Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/433/550/340685/
Timestamp: 2020-07-05 13:45:33
Document Index: 137469310

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 4704', '§ 174', '§ 4251', '§ 301', '§ 4251', '§ 301', '§ 4253', '§ 24', '§ 2903', '§ 3416']

United States of America v. Melvin W. Collins, Appellant, 433 F.2d 550 (D.C. Cir. 1970) :: Justia
Justia › US Law › Case Law › Federal Courts › Courts of Appeals › D.C. Circuit › 1970 › United States of America v. Melvin W. Collins, Appellant
United States of America v. Melvin W. Collins, Appellant, 433 F.2d 550 (D.C. Cir. 1970)
US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit - 433 F.2d 550 (D.C. Cir. 1970) Argued December 15, 1969
Mr. Harvey S. Price, Asst. U. S. Atty., with whom Messrs. Thomas A. Flannery, U. S. Atty., and John A. Terry, Asst. U. S. Atty., were on the brief, for appellee. Messrs. David G. Bress, U. S. Atty., at the time the record was filed, and William S. Block, Asst. U. S. Atty., also entered appearances for appellee.
The District Court, with a jury waived, found appellant guilty on seven counts of federal narcotics offenses. 26 U.S.C. §§ 4704(a), 4705(a); 21 U.S.C. § 174. The proof at trial was of sales of narcotics by appellant to a police undercover agent on two occasions, and the subsequent finding of narcotics in appellant's possession at the time of his arrest. Concurrent sentences were imposed on all counts. On this appeal, no issue is raised as to appellant's commission of the proscribed acts. What is urged is that (1) denial of a pretrial motion for a mental examination deprived appellant of an insanity defense, and (2) evidence adduced at a post-trial hearing of an objection to a St. Elizabeth report on a pre-sentence mental examination required the court to set aside its verdict and to find appellant not guilty by reason of insanity.
We are not persuaded by our reading of the record that disturbance of the convictions is warranted by either of these claims. We do find the sentencing proceedings so fraught with misunderstanding as to justify our vacating the present sentences and remanding for resentencing in which appellant may be considered for commitment under Title II of the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act. 18 U.S.C. §§ 4251-4255.
* Appellant's appointed counsel moved, in advance of trial, for a mental examination pursuant to 24 D.C.Code § 301. The grounds asserted in the written motion were that appellant had a long history of drug addiction; his involvement with the law was directly connected with his addiction; and counsel had had difficulty securing appellant's cooperation in preparing for trial. As counsel revealed in her motion, appellant was firmly opposed to the request. Indeed, a few days later he filed a pro se statement with the court "that a mental examination would be both harmful and prejudicial to my defense;" and he asked that his counsel be removed and new counsel appointed.
At the hearing of the motion, the United States interposed no objection to it. In her oral presentation, counsel reported that appellant "has since been cooperative," but she continued to emphasize his addiction as bearing on his competency. The court was at some pains to make clear to appellant that his submitting to a mental examination would not irretrievably commit him to an insanity defense. But, upon questioning from the bench, appellant reasserted his belief that "I am capable of assisting in my defense as it is." The court interrogated appellant at length, probing his knowledge and understanding of the charges against him and his capacity and purpose to be of assistance in the preparation of his defense. The responses being of a positive and rational nature, the motion was denied.
The Government's proof at trial consisted of the testimony by police officers as to the purchases of narcotics made from appellant, and the finding of narcotics on him at the time of his arrest. Appellant was the only witness for the defense. He declared his inability to remember his whereabouts on the days when he was alleged to have made the sales. He admitted to having narcotics in his possession at the time of his arrest. He asserted that he had been a user of narcotics since 1951, although he did not assert that this had impaired his mental processes. On cross-examination, he stated that he had supported himself on occasion by shoplifting, but he denied buying drugs for resale to other addicts. In response to a question from the court on this score, he said that "it has never been necessary for me to purchase drugs from other people, because I have always been fortunate enough to have sufficient funds to buy my own drugs."
The court pronounced a verdict of guilty. It stated, however, that it "will take it upon itself that before sentence whether this defendant wants to or not he will have some psychiatric examination." A few days later, the matter came on for hearing on the sentence to be imposed. Counsel represented to the court that she had filed a motion for commitment under Title II of the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act. 18 U.S. C. §§ 4251-4255. Appellant objected to this motion on his behalf. After extended colloquy, in which the court explained to appellant that, as an offender with one prior narcotics conviction, he faced a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years on each count as the alternative to rehabilitative commitment under the Act, the court acceded to a request by appellant that he be not committed under the Act.
* * * In our opinion Mr. Collins is without mental disease or defect and competent for trial by virtue of having a rational as well as a factual understanding of the proceedings against him and being able to consult with counsel with a reasonable degree of rational understanding.
The patient is without mental disorder under the existing laws in the District of Columbia; however, if his drug dependence were considered a mental disorder it would be our opinion that the drug dependence does affect his mental and emotional processes and does substantially impair his behavioral controls. However, we would have no opinion as to whether his drug dependence caused the crimes of February 6 or 16, or March 2, 1967, if in fact he committed them.
The court, referring to the ambiguous nature of the St. Elizabeths report, stated that "the main purpose of having Dr. Pugh here is the opinion, the reason that he has for the mental condition on the crucial date in question and causal relationship to the crime committed." Defense counsel's direct examination proceeded as follows:
On the issues of productivity and responsibility as subjectively related to appellant, although the report stated that St. Elizabeths "would have no opinion as to whether [appellant's] drug dependence caused the crimes" of which appellant had been convicted, under questioning by the court Dr. Pugh admitted that he did in fact have an opinion but that he "thought that it would be best not to have our testimony obscured by a statement in the letter. * * *" This opinion as given, however, was that it was his "private opinion that drug dependency is a psychiatric illness and that Mr. Collins is mentally ill." No evidence in terms of productivity or responsibility in this case was ever forthcoming from the witness. The hearing continued with further reiterations of Dr. Pugh's personal belief that addiction is a mental illness and his "understanding" that such was not the law in the District of Columbia.
At the conclusion of the hearing, appellant's counsel moved for a new trial and for an independent psychiatric examination. Both motions were denied. The matter of sentencing was then taken up. Counsel asserted that she had explained to appellant that sentencing under Title II of the Rehabilitation Act did not prejudice his appeal rights, but he was still apparently seized of this misconception. Appellant then addressed the court, and stated that the reason he had opposed Title II commitment at the earlier sentencing hearing was because he thought his right to appeal his conviction would be lost. The court did not comment upon this statement, but turned to questioning appellant as to whether he was an addict. After getting affirmative answers, the court said, "And you don't care to go to any institution for rehabilitation?" In response, appellant mentioned the voluntary program at St. Elizabeths. The court indicated that this "open ward" program was not legally available, and proceeded to impose sentence. The following then occurred:
We turn first to the alleged impropriety of the denial of the pretrial motion for a mental examination. We are far from being able to say that the District Court abused its discretion in denying this motion. It was actively opposed by appellant himself, not only in court but by a letter filed by him with the court — a document which appears on its face to be the work of a wholly rational human being. That letter recited appellant's belief that a mental examination would be prejudicial to his defense, a view which he had expressed to his counsel. The latter was described as determined to go ahead with the motion despite her client's opposition. The letter went on to say that appellant had discussed with his counsel the defense of his case on the merits, and had urged her, without success, to seek discovery of some of the preliminary proceedings, including the minutes of the grand jury. Because of her lack of interest in these matters, appellant asked that she be replaced.3
At the hearing, counsel urged in support of her motion that appellant was an addict who had used about 24 capsules a day. She also made a brief reference to early difficulties in cooperative formulation of a defense, but stated that more recently appellant "has since been cooperative." She emphasized that her primary and immediate concern was appellant's competency to stand trial. Appellant was then interrogated at length by the court with questions designed to elicit the degree of his understanding of his legal circumstances, as well as his position on the motion. His responses to the former were clear, including a statement that his daily usage was not as large as counsel had said it was, and his opposition to the commitment was steadfast. We cannot assert that the denial of the motion on this record was error. We do not understand the law to be that evidence of addiction alone invariably requires a commitment under 24 D.C.Code § 301. The court here made a careful and detailed inquiry before ruling upon counsel's motion, and the responses to that inquiry are not such as to make the ruling an abuse of discretion.
Although no issue is raised on this appeal with respect to appellant's competency to stand trial, we think it worth noting in this context that the St. Elizabeths report was unequivocal in its finding that appellant was "competent for trial by virtue of having a rational as well as a factual understanding of the proceedings against him and being able to consult with counsel with a reasonable degree of understanding." This conclusion, drawn from observation of appellant while he was at the hospital, was one which the court was entitled to draw from the happenings at the hearing of the pretrial motion. Dr. Pugh's later testimony was to the same effect, as the colloquy set forth in the margin shows.4 We do not, accordingly, agree that appellant was deprived of an insanity defense at trial by an erroneous pretrial ruling.5
The St. Elizabeths report, it will be recalled, expressed no opinion on productivity. Although Dr. Pugh, as the anonymous author of that report, testified that he did have such an opinion, he stated that opinion as being his "private" view that "drug dependency is a psychiatric illness and that Mr. Collins is mentally ill." Although the court repeatedly referred to the ambiguous nature of the hospital report on the issue of causality, and pressed Dr. Pugh on that question, nothing was forthcoming except Dr. Pugh's reiteration of his personal belief that narcotics addiction constituted a mental illness. Defense counsel made no effort to elicit a direct response by Dr. Pugh to the productivity issue; and, indeed, the Government's cross-examination evoked the interesting observation from Dr. Pugh that he did not think appellant would have made the sales if he had known that his customer was an undercover policeman.
It may just possibly be that so-called "test cases" are not always the most effective instrumentalities from the standpoint of the client, in that the intensive focus upon one aspect of the defense may cause the neglect of others. Or it may be that the question of causality was avoided because any testimony about it would have been unimpressive. In any event, the central purpose of the insanity defense, which is to save from criminal conviction one who lacks responsibility for his unlawful acts, has not been achieved on this record by the introduction of sufficient evidence to make that defense a substantial issue in the determination of appellant's guilt or innocence.
"Your Honor, I was of the opinion that being sentenced under the Act would deprive me of my rights to appeal. That was my reason for asking that the motion be withdrawn at the time I appeared in Court."
* If the majority's disposition results in providing appellant with treatment under NARA rather than punishment in the form of a prison sentence, then it might seem unimportant to determine whether his conviction was properly rooted in a finding of criminal responsibility. Whether or not he was responsible for his unlawful acts he will be treated for his addiction. But in my view it is important to distinguish between those people who may fairly be blamed and held responsible for their unlawful conduct, and those who may not, because they could hardly have behaved otherwise. The distinction is important even if the same therapeutic approach is appropriate for both the "sick" and the "bad." For as long as our system for dealing with antisocial conduct allocates blame to persons convicted of unlawful acts, justice demands that we pay close attention to the task of exempting from blame those persons whose capacity to conform their behavior to social norms is substantially impaired. The ideals of treatment and rehabilitation cannot justify the abandonment of the inquiry into blameworthiness, hairsplitting though that inquiry may seem at times, unless we are ready to abandon the concepts of guilt and blameworthiness altogether, as many would urge.1
But whether or not appellant's testimony raised the issue of responsibility at trial, it was clearly raised by the psychiatric evidence introduced at the post-trial sentencing hearing. At that point the court finally granted appellant's motion for a psychiatric examination, and the doctor who performed that examination at St. Elizabeths Hospital presented the only expert psychiatric testimony in the case. Dr. Pugh testified that appellant was addicted to heroin, and that his addiction impaired his mental and emotional processes and behavioral controls in certain specified ways. He explained that heroin addiction can produce drowsiness, inappropriate cheerfulness, and euphoria; withdrawal symptoms including extreme depression; and impaired judgment with regard to the questions whether to continue using narcotics and how to obtain them. No other relevant testimony was elicited from Dr. Pugh by either the appellant or the government.3 While the evidence on the issue of responsibility was thus regrettably sparse, it clearly amounted to "some evidence" sufficient to impose on the government the burden of proving responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt.4 The rule requiring the defendant to come forward with "some evidence" of nonresponsibility is designed to avoid putting the government and the defendant to the expense and inconvenience of psychiatric examinations and extended testimony on the subject unless the defendant intends to contest the issue.5 For this purpose, the defendant need only introduce enough evidence to give notice of a nonfrivolous claim; he need not introduce evidence sufficient to establish the validity of that claim.
This was the second renewal. At a pretrial hearing of a motion to suppress evidence, counsel had, without success, renewed the motion for the first time. The judges in each case were different but the representations made to each were essentially the same
Counsel subsequently filed a motion for a preliminary hearing and for production of grand jury minutes, and a motion to suppress evidence and to dismiss counts 1 and 2 of the indictment on the ground of an illegal search pursuant to an illegal arrest. Appellant had earlier filed written pro se motions generally of the same nature. Counts 1 and 2 were dismissed by the District Court before trial. From the time of his arrest and through trial, appellant was at liberty on monetary bond.
"* * * With us, `an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect,' (citing Durham v. United States, 94 U.S.App.D.C. 228, 241, 214 F.2d 862, 874-75 (1954)), a standard thus combining a quality of mind and its linkage with the offending conduct. Exculpation entails an `abnormal condition of the mind which substantially affects mental or emotional processes and substantially impairs behavior controls,' (citing McDonald v. United States, 114 U.S.App. D.C. 120, 124, 312 F.2d 847, 851 (en banc 1962)), and which `made the effective or decisive difference between doing and not doing the act.' (citing Carter v. United States, 102 U.S.App. D.C. 227, 236, 252 F.2d 608, 617 (1957)).
See, e. g., B. Wootton, Crime and the Criminal Law (1963); K. Menninger, The Crime of Punishment (1968).
E. g., the convicted addict may be confined under Title II of NARA for a period of up to ten years or the maximum sentence that could have been imposed, whichever is shorter. 18 U.S.C. § 4253(a) (Supp. V, 1969). An addict acquitted for lack of criminal responsibility, on the other hand, may be confined so long as he remains mentally ill and dangerous to himself or others, a period which may be longer or shorter than the maximum confinement above. D.C.Code § 24-301(e) (1967); Bolton v. Harris, 130 U.S.App.D.C. 1, 12, 395 F.2d 642, 653 (1968). Compare the 36-month maximum for civil commitment of addicts under Title I of NARA, 28 U. S.C. § 2903(c) (Supp. V, 1969), and the 42-month maximum under Title III, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3416, 3417 (Supp. V, 1969).
Considerable time was spent exploring the question whether narcotics addiction is a mental illness. Dr. Pugh's professional opinion was that addiction is an illness, but he expressed doubt that such an opinion was acceptable as a matter of law. The trial judge never resolved that doubt, pursuing instead a line of questioning designed to ascertain whether addiction is regarded as a mental illness by the psychiatric profession or by St. Elizabeths Hospital. But of course appellant's responsibility for the acts charged depends on neither the legal nor the psychiatric answer to the question whether addiction per se may be a mental illness. For the purpose of the insanity defense, a mental illness is "any abnormal condition of the mind that substantially affects mental or emotional processes and substantially impairs behavior controls." McDonald v. United States, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 120, 124, 312 F.2d 847, 851 (1962) (en banc)
The label attached to narcotics addiction by Dr. Pugh, or by the Hospital, can neither create nor destroy a defense on the ground of nonresponsibility. The role of the psychiatric expert is not to tell the court which abnormal conditions constitute exculpatory illnesses and which do not, but rather to tell the court as much as possible about the extent to which an abnormal condition may impair an individual's mental or emotional processes and behavior controls. The record in another case recently before this court indicates that Dr. Pugh has recently changed his professional evaluation of addiction, concluding that it is not after all a mental disease. See Memorandum of Appellee, Williams v. Robinson, 139 U.S.App.D.C. ___, 432 F.2d 637 (decided June 19, 1970). But that of course is no more significant than his earlier insistence that addiction is a disease. It is uniquely for the factfinder, as repository of community values, to determine whether the impairment described by the experts in the science of human behavior is sufficient to relieve a defendant of responsibility for his unlawful acts.
See Adams v. United States, 134 U.S. App.D.C. 137, 141, 413 F.2d 411, 415 (1969); McDonald v. United States, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 120, 122, 312 F.2d 847, 849 (1962) (en banc); Tatum v. United States, 88 U.S.App.D.C. 386, 389-391, 190 F.2d 612, 615-617 (1951). Of course the character and extent of the defendant's evidence determines the lengths to which the government must go to prove responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt. In some circumstances, the government can meet its burden simply by relying on the weakness of the defense evidence. King v. United States, 125 U.S.App.D.C. 318, 322-324, 372 F.2d 383, 387-389 (1967); Hawkins v. United States, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 44, 47, 310 F.2d 849, 852 (1962). On this point, however, a distinction should be made. If the defense evidence is weak because the impairment described by the experts is of a minimal nature, then the prosecution can meet its burden by persuading the jury that the impairment was not substantial enough to constitute an exculpatory mental disability. If, on the other hand, the defense experts describe an impairment so serious that it is clearly exculpatory, and the weakness lies in the fact that they are not persuasive, the prosecution can meet its burden only with contrary expert evidence.
Davis v. United States, 160 U.S. 469, 484, 16 S. Ct. 353, 357, 40 L. Ed. 499 (1895)
See majority opinion, supra, at note 5.
This problem would not exist if the trial court had followed the factfinding procedure we recently commended in United States v. Carter, U.S.App.D.C. (No. 22,912, decided June 5, 1970) (slip opinion at 13-14 n.8) (Bazelon, C. J., concurring)
It appears that Dr. Pugh himself had formed some opinions on the relationship between appellant's addiction and the unlawful acts, but he never expressed them because he thought that first he had to establish that appellant was suffering from a legally recognized illness. He stated that his written report contained no statement on that matter because he preferred to wait until he could find out "exactly what the Court wished to know." Apparently he never found out.
Near the beginning of the post-trial hearing, the court stated that "the main purpose of having Dr. Pugh here is the opinion, the reason that he has for the mental condition on the crucial date in question and causal relationship to the crime committed."