Court Opinion

ID: 9449774
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:22:09.688045+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:58.574187
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge, with whom Judge WISDOM joins, concurring specially in Judge GRIFFIN B. BELL’S
dissenting opinion:
I join in Judge BELL’S dissenting opinion, but I would not stop there.
It is time — and when the Court voted to hear the case en banc, I suppose that all of us thought this would be the time— for the full Court to give critical review to this important problem of federal criminal law. But an inability to muster a majority out of the Judges sitting has again postponed this day. Perhaps offsetting the awesome consequence that this particular, appellant has something substantively less than the appeal as a matter of right which 28 U.S.C.A. § 1291; F.R.Crim.P. 37, affords him, is the possibility that this impasse will, in part, impel acceptance of this case for review by the Supreme Court. There are many experienced in this field as lawyers, as teachers, and District Judges on the firing line who think that the 66 years since 18971 is long enough to warrant a second, if not a new, look at this pressing recurring problem.
It is absurd to keep talking about McNaghten. McNaghten is dead. So, *708too, is Durham.2 Just what is left of Howard,3 I am not so sure. Probably it is not really a distinctive rule at all for what it did was merely fall back on Davis (note 1, supra) and other ancient cases including Parsons.4
These opinions suffer from the inescapable fact that they represent the law’s effort to write concerning medico-legal concepts about which the world then knew little. In thus criticizing these eases because from another vintage I do not subscribe to the misapprehension held by some that contemporary law always looks with disfavor on ancient principles. But it is difficult for me to see how law lives up to its ideals when it rests its rule on things said or written at a time when so little was known about behavioral science. Though Durham (see note 2, supra) has now been discarded, I do not share the view that this was a meaningless interlude. Rather, it proves the wisdom of law in its effort to adapt itself to an ever-expanding sum of knowledge, whether scientific or otherwise. A rule was formulated and then tested in the hot fire of experience. It was found wanting. But the need for constant concern whether law is abreast of accepted learning was not thereby proved to be lacking.
The great value of Judge Bell’s opinion, overshadowing any minor criticisms of the kind discussed above (note 4, supra) is the need for great flexibility in the nature and scope of evidence admitted and in the legal standards as the Judge translates them into effective instructions for jury application in the context of a given case. All of this would be aided were we to write these standards in understandable English in the light of contemporary scientific knowledge and, equally important, the knowledge wrought by the law’s efforts to attain a sound goal reconciling the demands for a secure society with the natural revulsion to the idea that human beings are to be criminally punished for that which they did not really responsibly do. A big step in that direction is to emphasize that we should quit talking in terms of McNaghten, Davis, Durham, Howard, Parsons, or the rest.

. This was last dealt with in the two Davis cases. Davis v. United States, 1895, 160 U.S. 469, 16 S.Ct. 453, 40 L.Ed. 499; and Davis v. United States, 1897, 365 U.S. 373, 17 S.Ct. 360, 41 L.Ed. 750.

. McDonald v. United States, 1962, 114 U. S.App.D.C. 120, 312 F.2d 847, and see the numerous cases subsequent to McDonald: Williams v. United States, D.C.Cir., 1962, 312 F.2d 862; Hawkins v. United States, 1962, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 44, 310 F.2d 849; Alexander v. United States, 1963, 315 U.S.App.D.C. 486, 318 F.2d 274; Mitchell v. United States, 1963, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 353, 316 F.2d 354; Strickland v. United States, D.C.Cir., 1963, 316 F.2d 656; Horton v. United States, D.C.Cir., 1963, 317 F.2d 595; Gray v. United States, D.C.Cir., 1963, 319 F.2d 725; Blocker v. United States, D.C.Cir., 1963, 320 F.2d 800; Simpson v. United States, D.C.Cir., 1963, 320 F.2d 803.

. Howard v. United States, 5 Cir., 1956, 232 F.2d 274 (earlier decision 1950, 229 F.2d 602).

. Parsons v. State, 1887, 81 Ala. 577, 2 So. 854. To this extent I really cannot subscribe to Judge Bell’s statement that “[o]ne of the better statements of the standard to be followed” is the quotation then made from the Parsons opinion. The Alabama Supreme Court lays down rules “first.” “second,” and “third.” If the “first” really existed — the defendant was “either idiotic or otherwise insane,” — it would shock us all today to think he was nevertheless criminally accountable even though as in “second,” he did “know right from wrong.” Worse is the mandatory conjunction of sub conditions (1) and (2) under “third.” Thus to a condition of (I) that by reason of the mental disease the defendant “had so far lost the power to choose * * * and to avoid doing the act in question [so] that his free agency was at the time destroyed,” the rule lays down the further condition (2) that the crime was “the product * * * solely * * * ” of “such mental disease.” If, as condition (1) assumes, the power of choice was gone and free agency was destroyed, no civilized court in my judgment would hold the person criminally accountable. To that extent condition (2) is superfluous. In any event, considering the complex nature of the human machine and the myriad of motivations which bring about human conduct, it is (in my opinion) nothing short of absurd for a court to ever demand, or hope to get credible proof on, the crime having been caused solely by “such mental disease.” (Emphasis supplied/