Court Opinion

ID: 9453192
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:05:57.043264+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:33.275675
License: Public Domain

*246DANAHER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I wish to emphasize my view, once again,1 that this case should not have occasioned our concern in the first place. I had earlier set forth as an Appendix2 the opinion delivered by Judge Holtzoff after he heard testimony by the Government’s psychiatrist concerning the extensive treatment afforded to Rouse, and the evidence offered by Dr. Marland, the expert called by the appellant. Dr. Marland testified that Rouse had had “several attorneys” who had requested his expert services. He believed Rouse should not be regarded as mentally ill, indeed he said, if Rouse, after release, should duplicate his earlier conduct, the place for him is jail.
The trial judge then continued the case for some two weeks to permit an examination to be made by Dr. Bunge, a member of the Mental Health Commission. The latter testified that Rouse had been suffering from a mental disorder when he was arrested in September, 1962, but by November, 1965, he was no longer mentally ill.
The treatment at St. Elizabeths had been such, and recovery had so far progressed, that Dr. Bunge felt further hospitalization would “stifle his future development.” He found that Rouse did not come within the diagnosis of the Government’s expert, indeed he would no longer be a menace if released.
So it was that Judge Holtzoff’s November, 1965 opinion 3 reflected the sheer common sense of a judge who had carefully explored the claims of Rouse and his attorney that the evidence showed Rouse should be released. The trial judge noted the progress Rouse had made under St. Elizabeths care, then urged him to resume cooperation with the staff, and gave assurance that if the staff authorities failed thereafter to recommend a conditional release, the judge himself would entertain a renewed request.
We should have affirmed, right then and there. But had we done so, we would not have had an opportunity in No. 19863 to order a remand for a hearing and findings “concerning treatment” and its adequacy respecting a patient as to whom there had been three different diagnoses by three different experts. Although there has been no suggestion from any member of this court that a mental patient, committed after a criminal proceeding, is not entitled to treatment, a majority purported to find a basis for its action in the “District of Columbia Hospitalization of the Mentally III Act,” 78 Stat. 944, as amended. I pointed out in my dissent4 the fallacy of that predicate, especially since the Act in so many words says that the term “mentally ill person” shall not “include a person committed to a private or public hospital in the District of Columbia by order of the court in a criminal proceeding.”
In the hearing after remand many of St. Elizabeths leading experts testified as did others. Again, Rouse failed to make out a case, notwithstanding which he brought his appeal in our No. 20881. My colleagues now moot that appeal.5 If the Dutch took Holland in the first opinion, swpra note 1, the leak in the dike *247finally in No. 20881 submerged the erstwhile victors, for they cannot surmount the record there made after remand.6
Realization of the likely development of that circumstance, no doubt, is not unrelated to the institution of another habeas petition filed April 11,1967. Begun after three previous habeas actions, nearly five years after the original Rouse arrest, we find for the first time a claim that Rouse’s mother and his privately retained counsel had “railroaded” him into St. Elizabeths. After a hearing, judgment having gone against him, Rouse now has presented the instant appeal in our No. 20962. Seizing upon this as a vehicle, a majority again reverses, and this court has come full cycle!
Thus I wish to dissociate myself from what has been happening here. I reiterate previously expressed views that Congress should create an entity to deal with all problems7 arising with respect to those alleged to be mentally ill when charged with the commission of a criminal offense. In particular, I reassert the firm conviction that those seeking exculpation from criminal responsibility for their offenses on the ground of lack of mental capacity should be required affirmately to assert and establish that defense.
BURGER and TAMM, Circuit Judges, concur in the foregoing dissenting opinion.

. See my dissent in Rouse v. Cameron, 125 U.S.App.D.C. 366, 377, 373 F.2d 451, 462 (1966, as amended, 1967).

. Id. at 382-383, 373 F.2d at 467-468.

. Supra note 2.

. 125 U.S.App.D.C. at 381 n. 14, 373 F.2d at 466 n. 14.

. Senior Circuit Judge Fahy, concurring, attached to the order of dismissal, entered September 1, 1967, his separate statement which reads:
“In view of the relation of this case to Rouse v. Cameron, 125 U.S.App.D.C. 366, 373 F.2d 451, where I joined in Chief Judge Bazelon’s opinion for the court, I desire to state now that I have come to entertain serious doubt that the care and treatment provisions of the 1964 Hospitalization of the Mentally Ill Act, D.C.Code § 21-562 (Supp V, 1966), apply in terms to a person committed to a mental institution in a criminal proceeding. While nothing in the Act indicates the slightest intention on the part of Congress that care and treatment *247should not be accorded to one committed in such a proceeding, the matter appears simply to have been left for separate congressional consideration.
“I remain clearly of the opinion that the obligation of treatment as spelled out in our opinion in Rouse v. Cameron, supra, applies as well to one committed by court order in a criminal proceeding as to one committed in a civil proceeding; that is, the correctness of our holding in that case is not dependent upon the 1964 Act.”

. The disposition by Judge Holtzoff was right in the first place. In August 1966, one mentally ill Charles Whitman, as was notoriously publicized, from a University of Texas tower, killed or wounded at least 36 people after having shot his wife and his mother. What Rouse with his loaded .45 pistol was to do with his hundreds of rounds of ammunition, we do not know.

. Cf. my opinion in No. 20573, Dobson v. Cameron and Stultz v. Cameron, 127 U.S. App.D.C. 324, 383 F.2d 519.