Court Opinion

ID: 9595696
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:42:43.010564+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:30.108982
License: Public Domain

Rogosheske, Justice
(concurring specially).
I agree that this case must be reversed and remanded for a new trial due to a failure below to instruct on the defense of involuntary intoxication. I cannot join the majority opinion, however, because I neither believe that involuntary intoxication is a type of insanity nor that an instruction couched in terms of an insanity defense fits defendant’s asserted defense in this unique case.
The premise underlying the defense of involuntary intoxication is that a person should not be held criminally liable in the absence of volitional fault, that is, conscious fault. Thus, in another context, it has been urged that an individual should not be “subject to punishment and loss of dignity or stigmatization through the criminal law unless he violates the law for reasons which were in his power to prevent.” Gorham v. United States, 339 A. 2d 401, 440 (D. C. App. 1975) (Fielding, J., dissenting). Stated in other words, “persons should not be punished if they could not have done otherwise, i. e., had neither the capacity nor a fair opportunity to act otherwise.” Hart, Punishment and Responsibility, p. 153. See, Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 241. In recognition of the above principle, the authors of the Model Penal Code declared that involuntary intoxication is an affirmative defense if—
“* * * by reason of such intoxication the actor at the time of his conduct lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate its criminality [wrongfulness] or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law.” Model Penal Code, § 2.08(4), 10 U. L. A. 473.
I would apply the above principle to the case at bar by instructing the jury that defendant should be excused from criminal lia*474bility if defendant establishes by the preponderance of the evidence that due to the ingestion of Valium he was intoxicated to such an extent that he was incapable of exercising reasonable • care in operating his automobile, and that he did not know or have reasonable grounds to foresee that in taking the Valium pursuant to his doctor’s prescription his mental condition would become such as to render him incapable of exercising reasonable care in driving an automobile. See, Burnett v. Commonwealth, 284 S. W. 2d 654, 659 (Ky. 1955).
The majority opinion declares that involuntary intoxication is a defense only when it causes temporary insanity as insanity is defined in Minn. St. 611.026. In my view, § 611.026 has no application to the defense asserted because involuntary intoxication due to the ingestion of a medically prescribed drug is simply not a form of mental “illness” or “deficiency” as those terms are commonly used. To describe the asserted mental state of defendant in this case as one of insanity stretches that word far beyond its ordinary meaning and gives § 611.026 a construction it is doubtful was ever contemplated by the legislature.
In my opinion, the defense of involuntary intoxication does not rest upon so tenuous a statutory basis. Involuntary intoxication is a defense anchored firmly in the theory of mens rea, which has long been a part of Anglo-American common law. See, e. g., Coke, Third Institute, pp. 6, 56, 107; 4 Wm. Blackstone, Commentaries, pp. 21, 22, 27. Other defenses to criminal liability grounded in the theory of mens rea include infancy, compulsion, necessity, insanity, and in this state, alcohol dependence. State v. Fearon, 283 Minn. 90, 166 N. W. 2d 720 (1969). In Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246, 250, 72 S. Ct. 240, 243, 96 L. ed. 288, 293 (1952), the United States Supreme Court reviewed the development of mens rea and its related defenses to criminal liability and declared:
“The contention that an injury can amount to a crime only when inflicted by intention is no provincial or transient notion. *475It is as universal and persistent in mature systems of law as belief in freedom of the human will and a consequent ability and duty of the normal individual to choose between good and evil.”
The defense of involuntary intoxication, based on the absence of volitional fault by defendant, is properly part of this same system of law.
The majority opinion suggests that this court must defer to the legislative judgment expressed in § 611.026 and allow the defense of involuntary intoxication only when it creates temporary insanity. I do not agree because it has traditionally been the duty of the courts and not the legislature to define the defenses which necessarily follow from the doctrine of mens rea. In Morissette, the Supreme Court observed (342 U. S. 251, 72 S. Ct. 244, 96 L. ed. 294):
“Crime, as a compound concept, generally constituted only from concurrence of ah evil-meaning mind with an evil-doing hand, was congenial to an intense individualism and took deep and early root in American soil. As the states codified the common law of crimes, even if their enactments were silent on the subject, their courts assumed that the omission did not signify disapproval of the principle [of mens rea] but merely recognized that intent was so inherent in the idea of the offense that it required no statutory affirmation. Courts, with little hesitation or division, found an implication of the requirement as to offenses that were taken over from the common law. The unanimity with which they have adhered to the central thought that wrongdoing must be conscious to be criminal is emphasized by the variety, disparity and confusion of their definitions of the requisite but elusive mental element.”
Historically, it has never been suggested that the principle of mens rea “is dependent on the direction of the legislative body. Indeed, much of the case law has evolved by way of implied exceptions (that is, implied by the judges) to apparent express and *476precise statutory commands.” Brett, An Inquiry Into Criminal Guilt, p. 40.
For the reasons stated above, I would direct the trial court to instruct on the defense of involuntary intoxication as provided for in § 2.08(4) of the Model Penal Code.