Opinion ID: 2567349
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sufficiency of evidence to support competency finding

Text: Defendant contends insufficient evidence supported the jury's finding of his competency, that he was in fact incompetent, and that his trial while incompetent violated state law and his federal constitutional rights of due process, to the assistance of counsel and to be present during the proceedings against him. A person cannot be tried or sentenced while mentally incompetent. (§ 1367, subd. (a).) A defendant is mentally incompetent to stand trial if, as a result of mental disorder or developmental disability, he or she is unable to understand the nature of the criminal proceedings or to assist counsel in the conduct of a defense in a rational manner. ( Ibid.; see also Dusky v. United States (1960) 362 U.S. 402, 80 S.Ct. 788, 4 L.Ed.2d 824.) A defendant's trial while incompetent violates state law and federal due process guarantees. ( Pate v. Robinson (1966) 383 U.S. 375, 385, 86 S.Ct. 836, 15 L.Ed.2d 815; People v. Pennington (1967) 66 Cal.2d 508, 516-517, 58 Cal.Rptr. 374, 426 P.2d 942.) A defendant is presumed competent unless the contrary is proven by a preponderance of the evidence. (§ 1369, subd. (f); People v. Medina, supra, 51 Cal.3d at pp. 881-886, 274 Cal.Rptr. 849, 799 P.2d 1282; see Medina v. California (1992) 505 U.S. 437, 448-451, 112 S.Ct. 2572, 120 L.Ed.2d 353 [placing burden on defendant to prove incompetence does not violate due process].) On appeal, the reviewing court determines whether substantial evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, supports the finding on competency. ( People v. Marshall (1997) 15 Cal.4th 1, 31, 61 Cal.Rptr.2d 84, 931 P.2d 262.) Evidence is substantial if it is reasonable, credible and of solid value. ( Ibid. ) The jury heard this evidence during the 1989 competency proceedings: Court-appointed Psychiatrist Roland Levy, examined defendant for 45 minutes on March 21, 1989, and concluded he was incompetent. Dr. Levy reported that defendant displayed affect inappropriate to the content of his conversation and spoke of how a computer, apparently connected to the FBI, influenced him and was responsible for the killings, but wandered off that subject and began to talk about such matters as organized crime, government control and working for secret agencies. Dr. Levy suspected defendant might be experiencing auditory hallucinations and concluded he could not distinguish his delusions from reality. Defendant's delusions had a diffuse quality, while another person with better organized paranoid schizophrenia could present a delusion in such a way as to make it almost believable. Dr. Levy considered and rejected the possibility that defendant was faking mental illness, noting the only deception defendant seemed to be practicing was his overt denial that he was mentally ill. Dr. Levy diagnosed defendant as suffering from chronic schizophrenia with paranoid traits. He observed that defendant was reacting well to the antipsychotic medication Navane at a dosage that would cause a nonpsychotic person to feel slow and unable to think. On July 16, 1989, defendant met with Dr. Levy for 45 minutes; the next day, he refused to meet with him. The defense then called Psychiatrist James Missett, who had examined defendant at the prosecution's request. Dr. Missett met with defendant for 45 minutes on October 7, 1986, and five hours on October 13, 1986; on July 25, 1989, he observed defendant during a 90-minute court hearing and, on another occasion, for 90 minutes in jail. Dr. Missett diagnosed defendant as having antisocial and borderline personality disorders and sexual sadism; he ruled out a diagnosis of schizophrenia, characterizing defendant's symptoms as inconsistent with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and his delusions as having a psychosis of the day quality. Dr. Missett believed defendant was malingering and had fooled other psychiatrists who had arrived at different diagnoses. He concluded defendant obtained gratification from jerking people around. The defense also called Psychiatrist George Wilkinson, whom the court had appointed to examine defendant in connection with the competency proceedings. Dr. Wilkinson examined defendant on several occasions, the first of them on May 27, 1987, when he committed involuntarily defendant, who was acutely psychotic, to Chope Hospital after an emergency referral by jail staff. His next examination of defendant, lasting more than 90 minutes, occurred on January 5, 1988, when defendant reported experiencing hallucinations. Dr. Wilkinson felt that defendant, who admitted the truth of his confessions but refused to discuss the facts of his case, was manipulating him. On January 26, 1988, Dr. Wilkinson again examined defendant, finding him competent but recommending an evaluation at Atascadero State Hospital to settle the question of whether he was malingering. (The recommended evaluation did not occur.) After defendant was again committed to Chope Hospital in May 1988, Dr. Wilkinson examined defendant and concluded that, although he had experienced psychotic episodes, he could still cooperate with counsel and was competent to stand trial. On March 1, 1989, after trial counsel reported deterioration in his relationship with defendant, Dr. Wilkinson attempted to interview defendant, who refused for delusional reasons to come out of his jail cell. Then, after a court appearance on July 7, 1989, Dr. Wilkinson saw defendant for some 45 minutes and found him to be psychotic, with disorganized thinking, loose associations, auditory hallucinations and inappropriate affect. Dr. Wilkinson's two later attempts to see defendant failed when defendant stood in his urinal and refused to come out of his cell. Dr. Wilkinson diagnosed defendant as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, although his symptoms did not fit all the criteria for that illness. He viewed defendant's manipulation of psychiatrists as a self-protective mechanism to compensate for feelings of humiliation and low self-esteem. At times, however, defendant would get his attempts to manipulate mixed up with his illness. Dr. Wilkinson noted defendant's condition had improved when he was taking Navane, consistent with someone who has had a genuine psychotic episode. Dr. Wilkinson agreed with Dr. Levy that defendant lacked the skills to fake a major mental illness completely. He disagreed with Dr. Missett that variability in reported delusions meant the patient was faking; indeed, a lack of variation in such delusions would be more consistent with total faking. Trial counsel Douglas Gray testified that defendant initially expressed hostility toward him and disclosed such delusional beliefs as that his former attorney had killed a California Highway Patrol officer and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, from either organized crime or the government, to stop defendant from pleading guilty. At first defendant only wanted to plead guilty, but later he developed a working relationship with Gray. That relationship faltered as defendant's mental condition deteriorated in the fall of 1988. Defendant appeared almost emaciated and had not bathed for some time, and by January 1989 his statements were incomprehensible and disconnected and he began to refuse to see Gray. When Gray initiated competency proceedings, defendant reacted negatively, said he would not take psychotropic medication and did not want to go to Atascadero State Hospital, and declared he was not and had never been mentally ill. On the first day of competency proceedings, defendant wore his jail clothes in compliance with counsel's tactical decision. On the second day, defendant angrily said he did not want to wear jail clothes but wanted instead to wear street clothes in order to get a fair trial. Even after being removed to a holding cell, he screamed at his attorneys. Finally defendant agreed to behave in court in exchange for the attorneys' agreement to permit him to wear street clothes in court. Defendant told Gray he did not want to testify in the competency proceedings because he was embarrassed and shy about answering questions about the psychiatrists, who, he maintained, had lied. He indicated that if he could confine his testimony to the homicides there would be no problem. The attorneys would not guarantee that, so he did not testify. Attorney Thomas Nolan testified as an expert in what is needed for a client to assist rationally in a capital case. Nolan testified that if a person is uncommunicative due to mental illness, or wants to plead guilty because a computer was responsible for the crime and refuses to consider an insanity defense, or prefers communicating with the district attorney over his own counsel, or sends letters to sheriff's deputies without telling his counsel, he is not rationally assisting counsel and is preventing counsel from fulfilling his or her role. The prosecution presented the testimony of several deputy sheriffs, who described their interactions with defendant at court and in jail. On May 6, 1988, Deputy Sheriff Debra Rosengart was assigned to transport defendant to Chope Hospital. From an area where she could not be seen, Rosengart observed defendant stop talking to himself when she left his sight; when Rosengart reappeared to defendant, she saw him resume talking to himself, only to stop when she told him to do so. While transporting defendant in a van, Rosengart turned on the radio to drown out his ramblings; he stopped talking and began to sing along. While walking into the hospital, defendant was silent; after Rosengart told him to go along to his evaluation, he resumed talking to himself. Sheriff's Sergeant Robert Prevot was assigned to the jail in 1987 and 1988 and there had contact with defendant, who was generally very quiet and read and slept a lot. On February 16, 1989, Deputy Sheriff Martin Douglas transported defendant to court. Defendant was quiet until he was called into court, when he started babbling. As soon as defendant left court after his appearance, Douglas noticed he stopped babbling. Deputy Sheriff William Southward, who sometimes worked in the jail, testified he never saw unusual conduct by defendant. Once Dr. Levy came to visit defendant at his cell; when defendant asserted he did not know the doctor and Southward described him, defendant refused to meet with him. Deputy Sheriff John Quinlan testified that while he was assigned to work in the jail, he never heard defendant make unusual statements. On three to five occasions Quinlan saw defendant engage in bizarre behavior, including refusing to see family members, refusing to come out for recreation, and smearing a substance onto his cell window. Deputy Sheriff David Barrett testified he had known defendant for two years as a result of his jail assignment and had a great deal of contact with him over 8 to 12 months. Barrett and defendant conversed about bicycling, movies and television. When the conversation touched on his crimes, defendant spoke about computers. Defendant told Barrett he had smeared shampoo onto his cell window in order to scare away predatory inmates by making them think he was crazy. Joan Davies was trained to work with persons with dyslexia and spent hundreds of hours, over a four-year period, helping defendant with his reading skills before her son John disappeared. Mrs. Davies attended the trial. She testified that when the prosecutor, during his opening statement, incorrectly asserted that defendant had lived with the Davies family, defendant turned in his seat, made eye contact with Davies and her husband, and shook his head no. Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Investigator Robert Bell first made contact with defendant in 1984, during the murder investigations; after defendant's arrest, he occasionally contacted Bell. In February 1988, defendant complained to Bell that his attorneys were trying to present a sham psychiatric defense in which defendant did not want to participate. Defendant told Bell he committed the murders because he had received radar transmissions from a large antenna in Russia instructing him to kill. Bell told defendant he was disappointed because defendant had earlier confessed and now seemed to be shirking responsibility. Defendant became quiet and eventually said he wanted to talk about something else. Belmont Police Detective Joseph Farmer testified to the contents of defendant's 1986 confessions, including the details of the Davies and Turner homicides and the assault on Stephen Murphy. Defendant contends this evidence was insufficient to support the jury's competency finding. In particular, he urges that Dr. Missett's opinion  that he was competent and malingering  was contrary to facts of record and to uncontested medical and scientific facts. Here, defendant asserts, the only substantial evidence was that he was psychotic, no evidence to the contrary was presented, and no evidence showed that even if he was psychotic he nevertheless was competent to stand trial. We disagree. The opinions of the various experts stood in conflict, and in assessing their testimony the jury was entitled to consider that Dr. Missett had more than five hours of contact with defendant in 1986 against which to evaluate his behavior during the 1989 competency proceedings. The jury also heard that Dr. Wilkinson, in two 1988 reports, had found defendant competent and changed his mind after a March 1, 1989, contact that lasted only 15 minutes. Although Dr. Wilkinson saw defendant again on July 7, 1989, for 45 minutes and found him to be psychotic, he felt less than total (i.e., only 75 to 80 percent) certainty that defendant was incompetent. Dr. Levy had briefer contact with defendant than had Dr. Missett (two 45-minute evaluations), from which the jury could infer that Dr. Missett's opinion was entitled to greater weight. Although defendant argues his behavior fit the classic model of incompetency, in that  like truly psychotic people  he sometimes insisted he was not mentally ill and refused to see the psychiatrists who were in a position to assist him in avoiding his criminal trial through a finding of incompetency, the jury was entitled to consider that, during his first competency trial the year before, defendant had heard expert witnesses describe the behavior of genuinely psychotic persons and the ways malingerers go wrong in feigning mental illness. The jury, moreover, was aware that defendant had the opportunity to observe the behavior of psychotic persons while in the locked psychiatric ward at Chope Hospital, and heard Dr. Wilkinson testify that defendant was cunning and manipulative, and derived gratification from frustrating psychiatrists. Defendant cites evidence that he responded favorably to antipsychotic medications, which only a psychotic person can tolerate without becoming sleepy and clouded in thinking; on Navane, defendant related better to people, was less hostile, had less trouble controlling his impulses, and apparently experienced none of the sedation that would be expected in a nonpsychotic person taking the drug. [2] Defendant also criticizes as scientifically invalid Dr. Missett's reliance on a definition of schizophrenia as involving fixed, firm delusions (and his resulting opinion that because the reported details of defendant's delusional material varied from time to time, he must be making up the material as he went and therefore was malingering), noting that other experts acknowledged the existence of types of schizophrenia involving fluctuating or variable delusions. But whether defendant was in fact mentally ill and, if so, his precise diagnosis was not determinative of his competency. Dr. Wilkinson testified one can be both paranoid schizophrenic and competent to stand trial. The testimony of Dr. Missett and the lay witnesses describing defendant's behavior, taken together (see People v. Marshall, supra, 15 Cal.4th at pp. 31-32, 61 Cal.Rptr.2d 84, 931 P.2d 262), provide substantial evidence to support the jury's finding that defendant understood the nature of the criminal proceedings and had the ability to assist his counsel in a rational manner (§ 1367, subd. (a)).