Court Opinion

ID: 9783619
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 19:52:16.781405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:27.584195
License: Public Domain

Justice COATS
dissenting:
For a patchwork of reasons, the majority concludes that allowing the jury to consider the defendant’s refusal to answer certain inquiries from emergency response and medical personnel about what happened to her deprived her of a fair trial and required the reversal of her conviction for first degree murder. Finding it unnecessary to even reach the question whether she had a constitutional privilege to remain silent, the majority instead upholds the court of appeals reversal on the far broader ground that the defendant’s refusal bore no logical relationship to her state of sanity only hours earlier and therefore was irrelevant. Because I strongly disagree with the majority’s rationale, as a matter of logic as well as law, and because I would hold that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination extends beyond the courtroom only to custodial interrogation, I would reverse the court of appeals and order the defendant’s conviction reinstated. I therefore respectfully dissent.
In my view, neither the majority’s characterization of a choice not to answer select questions as “silence,” nor its announcement that such silence is inherently ambiguous and therefore irrelevant, is supported by the authorities upon which it relies or by basic human experience. Even more fundamentally, however, I consider the majority’s analysis of relevance to be flawed from its inception by its mistaken presumption that the defense of insanity is complete upon expert determination of the existence of a mental disease or defect. While I also find unjustified the degree to which the majority minimizes the significance attributed to the defendant’s selective responses by prosecution psychological experts, see maj. op. at 303 its more fundamental shortcoming, in my opinion, lies in treating the defendant’s capacity to distinguish right from wrong, as well as her capacity to kill intentionally and deliberately, as a matter of scientific expertise. See maj. op. at 310. Finally, I consider the ma*312jority’s criticisms about timing and the lack of limiting instructions to be little more than quibbles over the trial court’s discretion to determine the appropriate order of evidence and defense counsel’s control over defense tactics.
Perhaps the most startling, and potentially far reaching, aspect of the majority’s rationale is its conclusion that the defendant’s decision to answer some, but not other, questions had no tendency whatsoever to make it more probable that she was sane at the time she pulled the trigger than would be the case without that evidence. Maj. op. at 306 (relying on CRE 401). This statement clearly has less to do with law than with logic and basic human experience. Because the defendant pled that she was not guilty of first degree murder by reason of insanity, the prosecution was required, as a matter of law, to rebut her claim, raised by plea, that she could neither appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct nor act intentionally and deliberately due to a mental disease or defect. At the very least, the majority necessarily holds that a reasonable juror could not logically infer anything about the defendant’s awareness of the wrongfulness of her conduct from her refusal to tell emergency personnel what happened to her.
We have, of course, previously recognized that silence may be ambiguous and in certain circumstances so ambiguous as to be insufficiently probative of any material fact to overcome other policy limitations on admissibility. See People v. Quintana, 665 P.2d 605, 610-11 (Colo.1983) (narrowly rejecting defendant’s failure to make a statement to police upon arrest as evidence of guilt, where he elected not to testify at trial). We have never suggested, however, that susceptibility to alternate explanations alone renders silence inadmissible. It has long been recognized that in the face of an accusation of wrongdoing, and other situations in which the natural reaction would be to speak out in response to a statement or question, silence may indeed have some probative value. Id. at 610; see also Lothrop v. Union Bank, 16 Colo. 257, 261, 27 P. 696, 698 (Colo.1891); see generally Herbert Broom, A Selection of Legal Maxims 137 & 787 (8th American ed. 1882) (Qui tacet consentiré videtur, “Silence implies consent.”).
The authorities relied upon by the majority largely stand for the proposition that declining to answer in the face of interrogation by law enforcement officers, when there exists a constitutional right to do so and especially after the person being interrogated has just been warned of that right, cannot reasonably be understood as having been motivated by consciousness of guilt any more than as simply taking advantage of a legal right. In addition to resting their holdings on the existence of a constitutional privilege rather than on the irrelevance of silence (as the majority does in this case), those authorities would not clearly treat the defendant’s selective refusal to respond as electing to remain silent. See Anderson v. Charles, 447 U.S. 404, 100 S.Ct. 2180, 65 L.Ed.2d 222 (1980); Quintana, 665 P.2d at n. 7.
To the extent that the majority opinion can be read to find a lack of probative value only because the defendant’s “silence” was not precisely contemporaneous with the killing, it is similarly without support. Any suggestion that evidence of sanity hours before and after committing a criminal act is not even remotely probative of sanity at the time of the act flies in the face of both common sense and specific expert testimony in this case. And authorities rejecting evidence of a defendant’s sanity years before or after the criminal act in question can hardly be considered to the contrary. See maj. op. at 306 (relying on People v. Galimanis, 944 P.2d 626 (Colo.App.1997)).
Apart from the clear connection between the defendant’s choice not to give certain answers and her appreciation of the situation, her interaction with the officers was expressly relied upon by prosecution psychological experts in concluding that she did not dissociate at the time of the killing. While agreeing that the defendant was depressed and suffered from a borderline personality disorder, the lead prosecution expert concluded that she was sane when she killed the victim. Offering his expert opinion that psychosis is not a fleeting thing that would last such a short time, he expressly relied on indications of the defendant’s organized *313thinking and behavior, both before and after, as evidence rebutting her claim of dissociation at that precise moment of the killing.
Evidence at trial (largely through the defendant’s own statements) indicated that the defendant tried to buy a gun a day and a half before the killing but was turned down for lack of any Colorado identification. The gun dealer helped her locate the appropriate state facilities, and when she returned the next day with a state identification card, he sold her a handgun and gave her five hollow-point bullets. She hid the gun in her car and retrieved it the next morning. She arose about 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., while the victim was asleep, dressed herself, drank some beer, and drove her car to her cousin’s house, some six blocks away. She then walked back to the victim’s apartment, loaded the gun with the hollow point bullets, disrobed, and got into bed with him. Although it was undisputed that she shot and killed the victim sometime later, the precise time of the killing was never established.
The victim was killed by one gunshot to the back of his head while he was lying in bed. His body was rolled over, and the gun was placed on his chest. Before placing the gun, however, the defendant shot herself. About 7:00 p.m., the defendant dialed her cousin and upon learning that she was at her sister’s house, dialed that residence in turn. The victim asked her cousin to come over but specifically admonished her not to call 911 until she arrived. Upon arriving, the cousin found the defendant on the living room floor and the victim in bed. Believing that the victim had passed out, the cousin had her sister call 911 and report that she was with a shooting victim and that there was a man in the bedroom with a gun to his head.
The first officer on the scene immediately asked about the location of the suspect, and although the defendant did not respond, her cousin indicated that he was passed out in the bedroom. The officer entered the bedroom with his gun drawn and eventually determined that the victim was dead. Thereafter, three detectives, a fireman, a crime scene analyst, and a nurse asked the defendant who shot her. Although she answered questions about her address, offered biographical information, and advised firemen at least twice not to lay her on her back for fear of causing bleeding or draining, she either did not respond to questions about who shot her or answered that she did not wish to respond for fear of saying something wrong or making a mistake. Only about three hours later, after the police found a gun box in her car and other evidence linking her to the shootings, was she arrested for murder.
The prosecution’s lead psychological expert observed that the defendant’s activities leading up to these events and her contact with the officers after the shootings revealed a level of organized thinking that contradicted her claim of insanity, and he gave as examples several factors upon which he based his opinion. He noted that she was organized enough to buy a gun, load a gun, and point a gun; that she lied to the gun salesman about her reasons for purchasing the gun, whether they were, at that time, suicide or homicide; that she was persistent enough to obtain a Colorado identification; that she was able to remember two different phone numbers after the shootings and successfully reach her cousin; and that she had the ability to place the gun on the victim’s chest after the shootings, all of which demonstrated some ability to remember important things and know that she was in trouble.
When asked specifically about the importance of the defendant’s failure to answer questions about what happened, despite her ability to answer other questions, the psychiatrist made clear that it was a factor in his considerations, like her placement of the gun, and explained in detail that although the defendant’s state of mind hours later was not dispositive, he considered it relevant to the existence or non-existence of psychosis at the time of the actual killing. He also offered that in partial reliance upon these factors, he found no psychosis, either before or after the killing. A second prosecution expert even more expressly credited the defendant’s selective failure to respond to inquiries about the shootings as being important to his assessment of sanity. He discredited the defendant’s later explanations of confusion and lack of memory about what had happened on the grounds that her failure to at least in*314quire about what happened or express surprise about being shot was contrary to what one would expect to find in the event of actual dissociation.
Although the prosecution experts did not consider the defendant’s choice to answer only certain questions dispositive in itself, they clearly considered it relevant to the question of psychosis by helping to demonstrate a pattern of organized thinking shortly after the killing. Perhaps in recognition of the tenuousness of its broad holding that this behavior could have no probative value whatsoever, the majority alternatively asserts that if it could have some probative value, its admission would nevertheless amount to an abuse of discretion and require reversal for various policy reasons. See maj. op. at 303-304 (relying on CRE 403).
While the majority is clearly aware of the tremendous deference to which trial court rulings of relevancy are entitled, requiring that reviewing courts assume the maximum probative value and minimum prejudicial effect that admitted evidence could possibly have, see maj. op. at 304, it finds that the danger of misleading the jury by permitting it to consider the defendant’s refusals was too great. Unlike evidence of unrelated bad character or unchai'ged criminal misconduct that might cause a jury to dislike and penalize a defendant for reasons other than actual belief in her guilt, the majority apparently considers the evidence here objectionable because there are possible explanations for the defendant’s conduct that would not be probative of her sanity.
Even if the defendant’s selective refusal to answer were relevant only insofar as it was motivated by self-interest and appreciation of the wrongfulness of her conduct, it should nevertheless have been admitted as long as there was evidence to support a jury finding of such motivations. See CRE 104(b). Although the jury might have legitimately found otherwise, in my view there was clearly evidence, including the testimony of the prosecution experts, from which the jury could find that the defendant’s refusals were not caused by confusion or lack of memory, as she later claimed, but rather by conscious design. More importantly, however, to the extent that the defendant’s choice of questions to answer, in conjunction with all of the other factors noted by the prosecution psychological experts, evidenced her organized thinking so soon after the killing, it was actually probative of an absence of dissociation or psychosis.
Although a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity includes a plea of not guilty, and the prosecution was required to prove the commission of the offense as well as rebut the defense of insanity, it was clear from defense disclosures and the defendant’s psychological evaluations by both defense and prosecution experts that the only contested issue at trial would be the defendant’s state of mind. In addition to being a matter of trial court discretion, which was agreed to by the defense in any event, the order of evidence in this case was therefore inconsequential. Similarly, because the only contested issue at trial was the defendant’s state of mind, an instruction limiting admission of her selective responses to that purpose alone would have been virtually meaningless, but in any event was agreed to by the court in limine. Defense counsel, however, never made a request with regard to any specific testimony and never tendered any such instruction at the close of the evidence.
I find it important that the majority does not reverse this first degree murder conviction in order to vindicate any constitutional privilege or protect the defendant from any inflammatory evidence. It reverses solely because it believes the jury was permitted to hear irrelevant evidence, which it may have (apparently like the prosecution’s psychological experts) mistakenly considered, in conjunction with the defendant’s other actions immediately after the killing, probative of her sanity. The trial of the defendant’s sanity plea included forty-eight witnesses, five of whom were psychological experts. There are good reasons for treating evidentiary rulings, particularly those involving relevance, as discretionary with the trial courts, and for formally limiting reviewing courts from acting as super trial courts. Because I consider the majority’s decision today an unwarranted intrusion into matters more properly left to juries and trial courts, I respectfully dissent.
*315I am authorized to state that Justice KOURLIS joins in this dissent.