Opinion ID: 2041427
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Can a Defendant Be Declared Competent Without Benefit of an Adversary Hearing?

Text: Upon receiving the report on defendant from the Recorder's Court Psychiatric Clinic, Presiding Judge Evans entered the following docket journal entry on August 13, 1971: Report received from psychiatric clinic. Court finds defendant able to stand trial and so orders. Subsequently, in denying defense counsel's motion for mistrial based on the competency determination procedure, Judge Poindexter relied, inter alia, on the clinic determination of competency: The Court: Before the jury returns, Mrs. Ritter, there are two motions  you made two motions for mistrial  one of them relates to the possibility that the defendant might be insane. The court has checked the file in the interim and finds that according to the file there has been no motion to refer the defendant to Ionia; neither has there been any notice of defense of insanity in this case and when the defendant was referred to the Recorder's Court Clinic the report was made that [sic] was of sound mind and able to stand trial. The Court will deny your motion. (Emphasis added.) The question which arises from this record is whether this determination of competency could be lawfully reached without giving defendant an opportunity for an adversary hearing? We hold that it could not. The court rule involved clearly contemplates a hearing. GCR 1963, 786.5 reads as follows: .5 When a defendant has been committed to an approved diagnostic facility certified by the department of mental health for the performance of forensic psychiatric evaluation, the motion to commit the defendant to the department of mental health shall stand adjourned pending receipt of the diagnostic report and recommendation of the facility. (Emphasis added.) GCR 1963, 786.7 reads: .7 If upon the hearing on the motion the defendant shall be adjudged incompetent to stand trial, he shall be committed to the department of mental health pursuant to PA, 1966, No 266, and the pending criminal proceedings against such defendant shall stand adjourned until the further order of the court. (Emphasis added.) As noted in Section II of this opinion, supra, Rule 786.4 requires a show-cause hearing prior to temporary commitment for competency evaluation. Such a hearing is held, the court rule indicates, under the aegis of a motion to commit the defendant to the department of mental health. Rule 786.5 indicates that should the 786.4 hearing result in an order of competency evaluation commitment, the motion to commit the defendant to the department of mental health shall stand adjourned pending receipt of diagnostic report and recommendation of the facility. Rule 786.7 then picks up the thread, [i]f upon hearing the motion. This indicates that after the diagnostic report is received there must be a motion to determine competency or incompetency. Obviously a hearing cannot be held teleologically with only one result in mind as that would not be hearing but a farce. The hearing is to determine the truth whether the defendant is or is not competent and the diagnostic report is only evidence and not necessarily conclusive evidence. Rule 786 is elliptical in describing in Rule 786.7 what happens when the defendant is found incompetent without also in that or another subsection describing what happens if the defendant is found competent. However, in the case of competency, unlike incompetency, there is no question what happens next; there is only one possibility and that is to go to trial. In any event, once there has been a motion to test defendant's competency, either competency or incompetency cannot be declared except after an adversary hearing. To hold otherwise would be to elevate the psychiatric report, standing alone, to an unimpeachable, dispositive status without giving the defendant opportunity to rebut. Not only is such a procedure not within the contemplation of Rule 786, it is in blatant disregard of due process. Again, as Section II of this opinion points out, deprivation of liberty through psychiatric commitment of any sort is an action which is clearly impermissible unless and until the demands of due process are met, at minimum the requirements being notice [5] and opportunity for an adversary hearing. The State of Michigan, acting through the trial court under Rule 786.7, does not have the power to involuntarily confine an individual without first obtaining a judicial determination that confinement is warranted, such determination being surrounded by the constitutionally necessary procedural safeguards including an adversary hearing. Cf. McNeil v Director, Patuxent Institution, supra . Accordingly, we answer the third question posed in the negative. Trial courts may not declare a defendant competent to stand trial, or incompetent to stand trial for that matter, once the question of competency has been raised, without at the least, affording the defendant the opportunity for a full adversary hearing.