Opinion ID: 1162387
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Test of Criminal Responsibility.

Text: Our first question is whether the trial court fairly instructed the jury on criminal responsibility as it related to the defense of insanity. The instruction given read in relevant part as follows: Insanity, as the word is used in these instructions, means such a diseased and deranged condition of the mental faculties of a person as to render him incapable of knowing the nature and quality of his act and of distinguishing between right and wrong in relation to the act with which he is charged. The test of accountability is this: Did the party have sufficient mental capacity to appreciate the character and quality of the act? Did he know and understand that it was a violation of the rights of another, and in itself wrong? If he had the capacity thus to appreciate the character and to comprehend the probable or possible consequences of his act, he was sane under the law, and is responsible to the law for the act thus committed. Chase claims it was error to give this instruction; that the jury ought to have been told to find him not guilty by reason of insanity if they believed the killing of his wife was the product of mental disease or mental defect. The disease-defect-product standard for determining criminal responsibility, known as the Durham rule, was formulated by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1954. [1] It represented a departure in that circuit from the previously existing right-wrong test based on the M'Naghten rules [2] , as modified by the irresistible impulse doctrine. [3] The Durham opinion has generated considerable debate. It has received favorable comment [4] , but has also been criticised. [5] The most recent criticism that has come to our attention is by a judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. In the case of Blocker v. United States, [6] decided March 3, 1961, Judge Burger in a separate opinion made a thorough and penetrating analysis of the whole subject of criminal responsibility. With persuasive reasoning he pointed out the inadequacies and defects of the Durham rule. He recommended that it be abandoned in favor of a rule which would place squarely before the jury the elements of knowledge and capacity to control behavior  that is, whether the act and its consequences were understood and appreciated by the accused, and whether the act was a manifestation of will or choice. [7] Judge Burger also pointed out that every court which had considered Durham had rejected it: three federal courts of appeal, the United States Court of Military Appeals, and the highest courts of twenty states. [8] We are not persuaded to adopt Durham in this jurisdiction. The disease-product test has no real meaning to us, and we venture to say, would have none to jurors who would apply it to the facts nor to the judges who would frame instructions. The terms mental disease and mental defect are not defined, and hence they would mean in any particular case whatever the experts say they mean. A further difficulty is that the psychiatrists disagree on what is meant by mental disease, or even if there is any such thing. [9] We shall not impose upon the trial courts and jurors the formidable, if not impossible task of understanding and applying terms whose meaning is unclear to acknowledged experts. [10] We fully recognize the great difficulty in many cases of ascertaining the mental condition of an accused and of assessing its effect on his conduct at the time of the commission of the criminal act. It is difficult because the criterion of responsibility cannot be defined with complete scientific precision; psychiatric evidence is technical and complex, and diametrically opposed views will frequently be expressed by expert witnesses. Because of these factors we consider it important that the jury, which must make the final decision as to criminal accountability, should be given as far as possible clear and simple principles on which to base their verdict. [11] Such is not accomplished by the Durham rule. We hold that it was not error for the trial court to refuse to give the Durham instruction which Chase had requested. The ultimate question that we must decide is whether the instruction given was erroneous so as to require reversal, entirely apart from a consideration of the Durham test. The trial judge told the jury substantially that Chase would be criminally responsible for killing his wife if he had sufficient mental capacity to appreciate the character and quality of his act, to comprehend the probable or possible consequences, and to know and understand that what he did was a violation of the rights of another and in itself wrong. If he did not possess such mental capacity, then he was to be acquitted by reason of insanity. This instruction dealt primarily with the faculty of the intellect, the work or function of which is to know, to understand, to see what is. If this faculty were so impaired that Chase did not know or appreciate what he was doing  if he were not then living in the reality of things  then he was not sane and accordingly was not to be held accountable for what he did. On precedent alone we would be justified in finding no reversible error in this instruction; for it is basically the knowledge or right-wrong test, laid down in M'Naghten's case [12] in 1843 and firmly established by a long line of subsequent cases. It is the primary test of criminal responsibility in the United States, and the exclusive test in a majority of American jurisdictions and in England and Canada. [13] The Supreme Court of the United States has stated that although the science of psychiatry had made tremendous strides since M'Naghten, the progress of science has not reached a point where its learning would compel us to require the states to eliminate the right and wrong test from their criminal law. [14] It is true that this statement was made nearly ten years ago, but the highest court has said nothing since then to indicate its viewpoint has changed. In his instruction to the jury the trial judge referred only to knowledge. He did not deal specifically with man's other faculty, his will, the function and work of which is to choose, to act, to decide. A substantial minority of American courts hold that the test of knowledge alone is not sufficient; that a person who understood that he was committing a wrongful act should nevertheless be excused from responsibility if he was incapable of controlling the impulse to commit it. [15] Whether this doctrine should be adopted to supplement the knowledge or right-wrong test of M'Naghten has been the subject of divergent views. Apparently a valid psychological concept is that man functions as a unitary being, his faculties of reason and will being interdependent and integrated. [16] From this premise Professor Hall has argued that one faculty cannot be severely disordered while at the same time another, fused with the first, may be so little impaired as to remain within the realm of normality. [17] Logically, it would appear to follow from this that if the rational functions, including knowledge of right and wrong, are unaffected, there can be no case where an impulse or urge to commit a wrongful act could be truly irresistible; there could not be by reason of insanity lack of power of control. In answer to this argument, Professor Weihofen, while admitting that the processes of the mind are interrelated, points out that certain forms of mental disorder may affect one process more than the other. A disorder manifesting itself in impulsions which can be said to have been `irresistible', may affect intelligence somewhat, but not necessarily to such extent as to obliterate knowledge of right and wrong. [18] And a psychiatrist, Doctor Roche, although admitting the logical validity of Hall's argument, contends that it is empirically false. [19] He refers to experience with human behavior where it is found that some persons know what they ought not do, and morally deplore and condemn such acts, yet nevertheless do them just the same. Such persons, Doctor Roche says, appear to themselves as well as to others to be impelled by an inner imperative to carry out the forbidden behavior. [20] Another psychiatrist, Doctor Cavanagh, discusses at some length the subject of the will and irresistible impulse. [21] Preferring the terminology unresisted urge to irresistible impulse, he defines an unresisted urge as one which, because of mental illness, so far causes the individual to lose his power of choice in regard to particular acts that in spite of the fact that he may recognize an act as wrong, he feels so impelled to act that he is unable to adhere to what he considers right. [22] In considering this concept in reference to the psychopath he says: The psychopath knows the difference between right and wrong, his subjective judgment is correct but he has no feeling for right and wrong. He is amoral, he has no ethical sense. If we accept then the concept of irresistible impulse as the ability to distinguish right and wrong but inability to adhere to the right then we have a perfect description of the psychopathic personality. Therefore a clear defense for every psychopath would be the irresistible impulse. [23] Dr. Davidson, author of a book entitled Forensic Psychiatry (1952), points out the disadvantages of an expanding concept of the doctrine of irresistible impulse. In the chapter dealing with Criminal Responsibility (p. 12) he says: Where irresistible impulse is a defense, it is usually broad enough to include both psychotic and psychoneurotic compulsions, though in some jurisdictions only psychotic impulses are grounds for acquittal. The danger is that the concept, once accepted, might be broadened to include the kind of impulse which occurs to normal people from time to time in response to rage or frustration. To be sure, it seems unfair to hold a person accountable for doing that which he could not refrain from doing. But there are good reasons for this procedure. When the doctrine is accepted with reference to psychotic impulses, it is logical for defense counsel to insist that it apply with equal force to neurotic compulsions, for these too are the result of psychiatric disorder. Then comes the plea that it should cover impulsive acts committed during drunkenness, for intoxication is also a form of mental illness. One step further carries us to the point where it furnishes a shield to anyone who commits a crime in a fit of rage, pique, or frustration. The above discussion points out the lack of agreement among learned men as to whether it is essential to a fair instruction on criminal responsibility that the jury consider not only if the accused was rational when he did the act, but in addition, if he also had the capacity to control his behavior. We do not adopt the second element as an additional test of criminal accountability. The difficulties encountered in attempting to differentiate between abnormal and normal are great. But the present state of development of the science of psychiatry does not provide a basis of knowledge which persuades us that it is necessary or even advisable to apply this theory. The important thing to remember is that we are concerned here with the law of insanity and legal responsibility, and the grave obligation placed on the law to protect society. As a matter of policy we believe the law is intended to exculpate from accountability for actions only those who suffer from a major mental disorder or disease  those who, because of some mental derangement, are lacking in reason or understanding or realization. Considering existing knowledge of human behavior in the light of present psychological and philosophical studies which are compatible with sound legal principles, we hold that a test of legal insanity framed in terms of capacity to understand or realize the nature and quality and consequences of conduct, and whether such conduct is wrong, is the proper test of criminal responsibility for this jurisdiction. We believe that it will work satisfactorily in practice, particularly where the expert witnesses are given wide latitude in describing their findings in their own terms; where the jury is given, so far as relevant and the rules of evidence will allow, the picture of the whole man. That was done here. An experienced psychiatrist, as a witness for Chase, testified at length  without any limitation by the court or objection from the state. Under the instruction given, had the jury accepted the witness's testimony they undoubtedly would have found Chase not guilty by reason of insanity. [24] But they apparently chose to believe other evidence offered by the state which tended to prove that Chase was not insane when he killed his wife. That was the jury's function and its right. We find no error in the trial court's instruction on criminal responsibility. Although not made a point on appeal, our attention is drawn to the conjunctive wording used by the trial court in that part of its instruction defining insanity. That term was defined as such a deranged condition of the mental faculties of a person as to render him incapable of knowing the nature and quality of his act and of distinguishing between right and wrong in relation to the act with which he is charged. In wording this was not identical with M'Naghten. There the test was whether a person was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of his act; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong. [25] Some courts have noted a distinction between the conjunctive and disjunctive wording. In People v. Sherwood [26] , the New York court of appeals expressed doubt that the jury had a clear conception of when the defendant would be criminally liable, since the trial court's instruction had not made it clear that a lack of knowledge (from defect of reason), either of the nature and quality of the act or that the act was wrong, would be sufficient to excuse him from liability. In 1899 the Supreme Court of Nebraska found an instruction erroneous where the conjunctive wording had been used. [27] The court's reasoning was that the defendant may have understood the nature of his act (that if he applied a match to a building it would be destroyed by fire), but may not have had the ability to distinguish between right and wrong with respect to such act. Other courts that have considered the question have held there is no distinction between ability to know of the nature and quality of an act and the ability to know whether the act was wrong. For example, in Jessner v. State, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin held that the two phrases     express exactly the same thing, but in different language. They are synonymous, and their conjunctive use results only in emphasis. If a person is unable to distinguish between right and wrong in respect to an act, he must be unaware of the nature and quality of the act which he is doing   . [28] To hold it reversible error to use the two phrases conjunctively would, in our opinion, infer that the intellect must be divided into two distinct parts. One part would be rational, so that the nature and quality of the act would be understood; and the other part would be irrational, so there could be no understanding that the act was one generally condemned by the community and therefore wrongful. The apparent implication here would be that one mind could be simultaneously normal and abnormal, sane and insane. That this could be is not supported by established medical or psychiatric principles that have come to our attention, nor by our own study and experience and knowledge in the field of human behavior. We should not, therefore, require the trial court to infer to a jury that such a condition of the mind does exist  which we would be doing if we insisted that the disjunctive, rather than the conjunctive wording of the test must be used. We find no error in that part of the court's instruction defining insanity.