Opinion ID: 1231135
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Defense of Insanity

Text: The superior court precluded Evans from asserting a defense of insanity under AS 12.45.083(a) by excluding any testimony on that issue. Evans asserts that this ruling was erroneous. AS 12.45.083(a) provides: A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of the conduct, as a result of mental disease or defect, he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law. We have previously dealt with the interaction of this statute and the problems of alcoholism. In McIntyre v. State, 379 P.2d 615, 616-17 (Alaska 1963), we adopted the majority rule that draws a distinction between the mental effect of intoxication which is the result of a particular alcoholic bout and an alcoholic psychosis such as delirium tremens, resulting from long-continued habits of excessive drinking. We concluded that the former does not amount to legal insanity, whereas the latter may. In McKinney v. State, 566 P.2d 653, 664-65 (Alaska 1977), on rehearing, 570 P.2d 733 (Alaska 1977), we equated this distinction with that drawn by more recent cases between those who lose control as a result of a particular bout and those for whom alcohol related or induced insanity is a pre-existing condition. We also emphasized in McKinney the importance of the defendant's capability to control his drinking: [W]here an individual has knowledge of the adverse effects of his drinking and can choose whether or not to drink, society can legitimately expect him to conform his conduct to its demands. Id. at 665. See also O'Leary v. State, 604 P.2d 1099, 1103 n. 7 (Alaska 1979), where we noted that the statutory concept of voluntariness, under former AS 11.70.030, is separate from an insanity defense. Statutorily, voluntary intoxication was, under former AS 11.70.030, a valid ground for negating the motive, purpose, or intent aspect of a crime which requires such as an element of the offense. [2] This carries the implication, supported in the case law, that voluntary intoxication will not establish an insanity defense. [3] The case law is also clear that involuntary intoxication does constitute a valid defense. This is most clearly shown when the intoxication is the result of the force, duress, fraud, or contrivances of another. [4] The problem presented when the intoxication is claimed to have been involuntary because compelled by internal force or compulsion  i.e., some variety of alcoholism  has been dealt with differently by different courts. Some have completely rejected any such defense, holding that the compulsion to drink must be external. [5] Other courts have been considerably more sympathetic in giving recognition to the alcoholic's asserted internal compulsion. [6] Alaska has already, in the context of the constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment, rejected the suggestion that chronic alcoholism automatically relieves offenders of their criminal responsibility. In Vick v. State, 453 P.2d 342, 344-45 (Alaska 1969), this court affirmed a sentence imposed on a chronic alcoholic for being drunk in public. In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Dimond, the reasons for our ruling were given as follows: The effect of such a concept is to do away with free will so far as the chronic alcoholic is concerned. One suffering from the disease of alcoholism has a compulsion to drink and to get drunk in public, and since this compulsion is said to be irresistible and not the product of the exercise of one's will, it is said he cannot be held criminally responsible for public drunkenness. The inevitable result of such a holding is that the chronic alcoholic would also have to be relieved of the legal consequences of other crimes committed while under the influence of alcohol. One may not escape that conclusion. If the alcoholic's public display of drunkenness is not his act because he was unable to resist the compulsion to drink to excess, then other things he does while in that intoxicated state would also not be his act  would not be the product of the exercise of his will. Thus, the person who becomes intoxicated involuntarily would have to be excused from acts performed while intoxicated, such as murder, rape, assault and battery, and others. We are unwilling to go this far... . Saying without more that one loses the power of self-control with respect to the use of alcoholic beverages fails to make a distinction between loss of self-control once an individual has commenced to drink and loss of control which makes it impossible for him to abstain from drinking in the first place. This is a crucial distinction, because presumably a person would have to display both characteristics before he could hope to establish that his public drunkenness was ungovernable and unwilled. To say that appellant suffers from both a physical compulsion and mental obsession concerning the consumption of alcoholic beverages is not to say that such compulsion and obsession were so completely overpowering that appellant was incapable of not taking the first drink, which in turn led to successive drinks and an eventual state of inebriation. Furthermore, there is yet much to be learned about alcoholism from a medical point of view. As the United States Supreme Court has pointed out in Powell v. Texas, [392 U.S. 514, 88 S.Ct. 2145, 20 L.Ed.2d 1254 (1968),] there is no agreement among members of the medical profession about what it means to say that alcoholism is a disease, and there is substantial disagreement as to the manifestations of the disease called alcoholism. We agree with the Supreme Court when it said: We are unable to conclude    on the current state of medical knowledge, that chronic alcoholics in general    suffer from such an irresistible compulsion to drink and to get drunk in public that they are utterly unable to control their performance of either or both of these acts and thus cannot be deterred at all from public intoxication. [392 U.S. at 535, 88 S.Ct. at 2155, 20 L.Ed.2d at 1269.] Id. at 344-45 (footnotes omitted). The state urges us to adopt a standard which would, in effect, render an accused's intoxicated state irrelevant to the issue of insanity. If a pre-existing recognized mental disease or defect is severe enough to render the intoxication involuntary, then, according to the state, it must be severe enough to constitute an insanity defense by itself without regard to the intoxicated state of the accused. [7] We think the state's position is a salutary one and adopt it. In our view, the rule which should govern in Alaska is that voluntary intoxication will not support an insanity defense, and that all intoxication is to be regarded as voluntary unless it is unknowingly or externally compelled. This rule has been accepted in many jurisdictions. [8] It is consistent with the traditional common law view of individual responsibility, [9] as well as with the statute which governs this case, former AS 11.70.030, and with the statute now in effect, AS 11.81.630. [10] Given the pervasive problems in Alaska of criminal acts committed by those who are drunk we think the better rule is one which views the accused's voluntary state of intoxication as irrelevant to the issue of insanity. [11] Since Evans's intoxication was voluntary under the rule we have adopted today, we hold that the superior court did not err in concluding that the evidence presented would not support an insanity defense. [12]