Court Opinion

ID: 9448491
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:37:24.378957+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:27.085175
License: Public Domain

MAGRUDER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I disagree with my brethren as to the proper disposition of these cases, but our disagreement is a narrow one.
I understand we are in agreement as to the so-called presumption of sanity. It is clear that the government does not have the initial burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt to establish that the defendant was sane at the time of the commission of the acts. See Davis v. United States, 160 U.S. 469, 16 S.Ct. 353, 40 L.Ed. 499 (1895). If the defendant wishes to raise the issue of his sanity, he has the burden of going forward with the evidence. Only if he maintains this burden of going forward with the evidence, which evidence, if believed, tends to rebut the “logical core”—the inferring of the accused’s sanity—does the government have the ultimate burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was legally responsible when the criminal acts were committed. And I suppose that the majority opinion would agree, at least in principle, that this burden of the defendant to go forward with the evidence is a burden of showing that he was mentally irresponsible, not at some time in his life, but on the dates of the commission of the unlawful acts.
The court also is in accord that there is nothing to appellant’s claim that he should not have been brought to trial under 18 U.S.C. § 4244 without a formal hearing by the trial judge sua sponte on the subject of his mental competency to stand trial.
The majority opinion also accepts the obvious contrast in 18 U.S.C. § 4244 between the accused’s mental competency at the time of the trial with his mental competency at the time of the commission of the alleged criminal acts. Whether or not the defendant is so mentally incompetent as to be legally irresponsible so far as the substantive offenses are concerned, he is not to stand trial, if the judge determines, after a hearing, that he is “so mentally incompetent as to be unable to understand the proceedings against him or properly to assist in his own defense.” Of course, a finding by the judge that the accused is “mentally competent to stand trial” does not necessarily indicate his guilt or innocence on the subject of his immunity to conviction for the substantive offenses because of his mental incompetency. This may be the reason why the Congress provided in the last sentence of the section: “A finding by the judge that the accused is mentally competent to stand trial shall in no way prejudice the accused in a plea of insanity as a defense to the crime charged; such finding shall not be introduced in evidence on that issue nor otherwise be brought to the notice of the jury.”
Our only difference is as to the effect of the statements by the medical expert, Dr. Seneriz, who testified also at the preliminary hearing conducted by the trial judge, and whose testimony was the basis of the trial judge’s finding that the accused was then not competent to stand trial.
On the point of the defendant’s criminal responsibility for the substantive offenses, the defense called as an expert witness only Dr. Seneriz. Apparently defendant believed that, because Dr. Seneriz had said at the hearing on September 16, 1959, that in his opinion the defendant was mentally incompetent to stand trial under 18 U.S.C. § 4244, this expert would certify at the trial that the accused was criminally irresponsible at the various dates mentioned in the indictments. Dr. Seneriz testified that he examined the patient for about an hour at a time on several occasions at his office from February, 1959, to August, 1959. In answer to a question by the court, “He is in a period of lucidity right now, is that right?”, the doctor an*54swered, “That is correct.” The doctor spoke about a “partial remission” of the symptoms of schizophrenia.
It is true that, on redirect examination by counsel for the defendant, Dr. Seneriz stated that in his “feeling,” “based on the symptoms I found during the time I examined him,” he was insane or mentally incompetent on the specific dates listed in the indictments. However, on cross-examination he clarified his remark by saying that the only scientific way of making a specific determination with any degree of certainty would be to examine the patient a few days prior to or a few days after the fact. Conceivably the nearness of the doctor’s examination of the patient to the date given in the third indictment might be acceptable, but if there was error in the district judge’s finding that the accused was guilty of the offenses charged in this indictment, it follows that on familiar principles this error becomes moot in view of the fact that without doubt the dates named in the first indictment were too remote, and the judge imposed concurrent sentences upon all the counts.
As appears from the statement of facts, a jury was waived in these cases and the trial judge thereby became the trier of the facts. The trier of the facts found that the accused “was not mentally incompetent” at the time he committed the acts recounted in the indictments and therefore that he was guilty of the charges they contained. In making this finding it is clear that the court did not accept without question the testimony of Dr. Seneriz because he thought that Dr. Seneriz had given only a superficial examination of the patient. The trial judge said:
“I am not at all convinced by the testimony of Dr. Seneriz. It leaves many things in doubt. I believe the examination he made of this defendant was not exhaustive enough to permit a diagnosis such as the one he said that he made. He only gave from 12 to 15 hours for the examination of this defendant during a period of six months. That is barely two hours per month, which means that perhaps he saw him 15 minutes one day, and then he didn’t see him in 10 days, and so I don’t believe that a psychiatric examination to determine insanity, the way that Dr. Seneriz testified, can permit a diagnosis the way he said he had arrived at that diagnosis. Moreover, he spoke about these partial remissions.”
I do not believe that under the circumstances the court was required to accept the findings of this expert. I am not prepared to find, as apparently are my colleagues, that this finding by the trial judge was without the support of substantial evidence. See United States v. Owen, 231 F.2d 831, 833 (C.A.7th, 1956), cert. denied 352 U.S. 843, 77 S.Ct. 42, 1 L.Ed.2d 59 (1956).