Case Name: STATE of Maine v. Bruce A. SOMMER
Court: Maine Supreme Judicial Court
Jurisdiction: Maine
Decision Date: 1979-12-31
Citations: 409 A.2d 666
Docket Number: 
Parties: STATE of Maine v. Bruce A. SOMMER.
Judges: Before McKUSICK, C. J., and POME-ROY, GODFREY, NICHOLS and GLASS-MAN, JJ.
Reporter: West's Atlantic Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 409
Pages: 666–672

Head Matter:
STATE of Maine v. Bruce A. SOMMER.
Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.
Dec. 31, 1979.
Michael E. Povich (orally), Dist. Atty., Ellsworth, for plaintiff.
Philip R. Foster, Ellsworth (orally), for defendant.
Before McKUSICK, C. J., and POME-ROY, GODFREY, NICHOLS and GLASS-MAN, JJ.

Opinion:
WERNICK, Justice.
Defendant Bruce A. Sommer has appealed from a judgment of conviction entered in the Superior Court (Hancock County) on the verdict of a jury finding him guilty of having committed, on January 27,1979, the crime of criminal threatening, in violation of 17-A M.R.S.A. § 209(1), with use of a dangerous weapon.
Defendant has entered pleas of "not guilty" and "not guilty by reason of insanity." Before trial, however, he withdrew the plea of "not guilty by reason of insanity" and chose to go to trial only on his plea of "not guilty." Defendant's pleading thus foreclosed him from making any contention at trial, or in this appeal, that he was not "criminally responsible" for his conduct pursuant to 17 — A M.R.S.A. § 58(1).
Apparently acknowledging this point, defendant confines his contention in this appeal to an attack on the correctness of the adjudication that he was guilty qf the crime charged. Defendant says that the evidence was inadequate to justify a jury finding beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed the crime. He maintains that the evidence is fatally deficient for having failed to prove two of the essential elements of the crime charged: (1) that defendant placed another person in fear of imminent bodily injury; (2) that even if this did happen, defendant "intentionally or knowingly" caused it to happen.
We disagree with defendant's contention and deny the appeal.
On the evidence the jury was plainly entitled to find the following facts. During the morning of January 27,1979 defendant was at the house occupied by his mother and stepfather, and he went into the kitchen to eat breakfast with his mother, sister and brother-in-law. Defendant picked up an english muffin and using a small serrated steak knife, he cut it in half. Suddenly, defendant announced to all assembled that Mrs. Christine Sommer, who was generally thought to be his mother, was not his mother; that his real mother had been killed before he was born and he had been born in a test tube. Further stating that the Japanese had injected a foreign substance into Mrs. Sommer's breast, defendant took hold of Mrs. Sommer's blouse and held the steak knife against her throat, saying: "I will show you, I will cut off your breast." While she was thus restrained, Mrs. Som-mer closed her eyes. She stated in her testimony, "I was scared, I guess." After about fifteen or twenty seconds had passed, defendant released Mrs. Sommer and left the kitchen. Mrs. Sommer hesitated for some time before calling the police because, according to her testimony, having committed defendant to a mental hospital in the spring of 1978, she thought that he was "very sick" and in need of medical attention.
On the basis of the foregoing findings the jury was justified in concluding beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant had placed another person in fear of imminent bodily injury. Adequate support for such a determination was the evidence as to the objective circumstances, together with Mrs. Sommer's testimony that when defendant was holding her with a knife against her throat and threatening to cut off her breast, she was "scared."
The evidence was also sufficient to justify a jury finding beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant acted "intentionally or knowingly" to place Mrs. Sommer in fear of imminent bodily injury. In this regard, defendant's argument is that the evidence that he had recently been committed to a mental hospital, that his mother believed he was "very sick", in combination with the testimony of the bizarre statements he made, required a rational juror to have a reasonable doubt that defendant was acting "intentionally or knowingly" to place Mrs. Sommer in fear of imminent bodily injury. Hence, argues defendant, the presiding Justice should have ordered entry of the judgment of acquittal defendant requested at the conclusion of all the evidence.
Defendant's contention fails. State v. Burnham, Me., 406 A.2d 889 (1979), recently decided by us, is most enlightening regarding the issue under consideration. Burn-ham holds that Section 58(1-A)
"allows admission of any evidence, including evidence of mental abnormality, which raises a reasonable doubt as to whether the defendant had the culpable mental state . . ." (406 A.2d at 895)
that is made an essential element of the crime charged. Burnham also makes plain:
"[t]his rule applies generally, whether or not the defense of lack of criminal responsibility as a result of mental disease or defect has been raised . . • . Id. at 895.
Beyond these holdings, Burnham is important for present purposes because of what it says concerning the evidence, purporting to show abnormal condition of mind that can generate a reasonable doubt of the existence of the "culpable" state of mind made an essential element of the crime charged. Burnham states categorically:
"if the defendant wishes to introduce psychiatric testimony . . . in a trial on the question of guilt or innocence alone where no plea of not guilty by reason of insanity has been entered, he should be required to make an offer of proof out of the presence of the jury, that the Court may ascertain that the proffered evidence goes to negate the 'culpable state of mind' . . . which is an essential element of the crime. Only if the evidence is relevant to a culpable state of mind and otherwise comports with the rules of evidence must it be admitted . . It is important to note that not all evidence relevant to proof of the affirmative defense of lack of criminal responsibility would be relevant and admissible . . . [for the purpose of negating the 'culpable state of mind' made an essential element of the crime charged]." Id. at 895-896. (emphasis added)
Since Burnham had not yet been decided when the present case was tried, the presiding Justice did not have the benefit of its procedural clarification that a presiding Justice should determine outside the presence of the jury whether proffered evidence as to an abnormal condition of mind should be admitted as having relevance to a culpable state of mind that is an essential element of the crime charged, insofar as such proffered evidence can be deemed capable of raising a reasonable doubt as to such element. Even though no such evaluation was made at trial, this Court is now called upon, in effect, to make that evaluation. In this appeal defendant's contention is that the matters in evidence indicating his abnormal condition of mind must be taken to be so cogent as to require a rational juror to entertain a reasonable doubt that defendant acted "intentionally or knowingly" to place Mrs. Sommer in fear of imminent bodily injury. On this basis defendant argues to us that his motion for judgment of acquittal was erroneously denied by the presiding Justice. However, if this Court's evaluation of the evidence leads to the conclusion that, far from having the conclusive effect defendant attributes to it, the purported evidence as to defendant's abnormal condition of mind was really not relevant on the question of whether defendant acted with the culpable state of mind made an essential element of the crime, because that evidence did not rise to the level of being adequate even to generate a reasonable doubt in the mind of a rational juror as to the existence of that culpable state of mind, defendant's contention in this regard must be rejected.
We so decide. Although particular statements made by defendant had a ring of irrationality in some respects, the critical point is that the threat uttered by defendant made plain his awareness, as reality, that he was using a knife against an object he knew was the breast of a woman. Thus, there is no rational basis, here, for a juror to entertain a doubt that defendant, in acting as he did toward Mrs. Sommer, may have been under a delusion that he would still be slicing the english muffin on which he had already used the knife. Moreover, in this case, unlike the situation in Burn-ham, defendant presented no evidence by psychiatrists, physicians, or psychologists as to the particular nature of defendant's mental illness and how it would affect his cognitional and volitional powers. Further, that lay persons, such as defendant's mother, Mrs. Sommer, or his sister, gave testimony that they thought defendant was "very sick" or "did not realize what he was doing", simply on the basis of their "past experiences" — without any amplification of the factual details of those past experiences or what they knew (if they knew) to be the nature of defendant's illness, or how they had observed his illness to manifest itself in past behavior tending to show some impairment of his cognitional or volitional faculties — cannot be deemed evidence legally sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt that on the particular occasion at issue defendant had acted "intentionally or knowingly" to place Mrs. Sommer in fear of imminent bodily injury. Similarly, the bare fact that defendant had been civilly committed to a mental institution some eight or nine months before the incident in question, without any testimony clarifying the nature of his mental illness or explaining the circumstances of his commitment, cannot be deemed to be legally sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt as to defendant's having acted with the culpable state of mind at issue.
In short, all of the foregoing evidence lacked legal sufficiency to generate a reasonable doubt as to the requisite culpable state of mind because it left indefinite and speculative the nature of the relationship, if any, between an indicated abnormal condition of mind and defendant's ability to act "intentionally or knowingly" as to consequences of his conduct. With the evidence on this critical point thus conjectural and speculative, a juror would have no rational basis on which to entertain a doubt that defendant acted "intentionally or knowingly" to place Mrs. Sommer in fear of imminent bodily injury; that is, on such evidence a rational juror would lack ground to have a doubt that could be a reasonable doubt. The entry is:
Appeal denied.
Judgment of conviction affirmed.
ARCHIBALD, J., did not sit.
. This statute provides:.
"(1) A person is guilty of criminal threatening if he intentionally or knowingly places another person in fear of imminent bodily injury."
. The accusation that defendant committed the crime of criminal threatening with use of a dangerous weapon brought into play the provisions of 17-A M.R.S.A. § 1252(4) raising the sentencing class for the crime charged from Class D to Class C.
. 17-A M.R.S.A. § 58(1-A) provides:
"In a prosecution for a crime which may be committed intentionally, knowingly or recklessly, where such culpable state of mind is a necessary element, the existence of a reasonable doubt as to such state of mind may be established by evidence of an abnormal condition of mind."
. Although defense counsel's argument to the presiding Justice in support of defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal referred to the evidence indicating that defendant was mentally ill as having bearing on whether defendant had the requisite culpable state of mind, defense counsel made no request for the presiding Justice to instruct the jury that the evidence of defendant's abnormal condition of mind could be taken into account in the jury's evaluation of whether defendant acted "intentionally or knowingly" to place Mrs. Sommer in fear of imminent bodily injury. Moreover, defense counsel made no objection to the charge given by the presiding Justice which made no mention of such a potential relationship.
In any event, in view of our conclusion that the evidence was insufficient even to generate that issue, no such instruction by the presiding Justice was warranted.