Court Opinion

ID: 9550363
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:34:30.417729+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:21:27.329874
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice,
specially concurring and dissenting.
I join with Justice Thomas in his special concurrence as it considers the issues presented in Section II of the court’s opinion. I dissent from present approval of the trial court’s denial of the admission of psychiatric testimony by defendant’s doctors as addressed in Section I. At issue in this atrocious homicide case was a plea of not guilty by reason of mental illness. Relevant and material on the subject to be addressed was proposed testimony by the accused’s own doctors. That tendered evidence was denied admissibility although directly related to the personal observation of the character and conduct of the accused defendant by the expert witness.
In Brown v. State, Wyo., 736 P.2d 1110 (1987), testimony of a similar character, when addressed to support the prosecution witness, was found to be acceptable. Furthermore, in adjudicative consistency, it is necessary to compare this case with the kind of testimony deemed by this court to be appropriate in State v. Zespy, Wyo., 723 P.2d 564 (1986). See also Scadden v. *868State, Wyo., 732 P.2d 1036 (1987); and Lessard v. State, Wyo., 719 P.2d 227 (1986). Zespy cannot logically be distinguished where, in that decision, “lay person expert” testimony and “scientific expert” testimony were permitted. The thesis of the latter witness, as a forensic witness careered in testifying in criminal cases to attack insanity defenses, was that psychiatric analysis for courtroom testimony was invalid. It would lead then to rationally be concluded that the testimony of a witness who does not know anything is admissible, while here the testimony of a witness about the bizarre psychiatric character of the defendant is inadmissible as conceptionally addressing a mental illness and not a mental deficiency as stated:
“A. It was my impression that the symptoms of the illness and his family history were most compatible with the diagnosis of Bipolar Affective Disorder, which is a manic depression, and Schi-zoaffective Disorder. It was my opinion the former term is most appropriate of the two which was Bipolar Affective Disorder or Manic, primarily because the latter term, Schizoaffective Disorder, is kind of a poorly defined psychiatric diagnosis.
“Q. Are those both mental illnesses?
“A. Major mental illnesses, right.”
This court has either forgotten or now ignores what it said in Zespy:
“ ‘ * * * neither the trial court nor this body should substitute its opinion for that of the jury, whose finding of fact should not be interfered with if there is any substantial evidence to support it. * * * jury js ⅛6 ultimate judge of defendant’s sanity at the time of the crime, and * * * since it had before it evidence of defendant’s behavior and state of mind upon the basis of which it could have found defendant sane [insane] at that time, it was not bound by the expert opinion testimony of the doctor. ***”*** “A jury can always disregard the testimony of an expert if the jurors find it to be unreasonable.” ’ ” State v. Zespy, supra, 723 P.2d at 567, quoting Gerard v. State, Wyo., 511 P.2d 99, 104 (1973).
The bizarre circumstance of this homicide gives some credence to the operational insanity of all participants as tempered only by avarice, demonstrable in part by post-killing events. See Thomas, Justice, special concurrence, supra. In this case, the jury was not afforded the opportunity to consider or disregard available expert witness testimony since, in effect, the evidence admissibility rule is developed for defense that expert witness testimony is only admissible if it states the ultimate conclusion which embraces the same conclusion as required in the jury decision. An adjunct to the rule seems, however, to be that the ultimate opinion requirement from the psychiatrist is obviously not invoked where lay person expert testimony on mental condition is to be afforded as demonstrated in Zespy. All of this postulates, as the Wyoming rule in the insanity defense case, that the only evidence available from the scientist is an opinion telling the jury what its decision should be where the witness testifies for the defense.
If there is anything uniform in the opinions of this court, in this area of psychiatric, sociological and motivationally directed expert testimony, it is that the expert witness testimony is admissible to prosecute and inadmissible to defend. Evenhanded justice this is not.
Wyoming has nine recent cases, with this as the tenth, where the admissibility of scientific behavioral-related, mentally-defined, expert-witness evidence was considered. In Brown, this court approved testimony when a clinical psychologist enunciated a perceived mentally related testimony-reliability factor, albeit over strong objection and dissent from two members of the court. In Lessard, the court found a rape crisis counselor to be an appropriately viable witness and evidence admissible that “the victim’s behavior was consistent with sexual assault.” Likewise in Scadden, behavioral analysis for prosecution purposes was deemed admissible evidence when presented by the “expert.” Finally, Zespy is in accord with admissibility for prosecution purposes with insanity plea.
*869State of mind expert witness evidence for the defense was denied in Smith v. State, Wyo., 564 P.2d 1194 (1977) as a psychiatric evaluation which enunciated an admissibility standard as contrary to the later developed concept of Brown, Scadden, Lessard and, to a degree, Zespy. The difference in Smith was a resolution that psychiatric evidence was only available with a technical insanity plea (which in fact does exist here). Buhrle v. State, Wyo., 627 P.2d 1374 (1981); Engberg v. State, Wyo., 686 P.2d 541, cert. denied 469 U.S. 1077, 105 S.Ct. 577, 83 L.Ed.2d 516 (1984), second appeal presently pending in this court— Engberg v. Shillinger, No. 87-15; Jahnke v. State, Wyo., 692 P.2d 911 (1984); and Krucheck v. State, Wyo., 702 P.2d 1267 (1985) defined inadmissibility in result as evidence used to defend. The box score for the ten recent cases is: three opinions — admission for prosecution approved, conviction affirmed; one opinion-rejection for prosecution disapproved when considered by bill of exception; six opinions — admission for defense denied, conviction affirmed. This is a ten to zero result.
Persuasively, the only common thread to be found in Wyoming precedent, as now repeated by this decision, is admissibility of scientific behavioral-related, mentally-defined evidence for conviction and rejection for defense. In this case, I am forced to conclude that the rejection of the scientific evidence, expert-witness testimony results-in a destruction of due process and denial of equal protection in constitutional terms. Under the Wyoming Constitution, it represents a disregard of Art. 1, § 10, right to witnesses and Art. 1, Section 6, due process.
I would ascribe denial of testimony to defend against a murder charge from the defendant’s own doctors which would have considered his mental condition to be not only inappropriate but prejudicial, and consequently dissent from Section I of the court’s opinion.