Opinion ID: 1189110
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Insanity Defense in California

Text: (3) It is fundamental to our system of jurisprudence that a person cannot be convicted for acts performed while insane. ( People v. Nash (1959) 52 Cal.2d 36, 50-51; ...) ( People v. Kelly (1973) 10 Cal.3d 565, 574 [111 Cal. Rptr. 171, 516 P.2d 875].) This rule is one aspect of the equally well established and no less fundamental principle that wrongful intent is an essential element of crime, a principle reflected in the first statutory criminal law scheme adopted by our Legislature in 1850. The Act Concerning Crimes and Punishments (Stats. 1850, ch. 99, p. 229) set forth this principle and its applicability to the insane as the first three sections of the law: § 1. In every crime or public offence there must be a union or joint operation of act and intention, or criminal negligence. § 2. Intention is manifested by the circumstances connected with the perpetration of the offence, and the sound mind and discretion of the person accused. § 3. A person shall be considered of sound mind who is neither an idiot, nor lunatic, nor affected with insanity, and who hath arrived at the age of fourteen years; or before that age, if such person knew the distinction between good and evil. [2] The principle that wrongful intent or criminal mens rea is an essential element of crime was carried over into the Penal Code of 1872 which incorporated section 1 of the Act Concerning Crimes and Punishments as section 20 of the code, and expanded the classes of persons deemed incapable of committing crime. Section 26, as adopted in 1872, provided that [a]ll persons are capable of committing crimes, except those belonging to the following classes: 1. Children under the age of fourteen years, in the absence of clear proof that at the time of committing the act charged against them, they knew of its wrongfulness; 2. Idiots; 3. Lunatics and insane persons; 4. Persons who committed the act or made the omission charged, under an ignorance or mistake of fact which disproves any criminal intent; 5. Persons who committed the act charged, without being conscious thereof; 6. Persons who committed the act or made the omission charged, through misfortune or by accident, when it appears that there was no evil design, intention, or culpable negligence; 7. Married women (unless the crime be punishable with death) acting under the threats, command, or coercion of their husbands; 8. Persons (unless the crime be punishable with death) who committed the act or made the omission charged, under threats or menaces sufficient to show that they had reasonable cause to and did believe their lives would be endangered if they refused. When the Penal Code of 1872 was submitted to the Legislature for adoption, the accompanying comments of the code commissioners reflected sensitivity to the principle of criminal responsibility that had been expressed by the court in implementing the prior law. With regard to section 20, the commissioners noted: The opinion of the Court in People vs. Harris [(1866) 29 Cal. 678] is given at length because it is a correct and authoritative exposition of Sec. 20; ... Says Mr. Bishop (1 Bishop's Cr. Law, Sec. 227): `There is only one criterion by which the guilt of men is to be tested. It is whether the mind is criminal. Criminal law relates only to crime, and neither in philosophical speculation nor in religious or moral sentiment would any people in any age allow that a man should be deemed guilty unless his mind were so. It is, therefore, a principle of our legal system, as probably of every other, that the essence of an offense is the wrongful intent, without which it cannot exist.' The opinion of Mr. Bishop finds full support in the following adjudged cases.  United States vs. Pearce, 2 McLean, p. 14; Weaver vs. Ward, Hob., p. 134; Rex vs. Fell, 1 Salk., p. 272, Lancaster's Case, 1 Leon., p. 208.... (Code Commissioners' note, Pen. Code of Cal. (1st ed. 1872) p. 21.) As to section 21, which essentially incorporated sections 2 and 3 of the 1850 act, the commissioners noted that [t]he natural and probable consequences of every act deliberately done are presumed to have been intended by the author of the act, if of sane mind.  ( Ibid. ) It was then understood, although the plea of not guilty by reason of insanity was not added to sections 1016 and 1017 until 1927 (Stats. 1927, ch. 677, §§ 1, 2, pp. 1148-1149), that the insanity defense could be offered under a plea of not guilty. (Code Commissioners' note, Pen. Code of Cal. (1st ed. 1872) p. 341.) The test of legal insanity when the Penal Code of 1872 was adopted by the Legislature was the two-prong M'Naghten test recognized by this court in People v. Coffman, supra, 24 Cal. 230, 235: The unsoundness of mind, or insanity, that will constitute a defense in a criminal action is well described by Tindal, C.J., in answer to questions propounded by the House of Lords to the Judges [citation]. He says, `that to establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of committing the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature or quality of the act, or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong. ' (Original italics.) Coffman 's exposition of the M'Naghten test was set out in the commissioners' note to section 1016, confirming the legislative understanding of the applicable definition of legal insanity. For more than a century after Coffman recognized the M'Naghten test as applicable in this state it continued to be used, and although sometimes stated in the conjunctive, was in fact applied so as to permit a finding of insanity if either prong of the test was satisfied. [3] We stated the test in the disjunctive in Drew and the instructions given by the trial court in that case did so also. (22 Cal.3d at pp. 336, fn. 2, 339.) [4] Because our statutes requiring mens rea, and our past formulation of the M'Naghten and ALI- Drew tests of insanity have afforded adequate defense to mentally ill persons who lack wrongful intent and might otherwise be subject to penal sanctions, we have not been called upon to consider the constitutional implications of the imposition of punishment on persons who act without that intent. Nor has the United States Supreme Court done so, although that court, too, has recognized repeatedly that except in regulatory offenses in which the sanctions are relatively light ( United States v. Dotterweich (1943) 320 U.S. 277, 280-281 [88 L.Ed. 48, 51-52, 64 S.Ct. 134]), the existence of wrongful intent is essential to criminal liability. (See United States v. Bailey (1980) 444 U.S. 394, 402 [62 L.Ed.2d 575, 585, 100 S.Ct. 624]; Morissette v. United States (1952) 342 U.S. 246, 250-251 [96 L.Ed. 288, 293-294, 72 S.Ct. 240]; cf. United States v. Balint (1922) 258 U.S. 250 [66 L.Ed. 604, 42 S.Ct. 301].) Because mens rea or wrongful intent is a fundamental aspect of criminal law, the suggestion that a defendant whose mental illness results in inability to appreciate that his act is wrongful could be punished by death or imprisonment raises serious questions of constitutional dimension under both the due process and cruel and unusual punishment provisions of the Constitution. In Leland v. Oregon (1952) 343 U.S. 790 [96 L.Ed. 1302, 72 S.Ct. 1002], the court upheld an Oregon law placing the burden of proving insanity beyond a reasonable doubt on the defendant and affirmed the right of the state to formulate the applicable test of legal insanity. In so doing, however, the court measured the law under due process standards, concluding that the irresistible impulse extension of the traditional insanity test was not `implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.' (343 U.S. at p. 801 [96 L.Ed. at p. 1310].) The court thus seemingly accepted the proposition that the insanity defense, in some formulation, is required by due process. (See also Robinson v. California (1962) 370 U.S. 660, 666 [8 L.Ed.2d 758, 762, 82 S.Ct. 1417], suggesting that punishment for the status of being mentally ill would constitute cruel and unusual punishment.) Scholars, too, suggest that abolition of the traditional insanity defense may be constitutionally impermissible if the result would be imposition of punishment on a mentally ill person for acts done without criminal intent. (See Robitscher & Haynes, In Defense of the Insanity Defense (1982) 31 Emory L.J. 9; Note, The Proposed Federal Insanity Defense: Should the Quality of Mercy Suffer for the Sake of Safety (1984) 22 Am.Crim. L.Rev. 49.) This court suggested a similar view in People v. Coleman (1942) 20 Cal.2d 399, 407 [126 P.2d 349], where we observed: Obviously an insane person accused of crime would be inhumanely dealt with if his insanity were considered merely to reduce the degree of his crime or the punishment therefor. [5] We need not face these difficult constitutional questions, however, if section 25(b) does no more than return to the pre- Drew California version of the M'Naghten test.