Opinion ID: 1993367
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Maryland Definition:

Text: This brings us to the question of whether or not the statutory definition of a defective delinquent as defined in Article 31B and as applied by the Maryland courts is sufficiently definitive to permit its practical application within constitutional limitations. The Act, Section 5, defines a defective delinquent as: ... an individual who, by the demonstration of persistent aggravated antisocial or criminal behavior, evidences a propensity toward criminal activity, and who is found to have either such intellectual deficiency or emotional unbalance, or both, as to clearly demonstrate an actual danger to society so as to require such confinement and treatment, when appropriate, as may make it reasonably safe for society to terminate the confinement and treatment. It was noted by the Sas Court that this definition was carefully drawn to conform to the definition approved by the [Supreme] Court [of the United States] in the Minnesota case, referring to Minnesota ex rel. Pearson v. Probate Court, 309 U.S. 270, 84 L.ed. 744, 60 S.Ct. 523 (1940), wherein the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Minnesota Sexual Psychopath Law. From the voluminous testimony presented in this case we determine that the conclusion of the Fourth Circuit Court in Sas is justified when that court decided that the statutory definition was facially constitutional. We say this because the evidence before us clearly shows that there does in fact exist a class or group of persons falling within the definition, constituting a danger to the health and safety of people and who, with the aid of medical expert testimony, after appropriate examination, using recognized medical techniques, are discernible and recognizable by lay persons, including judge or jury. In fact, it is clear from the testimony of nearly all the eminent medical experts specializing in psychiatry testifying in this case that the defective delinquent definition as contained in the statute is no less vague and difficult of understanding or difficult of application to individual persons than are the M'Naghten or Durham rules used in testing criminal responsibility, or the civil insanity rule used in Maryland to determine the need for confinement in a mental hospital of persons suffering from mental disease sufficient to cause them to be a danger to themselves or others. These same eminent medical experts, however, agree that there in fact does exist a medically recognizable group falling clearly within the definition in the Act's definition, and we so find. The real problem in this case, posed by Sas, seems not to arise from the words of the statute but is created by the interpretation and application of the statute by our Court of Appeals in Palmer v. State, 215 Md. 142, 137 A.2d 119 (1957). Judge Bell in Sas poses a question requiring a decision as to whether the Court of Appeals in Palmer, by referring to the term emotional unbalance as meaning a psychopath or a person with a psychopathic personality has rendered the definition so vague and meaningless that it fails to meet the test for definiteness required by the Fourteenth Amendment. It is clear from the testimony before us in this case that the term psychopath has many meanings and has no universally accepted medical meaning. Because of this fact its use is troublesome. It means different things to different people, including psychiatrists. For that reason it was dropped as a medical term from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association when its latest publication of acceptable psychiatric terms was adopted and published in 1952. (Exhibit No. 33). It has been suggested that the term sociopath has been substituted for the class of persons formerly referred to by many psychiatrists using the term psychopath. However, even the term sociopath is, by many eminent psychiatrists, including Doctors Guttmacher and Menninger, rejected for the same reason that the term psychopath was discarded by the Psychiatric Society. These doctors say there is no need to equate the term emotionally unbalanced persons to psychopaths or sociopaths, because they say the Maryland definition is in itself sufficiently clear and does not need, medically speaking, the use of either of these terms as an aid for diagnostic or other purposes in identifying the group or in determining whether or not a given individual falls within the class the Legislature was attempting to describe or in communicating that finding to other professional or lay persons. We reach the conclusion from the testimony that if, in fact, the Maryland Court of Appeals had placed the word psychopath without further explanation of the use of the term into the statutory definition that it then would be too indefinite to meet the constitutional test. We conclude, however, that careful reading of the Palmer case does not dictate this result, first of all because the Palmer opinion merely stated that an emotionally unbalanced person, as that term was used in the statute, referred to that group of people generally known as psychopaths as described by Guttmacher and Weihofen in their book Psychiatry and the Law. The Palmer opinion clearly defines psychopath as they used the term by quoting from this book to be a group of mentally abnormal individuals who on clinical examination do not fit into the categories of psychoneurosis, psychosis, or intellectual deficiency. [3a] These patients are generally without complaints; they do not exhibit abnormally pronounced mood disturbances, nor do they present the distortions of thought which become so manifestly evident in delusions and hallucinations. Furthermore, they are not intellectually retarded. Yet they are constantly in difficulty because of their abnormalities of behavior. They are unable to conform to the standards of their social group, and they are tragic failures in establishing lasting and satisfying interpersonal relationships ... [The] incapacity to conduct oneself `with decency and propriety in the business of life' is the outstanding characteristic of the true psychopath. It seems clear to us, therefore, that the Court of Appeals was merely saying that the persons described by Guttmacher and Weihofen as above quoted are unbalanced people as that term is used in the Defective Delinquent Act. The term psychopath as thus defined does have a definite meaning and describes a medically recognizable group of individuals. We conclude, therefore, that if the legislative enactment as interpreted by the Court of Appeals had defined an emotionally unbalanced person as being a psychopath with no further amplification of the meaning of the word psychopath, that its use in that manner would destroy its present acceptability as meeting the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment. It seems clear to us that a reading of the Palmer case, in light of the testimony before us in this case, justifies the conclusion that the Court of Appeals was not in fact importing the term psychopath into the statutory definition but that they were merely incidentally seeking another way of describing some emotionally unbalanced persons. In other words, its use in the opinion was merely an effort to seek a synonym for the term emotional unbalance and not, in fact, a positive holding that the term psychopath, minus a description of what was meant by the use of that term, was being engrafted into and made a part of the definition. We believe, in view of the testimony, particularly of Doctors Menninger and Guttmacher, and the fact that the term is no longer and was not at the time of the Palmer opinion, a part of the nomenclature recommended by the American Psychiatric Association, that it is unfortunate that the term was used by the Palmer court. Note is made of the fact that in spite of the great many cases before the Court of Appeals dealing with the Defective Delinquent Act and its statutory definition, the term psychopath has only been used by that Court one other time. See Cowman v. State, 220 Md. 207, 151 A.2d 903 (1959). Clearly, in Palmer the real issue decided by the Court of Appeals was not whether the term emotional unbalance meant psychopath but whether or not a group of people described by Guttmacher and Weihofen were those intended to be encompassed by the statutory definition. We conclude that in the light of the testimony in this case there is no need to give any further medical description to the nonmedical term emotional unbalance and that if the matter is ever squarely before the Court of Appeals that Court will conclude that the term psychopath is not a part of the definition, is not a synonym for emotional unbalance, but that the term emotional unbalance as used in the Act refers to a medically recognized psychiatrically disordered person who demonstrates persistent aggravated antisocial or criminal behavior, and who exhibits a type of psychiatric disorder manifested by deep-seated emotional conflicts which distort the individual's attitude toward society, and of society's attitude toward him, resulting in an uncontrollable desire and need to create continual hostile acts toward society and which is uncontrollable by the individual. It was in this context, we feel, that the doctors were describing a particular type individual when they used the term psychopath and it is in that context that the Court of Appeals used the term psychopath as defined by Guttmacher and Weihofen. With this description of the term psychopath we feel that the use of the term in the Palmer case does not destroy the validity of the statutory definition so as to cause it to become vague and meaningless, as was found to be a fact by the Ninth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. In the statute involved in that case the term psychopath was used without further amplification or definition, hence its use compelled the holding of insufficient clarity to meet constitutional requirements. Fleuti v. Rosenberg, 302 F.2d 652 (1962). Accordingly, we hold that the attack on the legal sufficiency of the statutory definition as applied by the Maryland Courts is not sustained.