Court Opinion

ID: 9505344
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 20:03:51.887734+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:04:24.282649
License: Public Domain

*1151SULLIVAN, Justice,
concurring.
This case has some history that I think is worth reciting. As the majority opinion says, the expert opinions in this case were unanimous that Rita Thompson was insane when she committed the crimes at issue here.1 The Court of Appeals found this evidence "uncontradicted" and reversed her conviction. 782 N.E.2d 451 (Ind.Ct.App.2003).
On the same day that the Court of Appeals decided Thompson's appeal, the same panel of the Court of Appeals also rendered an opinion in the case of Michael L. Moler, Moler v. State, 782 N.E.2d 454 (Ind.Ct.App.2003), trans. denied 792 N.E.2d 43 (Ind.2003). As in Thompson, the expert opinions in Moler's case were unanimous that he was insane when he committed the crimes at issue. However, there was also lay evidence in Moler that contradicted the experts' opinions. The Court of Appeals reluctantly rejected Moler's claim that because the experts' opinions that he was insane were uncontradicted, there was insufficient evidence to convict him. I say reluctantly because the Court of Appeals said in Moler:
Barany [v. State, 658 N.E.2d 60 (Ind.1995) ], has made it very difficult even for defendants with well-documented mental illnesses to successfully raise the insanity defense. Under the rule of Barany, even if all expert testimony regarding a defendant's state of mind points to the fact that the defendant could not have appreciated the wrongfulness of his actions at the time of a crime, the jury is free to disregard the experts' opinions in favor of lay evidence of the defendant's demeanor before and after the crime.
782 N.E.2d at 454. Barany was still another case where the expert opinions were unanimous that Barany was insane when he committed the crimes at issue. But like Moler, there was lay evidence that contradicted the experts' opinions. Based on all the evidence presented, Justice De-Bruler's opinion said:
The jury could have decided that this testimony about appellant's behavior was more indicative of his actual mental health at the time of the killing than medical examinations conducted four weeks after the arrest. Given this conflicting evidence, we will not invade the jury's fact-finding province.
658 N.E.2d at 64.
It is probably not coincidence that the same panel of the Court of Appeals decided two cases involving exactly the same issues on exactly the same day, one in favor of the State and the other in favor of the defendant. The Court of Appeals likely expected petitions to transfer with respect to both cases to reach our Court at the same time. However, Moler reached our court and we disposed of it (denying Moler's petition to transfer by vote of 3-2) prior to receiving the petition to transfer in Thompson. At such, we did not consider them together.
Moler, of course, constituted a direct request by the Court of Appeals for us to constrict the rule of Barany. Because a vote to deny a petition for transfer does not constitute a vote on the merits, that issue remained open even after Moler's petition to transfer was denied. But today we unambiguously reaffirm the rule of Barany.
*1152There may be a temptation to read into today's opinion-because we reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals-a suggestion that Barany has been expanded and that psychiatric testimony is even less weighty than before. I do not believe that to be the Court's intent. It seems to me that the law would require us, even under today's opinion, to set aside a conviction where (1) there was unanimous credible, expert testimony that a defendant was insane at the time of the erime at issue and (2) there was no other evidence of probative value from which a conflicting inference could be drawn. Said differently, there will be insufficient evidence to con-viet where (1) there is unanimous credible, expert testimony that a defendant is insane at the time of the crime at issue and (2) there is no other evidence of probative value from which a conflicting inference can be drawn. But we find that there was such evidence here.

. The majority says that the "psychiatrists' reports in this case merely offer their opinions about Thompson's state of mind two days after she committed the crime at issue." The Court of Appeals held that the state had stipulated that the reports were "equally applicable" to the date of the crime.