Court Opinion

ID: 9754567
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:04:19.621609+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:54.448592
License: Public Domain

Weintraub, C. J.
(concurring). I join in the opinion of Mr. Justice Fbaitois.
The trial court should have permitted Dr. Galen to answer the question whether defendant was capable of premeditating murder. Although Dr. Galen had already said defendant appreciated the nature of his murderous act and knew it was wrong and hence was not legally insane, still anything the witness could add in response to that particular question would be relevant upon the issue of punishment, for the question whether the death sentence should be imposed calls for a moral judgment with respect to which the law sets no standard. As to that issue the jury may consider whatever medicine or psychiatry can contribute to an understanding of a defendant’s behavior. State v. Mount, 30 N. J. 195 (1959); State v. DiPaolo, 34 N. J. 279, 291, cert. denied 368 U. S. 880, 82 S. Ct. 130, 7 L. Ed. 2d 80 (1961). Since, however, the jury did recommend life imprisonment, defendant was not prejudiced in this regard.
On the surface of things, the question put to Dr. Galen was relevant also upon the issue of the degree of murder. Again it is of no moment that a defendant was legally sane at the time of the homicide, for his psychiatric make-up may bear upon whether he did in fact perform all the mental operations which must be shown to raise murder in the second degree to *474murder in the first degree. State v. DiPaolo, supra, 34 N. J., at p. 294; State v. Trantino, 44 N. J. 358 (1965). Dr. Galen was permitted to describe Sikora’s psychiatric nature and the jury was able to consider it upon that issue. We know now that the doctor’s further testimony would not have assisted the jury upon that issue, but no one could know from the question itself that the answer would be incompetent.)
In any event a defendant should be permitted to spread his offer of proof on the record (in the absence of the jury, of course) to the end that an appellate court may see whether there was prejudicial error. State v. Abbott, 36 N. J. 63, 77-78 (1961). Unless that course is followed, an appellate court may have to reverse a conviction because it has no way of knowing whether harm was done or be obliged to follow the unusual course we took in this case, of having the proffer made under oath during the appeal, a procedure which consumes time and money and may leave one in doubt as to whether the post-conviction offer really matches what was in mind at the time of trial.
As I have said, the question put to Dr. Galen was proper on the surface of things, but the answer we now have reveals his testimony would be incompetent as to guilt for the reason that it does not bear upon the issues as the law conceives them. Rather it simply challenges the law’s entire concept of criminal responsibility.
To put the subject in perspective, we must start with the common law’s conception of crime. The common law required (1) an evil deed and (2) mens rea—a guilty mind. This conception emerged from man’s then understanding of himself. It was felt to be unjust to stigmatize a man a criminal unless his evil deed was accompanied by an evil-meaning mind. Insanity was relevant only insofar as it denied the existence of an evil intent and thus disputed that critical element of the State’s charge. It was assumed that all men were able to adhere to the right if they saw the right, and hence insanity was conceived to be such disease of the mind as prevented the accused from understanding the nature of *475his act and that it was wrong. The law thus separated the sick from the bad upon the basis of a man’s capacity to know what was right. Any other imperfection or defect was deemed to be merely a bad trait of character or personality.
The law’s conception, resting as it does upon an undemonstrable view of man, is of course vulnerable. But those who attack it cannot offer a view which is demonstrably more authentic. They can tear down the edifice but have nothing better to replace it.
The psychiatric view advanced by Dr. Galen seems quite scientific. It rests upon the elementary concept of cause and effect. The individual is deemed the product of many causes. As a matter of historical fact, he was not the author of any of the formative forces, nor of his capacity or lack of capacity to deal with them. In short, so far as we,know, no man is his own maker. I say so far as we know, for man has yet to catch a glimpse of the ultimate truth. The concept of cause-and-effect, satisfying though it may be for most matters, is a dead-end approach to the mystery of our being.
Actually this psychiatric view of man is not new. It was centuries ago that an Englishman, seeing another taken to the place of execution, said of himself, “But for the grace of God there goes John Bradford.” Wordsworth knew “The child is father of the man.” What the psychiatrist has added is the detailed psychodynamics beneath an individual’s objective behavior.
Abstractly, the cause-and-effect thesis could suggest a stultifying determinism whereunder every stroke of a man’s pen was ordained when time first stirred. But the psychiatrist, awed by it all, wisely leaves that subject to the philosopher. Besides it is not easy for an inquiring mind to believe it is on a string stretching from infinity. Nonetheless the cause-and-effect thesis dominates the psychiatrist’s view of his patient. He traces a man’s every deed to some cause truly beyond the actor’s own making, and says that although the man was aware of his action, he was unaware of assembled forces in *476his unconscious which decided his course. Thus the conscious is a puppet, and the unconscious the puppeteer.
And so, Dr. Galen, in expounding the psychodynamics of Sikora’s murderous exploit, started with the premise that Sikora appreciated the nature of his act and knew it was wrong; that Sikora was aware of the events which indeed he recalled with great detail, but was unaware that his unconscious was so constituted that its reaction to his conscious experience had to be homicidal. The doctor added, as I understand him, that the unconscious probably decided on murder in order to avoid a complete disintegration of the personality.
Wow this is interesting, and I will not quarrel with any of it. But the question is whether it has anything to do with the crime of murder. I think it does not.
The witness described Sikora’s actions as wholly “automatic.” While at tidies he spoke in other terms, such as that Sikora was really not “fully” conscious of what he was doing despite his “long * * * and rather clear history of what occurred,” and although on cross-examination the doctor found himself differentiating between rational and irrational ways of committing murder (a most unscientific discourse, it seems to me), his professional theme remained that the conscious was the unwitting and unsuspecting puppet of the unconscious.
Further, “disease” has nothing to do with this automatic behavior. Although in obeisance to M’Naghlen the witness said his “diagnosis” of a “personality disorder of a passive dependent type with aggressive features” describes “a mental disorder” listed in the Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, he denied the reality of such classifications. Rather he said mental disturbances or disorders are merely gradients in the range from “essentially normal” to “marked disturbance of the thinking mechanism.” The point I stress is that the automatic thesis in nowise depends upon the existence of some “disorder” of the mind. Rather it accounts for all human behavior, whether it be a murder or the retaliatory action of the witness’s doctor friend who cut off a motorist *477who had cut him off, or the raising of one’s index finger rather than his pinky, to refer to still another example Dr. Galen gave of the dictatorial control of the unconscious.1
Under this psychiatric concept no man could be convicted of anything if the law were to accept the impulses of the unconscious as an excuse for conscious misbehavior. Although the specific question put to Dr. Galen was whether the defendant was capable of premeditating the murder, his answer would have to be the same if he were asked whether defendant was able to form an intent to do grievous bodily harm or any harm at all. His answer would have to be that the unconscious directed the killing in response to the stimulus of the events preceding the killing. The same explanation would account for the misbehavior of Dr. Galen’s motoring friend if he were charged with a violation of the motor vehicle act.
What then shall we do with our fellow automaton whose unconscious directs such antisocial deeds? Por one thing, we could say it makes no difference. We could say that in punishing an evil deed accompanied by an evil-meaning mind, the law is concerned only with the existence of a will to do the evil act and it does not matter precisely where within the mind the evil drive resides.
Or we could modify the law’s concept of mens rea to require an evil-meaning unconscious. The possibilities here are rich. It would be quite a thing to identify the unconscious drive and then decide whether it is evil for the purpose of criminal liability. Por example, if we somehow were satisfied that a man murdered another as an alternative to an unconscious demand for suicide or because the unconscious believed it had to kill to avoid a full-blown psychosis, shall we say there was or was not a good defense? Shall we indict for *478murder a motorist who kills another because, although objectively he was negligent at the worst, the psychoanalyst assures us that the conscious man acted automatically to fulfill an unconscious desire for self-destruction? All of this is fascinating but much too frothy to support a structure of criminal law.
Finally, we could amend our concept of criminal responsibility by eliminating the requirement of an evil-meaning mind. That is the true thrust of this psychiatric view of human behavior, for while our criminal law seeks to punish only those who act with a sense of wrongdoing and hence excuses those who because of sickness were bereft of that awareness, the psychiatrist rejects a distinction between the sick and the bad. To him no one is personally blameworthy for his make-up or for his acts. To him the law’s distinction between a defect of the mind and a defect of character is an absurd invention. Hence, as I tried to say in a concurring opinion in State v. Lucas, 30 N. J. 37, 82 (1959), and elsewhere, “Criminal Responsibility: Psychiatry Alone Cannot Determine It,” 49 A. B. A. J. 1075 (1963), the psychiatric conception of man would lead the law to discard insanity as a defense and to think of mens rea as nothing more than a conscious intent, objectively-found, to do the forbidden act.2
The subject of criminal blameworthiness is so obscure that there is an understandable disposition to let anything in for whatever use the jury may wish to make of it. But it will not do merely to receive testimony upon the automaton thesis, for the jury must be told what its legal effect may be. Specifically, the jury must be told whether a man is chargeable with his unconscious drives.
It seems clear to me that the psychiatric view expounded by Dr. Galen is simply irreconcilable with the basic thesis of our criminal law, for while the law requires proof of an evil-*479meaning mind, this psychiatric thesis denies there is any sneh thing.3 To grant a role in onr existing structure to the theme that the conscious is just the innocent puppet of a noneulpable unconscious is to make a mishmash of the criminal law, permitting—indeed requiring—each trier of the facts to choose between the automaton thesis and the law’s existing concept of criminal accountability. It would be absurd to decide criminal blameworthiness upon a psychiatric thesis which can find no basis for personal blame. So long as we adhere to criminal blameworthiness, mens rea must be sought and decided at the level of conscious behavior.
For affirmance — Chief Justice Weintraub and Justices Francis, Hall and Haneman—4.
For reversal—Justices Jacobs, Proctor and Schettino —3.

This automaton concept apparently differs from the “irresistible impulse” concept in that it proclaims the conscious is subservient to the unconscious in illness or in health, whereas the irresistible-impulse concept attempts to distinguish between impulses which were not resisted and impulses which could not be resisted because of mental illness.

 Upon that approach the law would look to psychiatry, not for help upon the issue of guilt, as to which psychiatry is inherently indifferent, but rather upon the problem of post-conviction disposition or treatment of the offender, as to which psychiatry may be useful.

 On cross-examination Dr. Galen testified:
* “Q. Is your opinion, Doctor, that in a case such as this, and now referring to the Defendant, Sikora, as to what he did and what happened, that there was a total absence of evil on the part of this Defendant at the time that this act was committed? A. Mr. Donatelli, I am a Doctor. I am a Psychiatrist, and you are asking me to discuss, really, a philosophical concept which is the concept of evil.
Q. Well, basically, isn’t that what you have been doing, Doctor, a philosophical— A. No. I have not been doing a philosophical, dealing with this on a philosophical basis. I have been trying to deal with this on a medical, and hopefully a scientific basis in which I have tried to show that Psychiatrists do have a knowledge of the way people operate, that they do have a knowledge of stress and the way people react to particular kinds of stress, based on their personality disorganization. In terms of evil, you are asking me, I feel somewhat medieval about talking about evil. I don’t think it is particularly a Psychiatrist’s place to discuss evil in our Society.”