Court Opinion

ID: 9686837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:08:27.459078+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:22.276645
License: Public Domain

Souris, J.
{concurring). In People v. Wingeart, 371 Mich 264, I wrote for reversal because of the trial judge’s rejection of unanimous opinion testimony of psychiatrist that defendant was insane at the time of commission of the criminal acts charged. Here, another trial judge sitting without a jury likewise has rejected opinion testimony (that defendant is a criminal sexual psychopath), but in this case I believe our appellate duty is to affirm.
Unlike Wingeart, a criminal appeal in which our function was to determine whether the trial judge’s finding of sanity was supported by evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, this proceeding under PA 1939, No 165, as amended (CL 1948, § 780.501 et seq. [Stat Ann 1954 Rev § 28.967(1) et seq.]), is in the nature of a civil proceeding. People v. Chapman, 301 Mich 584, 604. Our function here, as Mr. Justice Dethmers notes, is to determine whether the judge’s finding is against the clear preponderance of the evidence. I am not persuaded that it is.
In Wingeart, it was my conclusion that the trial judge’s grounds for rejecting the psychiatrists’ testimony of defendant’s insanity were erroneous and, therefore, that the evidence in the case, including the testimony of the psychiatrists, did not support his finding that defendant was sane beyond a reasonable doubt. Here, however, I conclude that the trial judge properly refused to give the psychiatric evidence any weight, without which evidence there could *357be no valid finding that defendant was a criminal sexual psychopath. The psychiatrist witness himself recognized that defendant had a tendency to distort the truth but, nevertheless, did nothing which appears in this record to verify defendant’s statements on which his opinion, and that of his associates, was solely based. All 3 psychiatrists appointed by the court to examine defendant did so together, spending no more than a little over 1 hour with him. Notwithstanding their awareness of his proclivity for lying and deception, as far as this record is concerned they made no effort to verify his statements to them, — by interviewing- family members or others familiar with defendant or by repetitive interrogation to test the internal consistency of his statements, such as was done by the psychiatrists in Wingeart. Ample reason exists, of record from the mouth of the psychiatrist witness himself, for rejecting his opinion testimony.
Under these circumstances, I cannot say that this record would support a commitment under the act, let alone that the judge’s finding was against the clear preponderance of the evidence.