Opinion ID: 566299
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984

Text: 24 After we had adhered to Whalem in Wright II, the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984, Pub.L. 98-473, tit. II, ch. IV, 98 Stat. 2057, made insanity an affirmative defense in the federal courts. See 18 U.S.C. Sec. 17. In both Whalem and Wright II, however, the court had expressed and to a significant degree rested upon the view that insanity is fundamentally different from other defensive pleas--a view that was more compelling when the Government was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant's mental responsibility for his crimes. See Davis v. United States, 160 U.S. 469, 16 S.Ct. 353, 40 L.Ed. 499 (1895). See also Robertson I, 507 F.2d at 1164 (Wilkey, J., dissenting) (neither Whalem nor any of our other precedents apply in light of D.C. Code amendment shifting to defense the burden of proving insanity). But see id. at 1152 n. 13 (court declines to reach argument as it was not pressed on appeal, but adds in dictum that it appears to be without substantial merit). 25 In holding that a defendant may not, in a proper case, prevent the court from injecting [the issue of insanity], id., the Whalem court had relied solely upon Overholser v. Lynch, 288 F.2d 388 (D.C.Cir.1961) (en banc), rev'd on other grounds, 369 U.S. 705, 82 S.Ct. 1063, 8 L.Ed.2d 211 (1962). In Lynch we reversed a district court's grant of habeas corpus relief in a case in which the trial court had (1) refused to allow the competent defendant, assisted by counsel, to plead guilty, (2) admitted testimony of the defendant's mental condition at the time of the offense, over his objection, and (3) ultimately found the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity. 26 This court approved the trial court's handling of the case, saying that: The cases ... establish almost a positive duty on the part of a trial judge not to impose a criminal sentence on a mentally ill person.... [The] decision [to plead guilty and forgo an insanity defense] was one which [the defendant] and his counsel did not have an absolute right to make. Id. at 393. Our conclusion rested squarely upon the premise that insanity is not strictly an affirmative defense and can be raised by either the court or the prosecution, id. at 392 (citing Davis v. United States, 160 U.S. 469, 16 S.Ct. 353, 40 L.Ed. 499), and upon the moral judgment that imprisonment was wrong in the case of a mentally ill person, id. at 393 (emphasis in original). 27 The IDRA stripped away those underpinnings of Lynch, and hence of the only authority supporting Whalem. As an affirmative defense, the insanity issue no longer impose[s] ... an additional burden of proof on the Government prosecutor. Whalem, 346 F.2d at 819. Convicting the competent mentally ill criminal is no longer wrong in the judgment of the Congress--nor, we infer, of the public it represents. Instead of excusing the competent mentally ill from criminal liability, the Congress has now provided standards to govern their confinement and treatment, so that imprisonment ... of a mentally ill person is not the only alternative to acquittal by reason of insanity. 18 U.S.C. Secs. 4244-4246. The defense of insanity is available only to a person able to prove by clear and convincing evidence his inability to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts, and that such inability resulted from a severe mental disorder. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 17. See S.REP. NO. 225, 98th Cong., 1st Sess. 229-30 (1983), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1984, pp. 3182, 3411, 3412 (limitations included specifically in order to exclude persons with minor mental illnesses and to assure that only those defendants who plainly satisfy the requirements of the defense are exonerated from what is otherwise culpable criminal behavior). 28 Now that the Congress has undercut both the technical and the policy bases for Lynch and Whalem, the reasoning in Wright II cannot stand; we can no longer distinguish the decision not to plead insanity from other aspects of a defendant's right, established in Faretta, to direct his own defense. Moreover, unlike Faretta, the Whalem line of cases does not rest upon a constitutional ground, cf. Leland v. Oregon, 343 U.S. 790, 797, 72 S.Ct. 1002, 1006, 96 L.Ed. 1302 (1952) (Davis established no constitutional doctrine, but only the rule to be followed in Federal courts); it rests only upon this court's view of public policy in 1965. The IDRA reflects a more authoritative social judgment, and one that squarely contradicts the judicial predilections underlying Whalem. 29 Thus we are constrained to conclude that the Whalem line of cases has become a victim of the shifting sands of statute and case law. See Ralpho v. Bell, 569 F.2d 607, 629 (D.C.Cir.1977). Guided by the clear policy of the IDRA to hold criminally responsible all but the most patently insane offenders, and the Supreme Court's deference, expressed in Faretta and Alford, to a competent defendant's strategic decisions, we hold that a district court must allow a competent defendant to accept responsibility for a crime committed when he may have been suffering from a mental disease. Insofar as they hold to the contrary, Whalem and its progeny are overruled.