Opinion ID: 2149954
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Cate's Insanity Defense

Text: Persons who cannot appreciate the wrongfulness of their conduct due to some mental disease or defect cannot be held responsible when they break the law. Ind. Code Ann. § 35-41-3-6(a) (West 1986). Still, not all mental conditions are serious enough to relieve one of criminal responsibility. Lyon v. State (1993), Ind., 608 N.E.2d 1368, 1369 (Mental disorder alone is not enough to excuse a defendant for the perpetration of a crime.). The Indiana Code defines mental disease or defect as a severely abnormal mental condition that grossly and demonstrably impairs a person's perception, but the term does not include an abnormality manifested only by repeated unlawful or antisocial conduct. Ind. Code Ann. § 35-41-3-6(b) (West 1986). According to Ind. Code § 35-41-4-1, the burden of proof is on the defendant to establish the defense of insanity (IC XX-XX-X-X) by a preponderance of the evidence. In this case, the jury was not satisfied that Cate proved his insanity. Most defendants claiming insanity attempt to satisfy their evidentiary burden by introducing expert testimony, and Cate calls our attention to the unanimous testimony of five doctors supporting his insanity defense. Indeed, each of the mental health professionals who examined Cate, including the State's expert and the court-appointed psychiatrist, agreed that Cate was legally insane at the time he killed his daughter. While such opinions provide a strong justification for raising the insanity defense, we have never held expert testimony to be conclusive. See, e.g., Mayes v. State (1982), Ind., 440 N.E.2d 678. Rather, as we observed in Turner v. State (1981), Ind., 428 N.E.2d 1244, the question is whether the jury's rejection of Cate's insanity defense was contrary to all the evidence and hence contrary to law.  Id. at 1246 (emphasis in original). While the expert testimony was unanimous, the psychiatrists' assertions about Cate's legal insanity were hardly uncontroverted. The record contains evidence of his lucidity after arrest, demonstrating both an awareness of what he had just done and his deliberation in accomplishing the killing. Furthermore, despite his subsequent claims that he was mimicking the biblical story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, Cate had previously denied such a motivation when asked by a coworker within a week of the murder. Each of the psychiatrists, of course, evaluated Cate after the incident, based on his representations about his motivation on the evening in question. The jurors may have agreed with the prosecution's suggestion that Cate had a strong incentive to lie and could have told his doctors a tall tale to avoid a guilty verdict. We neither know nor can accurately reconstruct the exact reasons Cate was found to be guilty but mentally ill instead of not guilty by reason of insanity, but we find at least the minimal evidentiary justification for the jury to find him sane enough to be held legally accountable for his actions. The jury's decision to reject Cate's insanity defense was not contrary to law.