Opinion ID: 1290601
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: (5) The defendant retains the burden of proof on the issue of insanity.

Text: Evidence Code section 522 provides explicitly that The party claiming that any person, including himself, is or was insane has the burden of proof on that issue. The trial judge in the present case accordingly charged the jury that the defendant has the burden of proving his legal insanity by a preponderance of the evidence. Drew contends that the court's instruction denied him due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment. He relies on Mullaney v. Wilbur (1975) 421 U.S. 684 [44 L.Ed.2d 508, 95 S.Ct. 1881], in which the United States Supreme Court struck down a Maine statute which required a homicide defendant to prove that he acted in the heat of passion to reduce the offense to manslaughter; the court's language suggested broadly that the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt every fact critical to the guilt of the offender. More recent decisions of the Supreme Court have confirmed, however, that notwithstanding the broad dictum of Mullaney, it remained constitutional to burden the defendant with proving his insanity. ( Patterson v. New York, supra, 432 U.S. 197, 205 [53 L.Ed.2d 281, 289, 97 S.Ct. 2319, 2324]; see Rivera v. State (Del. 1976) 351 A.2d 561, app. dism. sub nom. Rivera v. Delaware (1976) 429 U.S. 877 [50 L.Ed.2d 160, 97 S.Ct. 226].) Drew further contends that requiring him to bear the burden of proving insanity violates the due process clause of the California Constitution. (Cal. Const., art. I, § 7.) California courts, however, have consistently upheld the constitutionality of our rule placing the burden of proof on the defendant (see, e.g., People v. Hickman (1928) 204 Cal. 470, 477-478 [268 P. 909, 270 P. 1117]). Recently in People v. Miller, supra, 7 Cal.3d 562, 574, we unanimously rejected a defendant's contention that the rule conflicted with due process requirements. The validity of this settled line of authority was called into question only because of the broad language of the United States Supreme Court opinion in Mullaney v. Wilbur, supra, 421 U.S. 684; following that court's narrow interpretation of Mullaney in Patterson v. New York, supra , and its confirmation that a state may constitutionally require a defendant to prove insanity, doubts respecting the constitutionality of the California rule have been laid to rest. [13]