

| Government of Virgin Islands v. Fredericks
Government of Virgin Islands v. Fredericks
filed as amended june 7 1978.: April 24, 1978.
GOVERNMENT OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS, APPELLEE,v.IVAR FREDERICKS, APPELLANT
APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS DIVISION OF ST. CROIX D.C. Crim. No. 77-44-1.
Adams, Rosenn and Hunter, Circuit Judges; Adams, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
In the early hours of the morning of March 7, 1977, Fredericks drove to a dilapidated house, owned by his brother, in Christiansted, St. Croix. Defendant had been drinking before he arrived at the building. The house was then temporarily occupied by some of his brother's acquaintances.
The Defendant shall be entitled to a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, if, at the time of the alleged criminal conduct, the Defendant, as a result of mental illness or mental defect, lacked substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.*fn1
The dissent argues that the Virgin Islands statute on insanity was constructed around the Durham rule enunciated in Durham v. United States, 94 U.S. App. D.C. 228, 214 F.2d 862 (1954). The statute was apparently influenced by the "product test" of Durham which was rejected in the Currens opinion, see 290 F.2d at 771-774. While of course this court cannot supplant the Virgin Islands statute with its own notions of the insanity defense, we do not read the Currens test as being fundamentally at odds with the statute.*fn2 This court has given some indication that the Currens test may properly be used in the Virgin Islands. See Government of the Virgin Islands v. Bellott, 495 F.2d 1393, 1397-98 & n.3 (3d Cir. 1974). Both parties to this appeal seem to have accepted the trial judge's use of Currens language; no objection was raised at trial, and neither party has briefed or argued this issue on appeal. In light of these circumstances, we do not believe that the charge given to the Fredericks jury contained a fundamental error which this court should raise sua sponte. See F.R. Crim. P. 30; Government of the Virgin Islands v. Navarro, 513 F.2d 11, 16 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 422 U.S. 1045, 45 L. Ed. 2d 698, 95 S. Ct. 2662 (1975). We shall therefore consider the contentions of the appellant in the context of the charge actually given to the jury.
After the charge had been given, defendant objected to the omission of his requested instruction. In overruling the objection, the judge commented, "That is argument and not instructions."
Defendant argues that the instruction he requested was necessary to avoid jury confusion over the correlation of the medical labels used by expert witnesses to describe his mental condition and the legal definition of "insanity." At trial, much of the examination and cross-examination of the medical experts dealt with the appropriate label to attach to defendant's condition.*fn2a Currens emphasized that the medical label used by experts is not determinative on the issue of insanity; the jury has an independent role in determining criminal responsibility based on its weighing of all evidence, expert and lay, of the defendant's mental condition before and after the acts charged. 290 F.2d at 772-75. Defendant contends that, without the definition he proposed, the jury had no basis except the medical labels on which to make a determination of whether defendant suffered from a mental disease or defect.
Further, even if the contents of the requested instruction were not substantially covered by the charge to the Fredericks' jury - specifically the fixing of a medico-legal definition of mental disease or defect as an "abnormal condition of the mind which substantially affects mental or emotional processes" - we do not believe that such a charge should be mandated. The proposed instruction would not illuminate the charge given and could conceivably confuse the jurors in their application of it. We do not think it self-evident that the concepts of "mental or emotional processes" and "behavior controls" would be more intelligible to a jury than the concept now embodied in Currens of a mental disease or defect which deprives defendant of the substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. Additionally, the evidence adduced during the Fredericks' trial did not bear closely on these terms of the requested charge. Indeed, we are not convinced that this specification of psychiatric terminology is correct in light of current (let alone future) psychiatric thought.
We also believe that requiring that defendant's proposed instruction be given would conflict with the responsibility of the jury in considering an insanity defense. As this court indicated in the Currens opinion, the decision of whether a defendant is affected by a mental disease or defect rests with the jury's evaluation of all lay and medical evidence in the case. 290 F.2d at 772-74. See Government of the Virgin Islands v. Bellott, supra, 495 F.2d at 1397-98; United States v. Collins, 491 F.2d 1050 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 857, 42 L. Ed. 2d 90, 95 S. Ct. 104 (1974); Blake v. United States, 407 F.2d 908, 913 (5th Cir. 1969) (en banc). The requested instruction, insofar as not covered by the Currens charge, directs the jury to trial testimony given in terms of "mental or emotional processes" and "behavior controls" as the determinate of this decision. The definition of mental disease or defect is essentially a factual, medical question, not a legal issue. The court should not encroach upon the jury's function of resolving possibly competing psychiatric views of this definition.
The first appearance of the sort of instruction requested by defendant was in McDonald v. United States, 114 U.S. App. D.C. 120, 312 F.2d 847 (1962) (en banc). At that time the District of Columbia court was following the insanity test of Durham v. United States, 94 U.S. App. D.C. 228, 214 F.2d 862 (1954), which required the jury to determine whether the acts charged were the "product" of a mental disease or defect.*fn3 In McDonald, the court noted that its experience under Durham had shown that a " judicial definition" of disease or defect was needed to emphasize that "neither the court nor the jury is bound by ad hoc definitions or conclusions as to what experts state is a disease or defect." 114 U.S. App. D.C. 120, 312 F.2d at 851.
The American Law Institute in its Model Penal Code and this court in its decision in Currens similarly noted the problems of vagueness in the Durham "product" test. Instead of attempting to define more closely the term "mental disease or defect," both the Institute and this court departed from Durham.*fn4 The ALI formulated a rule which depends on whether the defendant, as a result of a mental disease or defect, either lacks the substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness or criminality of his conduct or lacks the substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.*fn5 This court's rule in Currens was derived in part from the ALI's test. 290 F.2d at 774 n.32.
The approach of the ALI and this circuit, which has omitted the McDonald definition of mental disease or defect, is now widely accepted among federal courts.*fn6 Although some of these courts have discussed the criticism of the Durham test raised in McDonald, they have assumed that the ALI test would eliminate the problem.*fn7
The sole exception currently is the District of Columbia court. When that court adopted the ALI standard, it ruled that the McDonald definition should be retained to cure the "inherent ambiguity" of the term "mental disease or defect." United States v. Brawner, 153 U.S. App. D.C. 1, 471 F.2d 969, 983-84 (1972) (en banc). As we mentioned above, we do not find inherently ambiguous the concept of a mental disease or defect which deprives defendant of the substantial ability to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. We therefore agree with the majority of circuits which have not inserted the McDonald instruction into the ALI test. We hold that under a Currens charge as was given in this case, the trial judge was not required to give the instruction requested by Fredericks on the "legal definition" of mental disease or defect.
Defendant's second claim is that the trial judge improperly refused to inform the jury during instructions of the consequences of a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. Following such a verdict, the defendant faces mandatory commitment proceedings under 5 V.I.C. § 3637(a).*fn8
The court ruled that the question would be given. The trial judge expressed two reasons for his decision. First, if a juror disagreed with the idea of institutional confinement, he might be unwilling to assent to an insanity verdict. Next, the judge expressed his concern over the common misapprehension that an insanity verdict allows defendant to go free.*fn9 The judge therefore made the following statement to the array from which all of Fredericks' jurors were selected:
In this appeal defendant argues that the instruction informing the jury of the consequences of a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity should be given to insure that jurors do not labor under the misapprehension that the defendant would go free after such a verdict. Defendant contends that jurors, from common knowledge, know the general consequences of the verdicts of guilty and not guilty but often carry with them into deliberations a misunderstanding of the consequences of an insanity verdict. He concludes that, if jurors wrongly believe that an insane and possibly dangerous defendant will be released after a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, they will feel constrained by fear for the public safety to return a guilty verdict. Fredericks relies on cases in the District of Columbia*fn10 and in a growing number of states*fn11 which require that an instruction substantially like the one requested be given.*fn12
We first note that, for the Virgin Islands, this argument is not foreclosed by our decision in United States v. Alvarez, 519 F.2d 1036 (3d Cir. 1975). That case held that, in federal prosecutions in this circuit, the trial judge may properly refuse to give an instruction dealing with the consequences of an insanity verdict. We pointed out that, except in the District of Columbia, there is no federal law requiring commitment proceedings for a defendant found not guilty by reasons of insanity.*fn13 We therefore concluded that it would be misleading in a federal prosecution to inform the jurors that an insane defendant would be committed. Id. at 1047-48.
Resolution of this issue poses a difficult balance of the functions of the judge and jury. It is clear that the consequences following any verdict are solely a matter for the judge and for the legislature. What is done with defendant after any verdict should not in the slightest affect the decision of the jury on whether that defendant is guilty or innocent. See, e.g., United States v. McCracken, 488 F.2d 406, 425 (5th Cir. 1974); Lyles v. United States, 103 U.S. App. D.C. 22, 254 F.2d 725, 728 (1957) (en banc), cert. denied 356 U.S. 961, 2 L. Ed. 2d 1067, 78 S. Ct. 997 (1958).
Nonetheless, the requested instruction on the consequences of the insanity verdict presents a unique situation where there may be a common misunderstanding, not of the particulars of the result of a verdict, but of the nature of the verdict itself.*fn14 The words "not guilty" contained in the insanity verdict invoke the idea that a potentially dangerous defendant will be unconditionally released after trial, while in fact he faces mandatory corrective proceedings. A juror who feels that a verdict importing freedom for defendant will endanger the community might, out of his sense of social responsibility, be swayed from rational deliberation and be unwilling to weigh properly the evidence of defendant's mental condition. See, e.g., United States v. Grimes, 137 U.S. App. D.C. 184, 421 F.2d 1119, 1125 (1969), cert. denied, 398 U.S. 932, 26 L. Ed. 2d 98, 90 S. Ct. 1831 (1970); Commonwealth v. Mutina, 366 Mass. 810, 323 N.E.2d 294 (1975). This type of problem arises solely with respect to the insanity verdict.
To accept defendant's reasoning, however, would be a substantial departure from the usual rules for allocating responsibility between the judge and jury. See, e.g., United States v. McCracken, 488 F.2d 406, 423 (5th Cir. 1974); United States v. Borum, 464 F.2d 896, 901 (10th Cir. 1972). He asks, in effect, that we assume that the jury will disregard its instructions to ignore the consequences of its verdict and then allow erroneous extraneous information to affect its judgment. The cure proposed is to give the jury the correct information, which it should then be instructed to ignore.
Further, we note that accepting this reasoning could be prejudicial to a criminal defendant. A juror who is convinced that a defendant is dangerous, but who believes that he did not in fact commit the acts charged, might be willing to compromise on a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity rather than insist on an acquittal. See, e.g., State v. Wallace, 333 A.2d 72, 78 (Me. 1975); People v. Adams, 26 N.Y.2d 129, 257 N.E.2d 610, 614, 309 N.Y.S.2d 145, 151, cert. denied, 399 U.S. 931, 90 S. Ct. 2262, 26 L. Ed. 2d 800 (1970).
The premise of defendant's argument is not that the judge made an erroneous statement of the law, but rather that he failed to rebut a misconception possibly held by jurors before they entered the courtroom. In this case, however, each juror was informed during voir dire questioning that the defendant must be civilly committed after a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. This information was given upon defendant's request for the express purpose of informing the jurors of these consequences. Thus, whatever the belief of the jurors before their involvement with this case, all of them were told the correct knowledge from an authoritative source before the trial began.*fn15
We therefore find no prejudice to defendant in this case. Even if the judge did commit an error in failing to give the instruction, the error would have been harmless. We have no doubts that the jury reached its verdict based solely on the evidence. Since the judge gave the jurors the information which defendant requested, this is not an appropriate case to decide whether, as a matter of Virgin Islands law, an instruction on the consequences of an insanity verdict must be given when requested by defendant.*fn16
ADAMS, Circuit Judge, dissenting
Ivar Fredericks, whose conviction is before us, appeals on the ground that a critical request by him for jury instructions was improperly denied. Specifically, he claims that he was entitled to have the trial court explain to the jury the terms "mental disease or defect" and "mental illness" - as these concepts affected the defense of insanity - the sole defense which Fredericks asserted. For the reasons set forth, I believe his contention has merit, and that a new trial is required.*fn1
To a considerable extent, the law of criminal responsibility has acted as a screen upon which the community has projected its visions of criminal justice. As society's understanding of the workings of the human mind and the role of the individual in the social structure has evolved, the paradigm of the mental state which will justly exonerate the perpetrator of what would ordinarily be a criminal act has altered in response. Thus, the common law moved from strict liability for such conduct to a requirement of mens rea, and then tempered its sanctions with a recognition of insanity as a defense to criminal charges.*fn2 This recognition was refined in Hadfield's Case*fn3 to reach beyond those totally deprived of reasoning ability or understanding, and appeared in its modern locus classicus forty years later in M'Naghten's Case.*fn4 The rule in M'Naghten's Case exempts individuals from criminal punishment where:
At the time of the committing of the act the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, resulting from a disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.*fn5
The M'Naghten standard, however, came under increasingly heavy criticism for arbitrarily excluding certain varieties of mental disease from the reach of the insanity defense. More basically, critics charged that the rule misleadingly focused attention on the capacity to distinguish "right" from "wrong" at a time when recognized psychiatric impairments were understood as unitary entities which distorted both cognitive and effective capacities.*fn6
The second half of the Twentieth Century opened with a renewal of this criticism, and a flurry of suggested alternatives to the M'Naghten formulation. In his dissent in U.S. ex rel. Smith v. Baldi,*fn7 Chief Judge Biggs, in 1951, proposed "if the mental illness of the accused is the proximate or a contributory cause of the crime, then the accused may not be found guilty of murder," and called for the extirpation of the M'Naghten Rule by judicial, or failing that, legislative action.
Two years later, in 1953, the British Royal Commission on Capital Punishment also advocated that M'Naghten be replaced. Two alternative tests for acquittal by reason of insanity were put forward by the Commission
(2) That the jury "must be satisfied that, at the time of committing the act, the accused, as a result of disease of the mind (or mental deficiency) (a) did not know the nature and quality of the act or (b) did not know that it was wrong or (c) was incapable of preventing himself from committing it."*fn8
One year after the Royal Commission report, Judge Bazelon's landmark decision in Durham v. United States,*fn9 drew heavily on the Commission's findings and rejected the M'Naghten Rule. In place of the supervened standard, Durham erected the so-called "product rule"; the jury in District of Columbia cases was to be instructed that "unless you believe beyond a reasonable doubt either that [the defendant] was not suffering from a diseased or defective mental condition or that the act was not the product of such abnormality, you must find the accused not guilty by reason of insanity."*fn10 Durham thus represented the first vindication by the judiciary for the critics of the M'Naghten Rule in half a century. To round out the scenario, it should be noted that the American Law Institute, in 1955, introduced an up-dated variant of the M'Naghten test, which was subsequently adopted in the Model Penal Code.*fn11 The ALI standard provided:
A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law.*fn12
It was in this context that the Advisory Committee on the Revision of the Virgin Islands Code undertook to redraft the criminal law of the Virgin Islands. The former Code had classed as incapable of committing crimes "lunatics and insane persons," but appended a mutant version of M'Naghten 's "right or wrong" test.*fn13
According to the Revision Note attached to the new statute, it was to eliminate this vestige of M'Naghten that the Advisory Committee amended the statutory provision.*fn14 As reenacted, the current version of the provision relating to the insanity defense (§ 14(4)) states:
From its language, it would seem that the new statutory provision is the offspring of the "product" rule enunciated by the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia in Durham two years previously. Certainly, this has been the interpretation of several commentators.*fn15 And this perception is confirmed by an exploration of the actual lineage of the provision.
The legislative history of § 14(4) specifically states that the change was suggested in letters by the Honorable John Biggs, Jr. and the Honorable Albert B. Maris.*fn16 Judge Maris advanced his suggestion primarily on the basis of the arguments presented in a previous letter to the Commission by Judge Biggs, which the legislative history refers to as the progenitor of the alteration.*fn17 Thus the fountainhead of the current provision is the analysis set forth by Judge Biggs at the time the legislation was enacted.
In expounding on his suggestion that the "Legislature of the Virgin Islands . . . create a first modern and workable statute relating to the criminal responsibility of the mentally ill."*fn18 Judge Biggs began by criticizing the M'Naghten test both on the ground that it failed to take account of non-cognitive volitional impairment, and because it was substantially under-inclusive, squarely covering only "delusional psychotics," and "quivering quaking imbeciles . . . not very likely to commit crimes requiring violence and energy."*fn19 After explicitly considering the ALI test, Judge Biggs also rejected that formulation. Rather, he suggested that the "product test is the best formula presently available."*fn20 He traced the development of the "product" test from Hadfield' s Case through Pike and his own dissent in Baldi to Judge Bazelon's formulation in the Durham opinion, from which the letter quoted extensively.*fn21 It would appear, therefore, that the present § 14(4) is in essence a codification of the product test which had recently emerged in Durham.*fn22
The success of a common-law doctrine in the courts is rarely complete or permanent, and the Durham rule soon attracted its own critics, both within and outside of the judiciary.*fn23 The building blocks of Durham - the concepts of "mental disease" and of "product" - were not defined by the opinion, and were criticized as overly vague. Since no definitions were proffered as to what mental conditions might constitute "diseases" or when acts could be considered the "product" of such diseases, it was charged, the jury was left without legal guidance. As a result, the argument went, the question of criminal responsibility was resolved by a battle of psychiatric labels.*fn24 Moreover, the charge of artificially "compartmentalizing" the human mind, which was a factor in the demise of M'Naghten, was also leveled at Durham. It was argued that it is psychologically unrealistic to consider some acts to be the "product" of mental disease, and others not.*fn25
For these reasons, as well as the reluctance to abandon a hallowed precept of law, it is not surprising that it was 1961 before another federal court took up the Durham banner of challenge to the M'Naghten Rule.*fn26 And when that undertaking was embarked upon by Chief Judge Biggs in United States v. Currens,*fn27 the M'Naghten Rule was cast aside in favor of a variation of the ALI standard rather than the Durham formula. Although he had advocated the Durham Rule in his letter to the Virgin Islands' Commission in 1956, Chief Judge Biggs now wrote that Durham insufficiently articulated the "relationship between mental disease and the concept of the 'guilty mind'".*fn28 Thus, it failed to provide the jury with "a standard by means of which an ultimate social and moral judgment can be rendered."*fn29 Accordingly, since the insanity defense was defined in the federal criminal law judicially rather than legislatively, Durham was now viewed as an inappropriate guide, and Chief Judge Biggs saw the issue as whether
at the time of committing the prohibited act the defendant, as a result of mental disease or defect, lacked substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law which he is alleged to have violated.*fn30
Currens, of course, remains the law of this Circuit as to federal offenses where no legislative enactment, such as that which prevails in the Virgin Islands, holds to the contrary. Other circuits have similarly declined to adopt Durham, and instead have favored the ALI standard.*fn31 Equally significant, the District of Columbia Circuit, the birth place of Durham, has taken cognizance of the criticisms that were directed at Durham as well as the operational difficulties which became manifest. Unlike the ALI formulation, which responded to the ambiguity of the term "product," yet declined to explicate "mental disease or defect," the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia began its clarification of the Durham rule by defining the term "mental disease or defect." In McDonald v. United States, that Court, spurred by a concern that medical terminology not control legal outcomes, adopted an explicitly legal definition of "mental disease or defect." It stated that mental disease or defect included:
any abnormal condition of the mind which substantially affects mental or emotional processes and substantially impairs behavior controls.*fn32
The McDonald gloss, however, even with other judicial fine tuning,*fn33 failed to yield what the District of Columbia Circuit considered a satisfactory result. Consequently, in United States v. Brawner,*fn34 the District of Columbia Circuit, sitting en banc, overruled Durham and adopted the ALI test. In taking this course, the Court stated, it was responding to three concerns: (1) a perception that the "product rule" led to dominance of the trial by expert witnesses and hindered communication between psychiatrists, attorneys and the jury: (2) a concern for unity of judicial approach and vocabulary in view of the unanimous adoption of the ALI rule by other circuits; and (3) a conviction that it is just to assign criminal responsibility where an individual retains substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of actions and to exercise his choice.*fn35 The Brawner court, however, retained the McDonald definition of mental disease or defect, on the ground that "it has permitted the kind of communication without encroachment, as between experts and juries, that has prompted us to adopt the ALI rule, and hence will help us realize our objective."*fn36
The majority in this case concludes that the Currens test is not "fundamentally at odds" with the Virgin Islands' statutory definition of insanity, and that therefore its use does not constitute "fundamental error."*fn37 Such a determination is unfortunately ambiguous, and gives scant guidance to Virgin Islands trial judges in evaluating future requests for jury charges on the insanity defense.
More importantly, to adopt the Currens standard in the Virgin Islands runs directly against the grain of the history of the Virgin Islands statute rehearsed above. The Currens rule is in essence identical with the ALI formulation that was available to the Virgin Islands Legislature in 1956. Yet, the Legislature eschewed the ALI test and advertently adopted the current wording of the statute that found its roots in the Durham "product" rule. Indeed, in the letter which formed the basis for the new standard, Judge Biggs expressly rejected the ALI rule, and in preference advocated the "product" rule as the "best formula currently available."
A footnote in Govt. of Virgin Islands v. Bellott,*fn38 appears to be the principal basis proffered by the majority as authority for the proposition that the Currens standard should now govern. Bellott, however, is not persuasive support. In Bellott, the defendant challenged a jury instruction which implied that the defendant bore the burden of demonstrating his sanity. Noting that nothing in Currens had cast doubt upon the holding in Davis v. United States,*fn39 that once the issue was raised, the government bore the burden of establishing sanity beyond reasonable doubt, this Court reversed. In this context Judge Gibbons stated:
The Court must determine whether there is some evidence . . . that his act was a consequence of mental illness ; if it so finds, the court must then instruct the jury that the government through the trial has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the offense was not the consequence of mental illness. n.3
n.3 This must be done in language equivalent to that approved in United States v. Currens, supra.*fn40
Thus, the holding in Bellott appears to be simply that the government bears the burden of proving sanity beyond a reasonable doubt. The reference to Currens in a footnote may arguably be read as suggesting that the "product rule" has been superseded in the Virgin Islands. But it is more reasonable to construe the footnote as referring to the fact that in Currens this Court approved the trial court's jury charge insofar as it
charged correctly . . . if Currens had submitted believable evidence "sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt that he was sane". . . then the burden was upon the United States to establish beyond reasonable doubt that he was sane and mentally capable of forming the specific criminal intent to commit the crime. . . .*fn41
The latter interpretation is supported by the fact that in the underscored portion of the body of the relevant passage of the Bellott opinion the Court reiterates the "product" rule.*fn42
It was necessary to convene en banc, the District of Columbia Circuit felt, in order to supplant the Durham standard with the ALI rule. We should be reluctant to presume that a panel of our Court would discard a considered determination of the Virgin Islands Legislature in an unelaborated footnote.*fn43
The Virgin Islands Legislature chose to reject the ALI/ Currens formulation in favor of the product rule, and no case in this circuit has purported to overrule that choice. Despite this, the majority analyzes the propriety of Fredericks' request for a definition of mental illness divorced from the statutory standard, in the context of an instruction patterned on Currens. Such an approach seems misdirected. It is the statutory "product rule" which defines the insanity defense in the Virgin Islands, and, whether or not the parties perceived the statute's controlling force, it is against this rule that Fredericks' request must be measured.
Fredericks' primary argument on appeal is that the statutory formula should be modified by the McDonald definition of insanity. He suggests that "mental disease or defect " should be defined to include "any abnormal condition of the mind, regardless of its medical label, which substantially affects mental or emotional processes and substantially impairs behavior controls."*fn44
Of course, "when the terms of a statute are 'simple and self-explanatory ' its verbatim recitation is sufficient."*fn45 But the term "mental illness" is neither simple nor self-explanatory.*fn46
The psychiatric profession has largely abandoned the term "mental disease," and has replaced it with a catalogue of "mental disorders."*fn47 Within the profession, a series of identical symptoms will frequently give rise to a diagnosis of different "disorders" depending on the orientation and perceptions of individual psychiatrists.*fn48 Moreover, the uses to which the term "mental disease" are put within the medical profession are to a considerable extent tangential to the reasons that a jury would be asked to determine whether a defendant is entitled to an insanity defense. The legal issue is not really whether the defendant is a "latent schizophrenic" or a "paranoid personality," but whether he is capable of entertaining mens rea. It would thus appear that when the jury is to be confronted with a series of technical psychiatric diagnoses in an attempt to ascertain the mental status of a defendant, it is appropriate, indeed essential, to define the "mental illness" which is the object of inquiry, rather than risk the tyranny of psychiatric labels.*fn49
Such has been the experience of our sister jurisdictions in the administration of the "product rule." As observed above, on the basis of an "eight year experience under Durham " the District of Columbia Circuit believed it was necessary to adopt the definition espoused by Fredericks "to make it very clear that neither the court nor the jury is bound by ad hoc definitions or conclusions as to what experts state is a disease or defect."*fn50 More importantly, Maine, the only jurisdiction other than the Virgin Islands which has enacted the product rule by legislation, has construed its statute to be consistent with the McDonald definition.*fn51 Indeed, the courts of Maine have steadfastly looked to the District of Columbia Circuit's construction of the Durham rule in setting boundaries for the statutory insanity defense.*fn52
Nor is such a refinement at variance with the canons of statutory interpretation. It is elementary that in construing statutes the intent of the legislature is to control.*fn53 In this case, as outlined above, § 14(4) was adopted from the Durham rule, as "the more enlightened view as to the test by which the criminal responsibility of the mentally ill should be measured."*fn54 It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that the Virgin Islands Legislature did not intend to freeze the interpretation of the rule in the form it took in 1954, but rather to allow glosses that retain the basic statutory definition as the "enlightened view" evolved.*fn55
Moreover, Judge Biggs' influential letter makes clear that the same concerns which led to the enunciation of the McDonald definition were present in the promulgation of § 14(4). Thus, Judge Biggs praised the product rule of Pike for making clear that the issue of the accused's mental state was a question of fact for the jury.*fn56 And in drafting his proposed statutory language, he emphasized that "no medical terms are employed and the definition is one of the utmost simplicity and should be easily understood by the laymen comprising the jury."*fn57 If the lack of judicial guidance led to a situation in which the clash of conflicting professional nomenclature threatened to overwhelm the function of the jury, it appears that the considerations underlying Judge Biggs' suggestions would sanction a jury instruction indicating the proper path of analysis.
The law provides that a jury shall bring in a verdict of not guilty by way of insanity if at the time of the alleged criminal conduct, the defendant was suffering from a mental illness and that he committed the act charged against him as a consequence of such mental illness. That actually comes right from our Code. That is right in the wording of our Code. The Court has put this another way, that the Defendant shall be entitled to a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, if, at the time of the alleged criminal conduct, the Defendant, as a result of mental illness or mental defect, lacked substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.*fn58
Now, the burden is on the Government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt either that the Defendant was not suffering from a mental disease or defect, or else that he, nevertheless, had substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.*fn59
The impression that the definition of mental illness is not governed by reference to "behavior control" was reinforced by the trial judge's later differentiation of the "step" of finding "mental illness" from the "step" of determining that the criminal act was performed "as a consequence of" the illness.*fn60 Such a charge, in my view, is not the substantial equivalent of the McDonald definition.
Nor did the trial judge's instructions on expert testimony adequately guard against the possibility that the jury might erroneously define "mental illness" in terms of diagnostic categories. The majority refers to the fact that the trial judge instructed the jury:
You would have to look at all, at the three experts and decide which one to accept, or you may decide to discard all of the experts' opinions and form your own, aside from what the experts said. You may decide it on your own, you are the jurors, it is your responsibility to determine. The experts are there only to help. You may reject their opinion for the reasons that you don't think they had enough facts. You may reject their opinion because you don't believe that their premises are valid. You may reject their opinion because you don't think they have had enough expertise, not enough schooling, they haven't had enough experience. There are all kinds of reasons why you may not accept an expert's opinion. That is why I say you are not bound by the expert's opinion and you may accept or reject their opinions. You are not bound by their definitions, their labels as to what is or what is not a mental illness.*fn61
The law does not say that you are bound by those opinions. You may accept their opinions, and in this case you have a difference of opinion, so, it would be very difficult to be bound by them since they vary, they conflict.*fn62
One implication a juror could reasonably draw from this latter statement is that medical labels are determinative, and it is only the conflict between expert opinions which renders them not binding.*fn63 The jury could well assume that their task was to choose the "correct" medical diagnosis, which would in turn establish the presence or absence of mental illness. This is particularly true in light of the fact that the trial judge closed his remarks on the subject by stating:
I don't think I need to go into all the ramifications on what is or what is not mental illness. You have had that given to you by the experts and even by the lawyers. As I say, it is your decision.*fn64
As we declared in Govt. of Virgin Islands v. Carmona,*fn65 "A conviction ought not to rest on an equivocal direction to the jury on a basic issue." Here, the fundamental and indeed only question in the trial was the insanity defense. Under these circumstances the definition of "mental disease or defect" is a basic issue, requiring a fully accurate charge.
I think that a golden opportunity is presented to the Legislature of the Virgin Islands to take a great forward step - the first in Anglo-American jurisprudence - to create the first modern and workable statute relating to the criminal responsibility of the mentally ill. It would be historically most interesting if the Virgin Islands should lead the jurisprudence of both the British Commonwealth and of the United States into a new era. That prospect may sound grandiloquent but it might well come to pass.
In a letter to me of June 16, 1956, Mr. Wechsler states: "The theory of our formulation, as you know, is that M'Naghten has two defects that should be remedied: (1) That it takes no account of volitional impairment unaccompanied by intellectual or cognitive disturbances; and (2) That it requires the finding of total incapacity - even in the cognitive realm."
I do not bring forward the above quoted section of the American Law Institute's proposed Penal Code because I think it presents a correct formula. On the contrary I think it curiously combines that out-worn M'Naghten formula with a more modern point of view being confined to that phrase "or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law." The phrase I have quoted is almost the same as the "product" test referred to in the next paragraph of this letter and thereafter.
The vapid quality of the M'Naghten formula can be well demonstrated by Hadfield's case (Rex v. Hadfield, 16 State Trials 695 (1800)). Hadfield, an old soldier who sustained very severe head wounds at the Battle of Freymar, attempted to assassinate George III because he was of the view that he, Hadfield, like Christ, had to be immolated by public execution so that he might save the world. He tried to kill the King as a sure way of getting himself executed quickly, thus demonstrating that he knew that it was legally wrong to kill a king. Had the M'Naghten formula been in existence at that time it is probable that Hadfield would have been executed. He was found "not guilty by reason of insanity" by the application of what has become known as the "product" test. I will deal with this test now since I am convinced it is the best formula presently available.
The product test appears in several forms. It was first laid in the United States by the Supreme Court of New Hampshire in State v. Pike [ State v. Jones ], 50 N.H. 369, 395 (1871), as a result of the influence of Dr. Isaac Ray on Mr. Justice Doe of the Supreme Court of that State. (See the famous "Musical Correspondence", the Doe-Ray Letters).
In the Pike [ Jones ] case, Pike, described as a dipsomaniac by his counsel, killed Thomas Brown with an ax in the course of a robbery. Justice Doe sat with Chief Justice Perley in the trial of this case. The defense was insanity. The Chief Justice charged the jury that "if . . . [the jury] found that the defendant killed Brown in a manner that would be criminal and unlawful if the defendant were sane - the verdict should be 'not guilty by reason of insanity' if the killing was the offspring or product of mental disease in the defendant; that neither delusion nor knowledge of right and wrong, nor design or cunning in planning and executing the killing and escaping or avoiding detection, nor ability to recognize acquaintances, or to labor or transact business or manage affairs, is, as a matter of law, a test of mental disease; but that all symptoms and all tests of mental disease are purely matters of fact to be determined by the jury." (Emphasis added).
You will note - and this is most important - that the issue of the accused's mental state was a question of fact for the jury; in other words, whether Pike possessed the capacity to entertain criminal intent, or mens rea, was a question of fact. The M'Naghten formula supplies a legal, but not a factual, test. This is its weakness. The New Hampshire rule correctly supplies a test of fact.
In the dissenting opinion in United States ex rel. Smith v. Baldi, 192 F.2d 540 (3 Cir. 1951), the dissenting judges (Biggs, McLaughlin and Staley) adopted the Scotch test and stated as follows: "The Scottish test of irresponsibility was expressed by Lord Justice-Clerk Inglis in 1963, as follows: 'In a strictly legal sense, there is no insane criminal. Concede insanity and the homicidal act is not criminal. The act of the insane, which in the sane would be criminal, lack every element of crime.' The Scotch rule remains substantially the same today. It is true that the word 'insane' is not a precise term but the meaning of the Scotch rule is clear despite this. We can see no reason why the legal test of irresponsibility for the commission of a crime should not be based upon the principle that if the mental illness of the accused is the proximate, or a contributory cause of the crime, then the accused may not be found guilty of murder. With this finding, as an inevitable corollary, would go the commitment of an accused in Pennsylvania under the Pennsylvania Mental Health Act of 1923, as amended, to an appropriate institution." Id. supra at pp. 568-9. See also note 64, cited to the text, as follows: "As quoted by MacNiven, 'Mental Abnormality and Crime', in Chapter II, 'Psychoses and Criminal Responsibility', MacMillan and Co., Ltd., at p. 60." You will see that this test is substantially the same as the State v. Pike [ State v. Jones ] test.
The case of Durham v. United States [94 U.S. App. D.C. 228], 214 F.2d 862 (1954), also adopted the product test. This is the famous decision by Judge Bazelon in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. It has aroused wider discussion than any case since M'Naghten's. It should be noted that a petition for rehearing before the court en banc was filed and was denied. It represents the law in the District of Columbia. Judge Bazelon said: "By its misleading emphasis on the cognitive, the right-wrong test requires court and jury to rely upon what is, scientifically speaking, inadequate, and most often, invalid and irrelevant testimony in determining criminal responsibility.
"The fundamental objection to the right-wrong test, however, is not that criminal irresponsibility is made to test upon an inadequate, invalid or indeterminable symptom or manifestation, but that it is made to rest upon any particular symptom. In attempting to define insanity in terms of a symptom, the courts have assumed an impossible role, not merely one for which they have no special competence. . . . [It] is dangerous 'to abstract particular mental faculties, and to lay it down that unless these particular faculties are destroyed or gravely impaired, an accused person, whatever the nature of his mental disease, must be held to be criminally responsible. . . .' In this field of law as in others, the fact finder should be free to consider all information advanced by relevant scientific disciplines."
Judge Bazelon said further, quoting from the report of the Royal Commission: "The sufferer from [melancholia, for example] experiences a change of mood which alters the whole of his existence. He may believe, for instance, that a future of such degradation and misery awaits both him and his family that death for all is a less dreadful alternative. Even the thought that the acts he contemplates are murder and suicide pales into insignificance in contrast with what he otherwise expects. The criminal act, in such circumstances, may be the reverse of impulsive. It may be coolly and carefully prepared; yet it is still the act of a madman. This is merely an illustration; similar states of mind are likely to lie behind the criminal act when murders are committed by persons suffering from schizophrenia or paranoid psychoses due to disease of the brain."
"Whenever there is 'some evidence' that the accused suffered from a diseased or defective mental condition at the time the unlawful act was committed, the trial court must provide the jury with guides for determining whether the accused can be held criminally responsible. We do not, and indeed could not, formulate an instruction which would be either appropriate or binding in all cases. But under the rule now announced, any instruction should in some way convey to the jury the sense and substance of the following: If you the jury believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused was not suffering from a diseased or defective mental condition at the time he committed the criminal act charged, you may find him guilty. If you believe he was suffering from a diseased or defective mental condition when he committed the act, but believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the act was not the product of such mental abnormality, you may find him guilty. Unless you believe beyond a reasonable doubt either that he was not suffering from a diseased or defective mental condition, or that the act was not the product of such abnormality, you must find the accused not guilty by reason of insanity. Thus your task would not be completed upon finding, if you did find, that the accused suffered from a mental disease or defect. He would still be responsible for his unlawful act if there was no causal connection between such mental abnormality and the act. These questions must be determined by you from the facts which you find to be fairly deducible from the testimony and the evidence in this case."
" SECTION I. Definition of mental illness :
SECTION II. When mental illness is a defense :
No person may be convicted of any criminal charge when at the time he committed the act with which he is charged he was suffering with mental illness as defined by this Act, in consequence thereof, he committed the act.
You will observe that no medical terms are employed and the definition is one of the utmost simplicity and should be easily understood by the laymen comprising the jury.*fn*
This is what the GAP statute, heretofore quoted, is intended to effect and what I think it would accomplish.
It seems to me that the Virgin Islands Legislature has a God-given opportunity to lend the jurisprudence of America and England out of the moress into which it has fallen in the field of the criminal responsibility of the mentally ill. I consider this matter to be of such prime importance that I would readily come to the Virgin Islands to discuss it with you and the members of your Committee if that would be of any assistance.
I have delayed answering your letter of the 19th, regarding a substitute for the McNaghten rule in the new Virgin Islands Code, until we could study the materials you enclosed.
CC: Honorable Albert B. Maris Honorable Leon P. Miller
Referring to Judge Biggs' letter of July 19th to you regarding the McNaghten rule now embedded in section 14(4) of title 14, I would strongly urge the modification of that subsection along the lines which he advocates. I am completely convinced that the McNaghten rule is unsound and that it does not promote that public interest. It is far safer, I am sure, to commit an insane defendant to an appropriate mental institution at the outset of his criminal career than to imprison him for a short term upon the theory that he knew right from wrong and then release him to renew his criminal career.
"§ 14. Capacity to commit crimes or offenses.
If this change is made it will be necessary to change section 3637 of title 5, so that it would read as follows:
§ 3637. Mental illness of the defendant
cc: Hon. John Biggs, Jr. Mr. Meldrim Thomson