Court Opinion

ID: 9667707
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:52:55.130215+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:40.048639
License: Public Domain

LeGRAND, Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent from Divisions I and II of the majority opinion because of its erroneous treatment of defendant’s claimed defense of insanity. Consequently, I dissent, too, from the result.
The insanity issue arose at trial because plaintiff testified he had ingested a quantity of LSD shortly before the events in question without knowing what it was and without realizing its possible harmful effects. The majority concedes there was ample medical testimony produced by defendant as to the properties of this hallucinogenic drug to support a finding defendant was suffering from a mental illness or temporary insanity and to require its submission to the jury. However, the majority then deprives defendant of this defense by holding his condition resulted from the voluntary ingestion of drugs, which it equates with voluntary alcoholic intoxication.
I find this portion of the majority opinion unacceptable on two grounds. First, I cannot agree that drug intoxication should be treated the same as that resulting from the use of alcohol. Second, even assuming the two are legally indistinguishable, the evidence here presents a fact question on the voluntariness of defendant’s conduct, which should have taken the issue to the jury.
At the outset let me acknowledge that much of defendant’s evidence is unlikely, even incredible. However, these are matters of credibility for jury determination. Like the majority, I assume the verity of his testimony for the purposes of this appeal. It is perhaps worthy of note here that the trial court expressed misgivings about this matter and decided with reluctance not to give the insanity instruction which defendant requested. I believe it should have done so.
I. My first disagreement with the majority opinion deals with its premise that drug intoxication and alcohol intoxication are legally the same when considering them as a possible defense to the commission of a crime. There is authority to support that view, although not as much as the majority says there is. For instance, the majority seemingly relies on three pre*212vious decisions of this court, none of which touches the issue at all.
They are State v. Christie, 243 Iowa 1199, 1208, 1209, 53 N.W.2d 887, 891, 892, On Rehearing, 54 N.W.2d 927 (1952). In that case the only claim of intoxication was one resulting from drinking beer. There is only a single reference to, and no discussion of, the use of drugs. The opinion is not based, either wholly or partially, on the use of drugs.
The next Iowa case cited is that of State v. Church, 169 N.W.2d 889, 893 (Iowa 1969). Again, the result turns on intoxication from drinking beer. The sole reference to drug use is this statement about glue sniffing at page 894 of 169 N.W.2d:
“As to the matter of glue sniffing, there is no evidence of the effect it has upon those who indulge in it, much less that it causes intoxication. Nor is it suggested the matter is of common and general knowledge so judicial notice may be properly taken of it.”
The use of drugs was not a factor there.
The last Iowa case is State v. Clark, 187 N.W.2d 717, 719 (Iowa 1971), where defendant requested an instruction on intoxication from the use of drugs. We did not decide the issue because it was not preserved for review. However, we did say at pages 719 and 720 that such a condition, if it existed, would “seem to relate more to a mental condition than to a state of intoxication” — an observation more favorable to defendant’s position here than to the State’s.
Not only do these cases fail to lend substance to the majority’s position, but other authorities relied on are equally unimpressive, except Commonwealth v. Campbell, (1971), 445 Pa. 488, 284 A.2d 798, 801. Even that case drew a hesitant special concurrence from one member of the court, who went along with the result only because he felt the “present state of our scientific knowledge” did not permit a distinction between the use of alcohol and the use of drugs to be made. South Carolina apparently adopts that same view. See State v. Bellue (S.C.1973), 194 S.E.2d 193, 195.
However, the majority also cites People v. Corson, (1963), 221 Cal.App.2d 579, 34 Cal.Rptr. 584, 587. While it is true the court there held voluntary intoxication resulting from either liquor or drugs is no defense, that case is of small help here because it was based upon a California statute which has no counterpart in this state.
De Berry v. Commonwealth, (Ky.1956), 289 S.W.2d 495, 496, is also cited by the majority as supporting its conclusion. On the contrary, I find it more helpful to defendant, as will be pointed out later.
On the other side of the coin are cases like State v. Flores, 82 N.M. 480, 483 P.2d 1320 (1971) where, under circumstances quite like those here, failure to instruct on the issue of insanity was held to be reversible error.
And in State v. Trantino, 44 N.J. 358, 209 A.2d 117, 123 (1965), the New Jersey Supreme Court held the question of temporary insanity allegedly resulting from the use of liquor and dexedrine had been properly submitted for jury determination.
I believe the Pennsylvania court is guilty of serious overstatement in Commonwealth v. Campbell, supra, 284 A.2d at 801, when it says the “overwhelming” view is that there is no distinction between alcoholic intoxication and drug .intoxication. The present state of the case law is not nearly so one-sided. See State v. Rippy, (N.C.1889), 10 S.E. 259, 261; Moss v. State, (1910), 57 Tex.Cr.R. 620, 124 S.W. 647, 648, 649; Edwards v. State, (1897), 38 TexCr.R. 386, 43 S.W. 112, 113.
I point out, too, that the problem presented here was recognized (but not decided) in Pierce v. Turner, (10 Cir.1968), 402 F.2d 309, 113, cert. denied 394 U.S. 950, 89 S.Ct. 1290, 22 L.Ed.2d 485 where the court said:
“We anticipate, of course, that the demands of due process may require ad*213justments and refinement in traditional and ‘stock’ instructions on the subject of criminal responsibility in view of the frightening effects of the hallucinatory drugs.”
I believe the time has come for this “adjustment and refinement” in our instructions dealing with this subject. The fallacy in the majority’s position is that it puts the issue on a time basis rather than an effect basis. It says the use of drugs is no defense unless mental illness resulting from long established use is shown because that’s what we have said of alcoholic intoxication. See State v. Booth, 169 N.W.2d 869, 873 (Iowa 1969). But we have said that about alcohol because ordinarily the use of alcohol produces no mental illness except by long continued excessive use. On the other hand that same result can be obtained overnight by the use of modern hallucinatory drugs like LSD.
The reason for our alcohol-intoxication rule disappears when we discuss the use of these drugs. See G. Lunter, “The Effect of Drug-Induced Intoxication on the Issue of Criminal Responsibility,” 8 Cr. Law Bulletin, page 731 (1972) and Comment in 17 DePaul Law Rev., page 365 (1968), “LSD — Its Effect on Criminal Responsibility.”
Several quotations from the latter are significant. At page 370 the author says:
“LSD can cause a breakdown in the normal functioning of the mind because hallucinations and a complete break with reality is one result of the use of the drug.”
At page 371 this appears:
“The LSD reaction may be equated, for legal purposes, with delirium tre-mens. In many ways they have the same effect on the human mind, and it would appear that both should render the subject legally insane.”
Our intoxication rationale as applied to alcohol simply does not fit the use of modern hallucinatory drugs; and it was never meant to. It was adopted before such drugs, as we now know them, were in common use. That is why I would say they are dissimilar and should be so regarded. There is no justifiable reason for equating the effects of so-called “hard” drugs, particularly those classified as hallucinatory, with the use of alcohol.
In the present case there is testimony of some 90 drug categories. Each has its own properties and each has its own effects. To treat all alike simply because each is classified generally as a drug strikes me as a judicial cop-out which completely disregards the realities of the situation.
In the case of alcohol, we have long experience which teaches us the usual and ordinary effects of alcohol upon the human mind and body. We are therefore justified in formulating general rules as to alcoholic intoxication, even though they may not operate with precise fairness in every case. We do not yet have the same scientific reliability on the effect of the use of drugs as far as criminal responsibility is concerned. But this should not tempt us to slough the matter off by lumping all drugs together with alcohol, where obviously many of them do not belong.
I would doubt a rule which affords a defendant the right to show temporary insanity under the standards announced in State v. Harkness, cited in the majority opinion, even though that condition may have resulted from a voluntary dosage of hallucinatory drugs. See State v. Flores and State v. Trantino, both supra.
II. Assuming, however, there is no merit to what I have said in Division I, there is still another reason why I cannot agree with the majority opinion. Even under that view, it is only voluntary intoxication which may not be relied upon as a defense to the commission of a criminal act. The majority finds that the use of drugs here was voluntary. I believe that finding *214entirely overlooks the real import of the evidence.
The testimony shows defendant took a pill which he knew to he a drug but which he did not know to be LSD and which he testified he thought to be harmless, although he had been told it would make him feel groovy. There is nothing to indicate he knew it could induce hallucinations or lead to the frightening debilitating effects of mind and body to which the doctors testified. The majority nevertheless holds the defendant’s resulting drug intoxication was voluntary. I disagree.
Surely, a court which has so zealously guarded unwary defendants from “voluntary” guilty pleas made without full realization of the consequences (State v. Sisco, 169 N.W.2d 542 (Iowa 1969)) and which has rejected any attempted waiver of constitutional rights unless knowingly and intelligently made (State v. Niccum, 190 N.W.2d 815, 822 (Iowa 1971))—surely that same court will not now say this defendant voluntarily drugged himself because he willingly swallowed a pill without knowledge of its nature and while ignorant of its potentially harmful effects.
In other words, does voluntary in this context refer to the mechanical act of ingesting the pill or does it refer to a willing and intelligent assumption of the possible harmful consequences of that act?
I am convinced voluntary as here used should relate to a knowledgeable acceptance of the danger and risk involved. Applied to the instant case, that rule would demand submission of the issue to a jury. See De Berry v. Commonwealth, (Ky.1956), 289 S.W.2d 495, 497, where the court held one who commits a crime under the influence of drugs should be held guilty if he takes the drug knowing the effect it is likely to have. See also Saldiveri v. State, (Md.App.1958), 217 Md. 412, 143 A.2d 70, 77, where it was held administration of an excess dosage of drug by mistake could not result in voluntary drug intoxication.
In my opinion the trial court erred in holding defendant was not entitled to have the issue of temporary insanity submitted to the jury under proper instruction. I would reverse and remand for a new trial, because of the court’s failure to give such an instruction.
MASON and RAWLINGS, JJ., join in this dissent.