Court Opinion

ID: 9576538
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:25:39.721864+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:09:32.307270
License: Public Domain

Deen, Chief Judge,
concurring specially.
This case involves and invokes a hybrid version of "act of God,” "act of Satan” and "Act of drunkenness” testimony militating toward societal forgiveness under insanity and delusional compulsion defenses. All three of these could be classified as crutches of excusability in shifting the blame to someone else. These arguments vary little from the popular sociological and psychological debates as to the origin of aggression and violent and destructive traits, that is, either heredity or environment. The proponents of the former theory are adamant that aggression is due to alleged animal ancestral innate latent instincts, while the latter are equally sure that destructive tendencies are learned from others in society. These two arguments are also crutches of shifting the blame.
Presiding Judge Quillian makes a strong scholarly argument that the legislature has modified the "right from wrong” test to include "mental illness.” One might cite further that drunkenness has been reclassified as an illness of alcoholism, instead of a wrongful act. Many intellectuals teach today that situation ethics or circumstances determine whether an action is right or wrong. Some say there really is no right or wrong but only "sick or well.” My only response is that "one convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”
The "McNaughton Rule” is based on the philosophy that humans have a free will, do not act on innate instincts of the lower order, and are responsible for their acts based on a right and wrong test. I believe this is still the law, but also agree that no evidence was presented that appellant could not distinguish right from wrong, therefore there was no error in the charge.
"The right-wrong test has its roots in England. There, by the first quarter of the eighteenth century, an accused escaped punishment if he could not distinguish 'good and evil,’ i.e., if he 'doth not know what he is doing, *196no more than... a wild beast.’ ” Durham v. United States, 45 ALR2d 1430, 1439. The latter test was changed in the McNaughton case to the "right-wrong” test still followed in Georgia. "... [T]he jurors ought to be told... that every man is to be presumed to be sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes . . Durham, supra, p. 1440.
The dissent cites and relies heavily on psychiatrists, Drs. Guttmacher, Weihofen and Zilboorg, in chiding the legal profession’s having muddied up and confused psychiatric garbled verbiage stating that the law should follow rather than lead, but to stay at a close and sufficient pace as to "keep in sight of the rest of the procession.” Even Judge David L. Bazelon, author of the Durham decision which substantially revised the Federal Insanity Test, acknowledges and states the error of many psychiatric conclusions: "Zilboorg’s appraisal can be evaluated now. He was wrong.” "Psychiatrists and Adversary Process,” by David L. Bazelon, p. 176, Biomedical Ethics and the Law, Humber and Almeder, Plenum Press, New York, 1976. Bazelon states further: "Psychiatry, I suppose, is the ultimate wizardry” and "In view of the inherent lack of certainty in psychiatric (as in other scientific) decisions, we held that the question of adequacy must be weighed on the basis of the 'state of the art.’ ” Ibid., pp. 173 and 179. Psychiatrists, as lawyers, disagree as to "mental illness.”
"A psychiatrist who accepts as his 'patient’ a person who does not wish to be his patient, defines him as a 'mentally ill’ person, then incarcerates him in an institution, bars his escape from the institution and from the role of mental patient, and proceeds to 'treat’ him against his will — such a psychiatrist, I maintain, creates 'mental illness’ and 'mental patients.’ He does so in exactly the same way as the white man who sailed for Africa, captured the Negro, brought him to America in shackles, and then sold him as if he were an animal, created slavery and slaves.” Ibid., p. 169, "Involuntary Mental Hospitalization,” Thomas Szasz.
To comprehend the obsession of many experts to eliminate the simple understandable moral or immoral "right-wrong” test from the jury and substitute a more *197vague, complex and undefinable "mental illness” obscure of moral or immoral and right-wrong connotation, one must understand the presuppositions and world view of the expert. For example, when attorney C. L. Gaylord of River Falls, Wisconsin, B. A., Wisconsin State University, with LL.B. from Drake University, in the provocative and timely article, "We Dance Around in a Ring,” American Bar Association Journal, Nov., 1976, Vol. 62, p. 1467, discusses irresistible impulsive irrational acts of rational people, he quotes Dr. Guttmacher and Professor Weihofen in Psychiatry and the Law, "In truth, each of us is born a savage. The wheel of evolution turns with infinite slowness. The newborn infant comes into the world today precisely the same asocial little animal that he was when he was bom to prehistoric man.” Dr. Alan F. Guttmacher, who is President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, is one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto II, whose moral views are: "Ethics is autonomous and situational” meaning there really is no definite right and wrong, so why have a test of this nature. See Religions of America, pp. 542-544, Leo Rosten, Simon & Schuster, N. Y. (1975). Also compare efforts of many in philosophical science who strive to completely wrest and take away all so-called cases involving technical and science questions and experts from courts of law and place them in a science court. See Proceedings of the Colloquium on the Science Court, Jan. 1977, U. S. Dept, of Commerce, National Science Foundation and American Assoc, for the Advancement of Science.
I trust lay people, non-experts, to best decide among the experts, based on a less complicated right-wrong test of responsibility rather than compounding the problem by substituting a sick-well test of irresponsibility. I would affirm.