Court Opinion

ID: 9456175
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:44:12.99598+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:52.409784
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge
(concurring and dissenting):
If appellant was properly found guilty of selling narcotics, then I agree that he should have the opportunity to be sentenced under the treatment provisions of the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act. I also agree that the evidence on the issue of responsibility was not such as to require an acquittal by reason of insanity. But the inquiry into appellant’s responsibility for his unlawful acts was permeated by so much confusion that I would remand for a new trial on that issue.
I
If the majority’s disposition results in providing appellant with treatment under NARA rather thán punishment in the form of a prison sentence, then it might seem unimportant to determine whether his conviction was properly rooted in a finding of criminal responsibility. Whether or not he was responsible for his unlawful acts he will be treated for his addiction. But in my view it is important to distinguish between those people who may fairly be blamed and held responsible for their unlawful conduct, and those who may not, because they could hardly have be*558haved otherwise. The distinction is important even if the same therapeutic approach is appropriate for both the “sick” and the “bad.” For as long as our system for dealing with antisocial conduct allocates blame to persons convicted of unlawful acts, justice demands that we pay close attention to the task of exempting from blame those persons whose capacity to conform their behavior to social norms is substantially impaired. The ideals of treatment and rehabilitation cannot justify the abandonment of the inquiry into blameworthiness, hairsplitting though that inquiry may seem at times, unless we are ready to abandon the concepts of guilt and blameworthiness altogether, as many would urge.1
There is of course a further reason for insisting on the inquiry. The convicted addict may be subject to treatment of substantially different kind and duration from the acquitted addict, and the substantive and procedural rights of the two may be quite different.2 Therefore I cannot ignore the confusion in this record on the critical issue of criminal responsibility.
II
At trial appellant’s counsel attempted to raise the issue of responsibility, but because her motion for a psychiatric ex-animation was repeatedly denied, the only evidence on which she could base an argument was appellant’s own testimony establishing the fact that he had a heavy heroin habit. The prosecuting attorney asserted that appellant had not effectively raised the insanity defense at trial, and the view of the trial judge is unclear.
But whether or not appellant’s testimony raised the issue of responsibility at trial, it was clearly raised by the psychiatric evidence introduced at the post-trial sentencing hearing. At that point the court finally granted appellant’s motion for a psychiatric examination, and the doctor who performed that examination at St. Elizabeths Hospital presented the only expert psychiatric testimony in the case. ■ Dr. Pugh testified that appellant was addicted to heroin, and that his addiction impaired his mental and emotional processes and behavioral controls in certain specified ways. He explained that heroin addiction can produce drowsiness, inappropriate cheerfulness, and euphoria; withdrawal symptoms including extreme depression; and impaired judgment with regard to the questions whether to continue using narcotics and how to obtain them. No other relevant testimony was elicited from Dr. Pugh by either the appellant or the government.3 While the *559evidence on the issue of responsibility was thus regrettably sparse, it clearly amounted to “some evidence” sufficient to impose on the government the burden of proving responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt.4 The rule requiring the defendant to come forward with “some evidence” of nonresponsibility is designed to avoid putting the government and the defendant to the expense and inconvenience of psychiatric examinations and extended testimony on the subject unless the defendant intends to contest the issue.5 For this purpose, the defendant need only introduce enough evidence to give notice of a nonfrivolous claim; he need not introduce evidence sufficient to establish the validity of that claim.
When the presentence examination revealed some evidence of nonresponsibility, the trial court was obliged either to grant appellant’s motion for a new trial, at which both parties would have the opportunity to explore the issue in the detailed fashion it normally requires, or at least to re-evaluate the verdict in light of the newly available evidence. It may be that the trial court did in fact reconsider its verdict, and concluded that the government had met its burden of proving responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt.6 The same expert testimony that raised the issue would support such a finding of responsibility. The court could reasonably have concluded that the impairment described by Dr. Pugh was not substantial enough to relieve appellant from responsibility for his unlawful acts.
I am troubled, however, by the possibility that the trial judge and the litigants were under the erroneous impres*560sion that the issue had never been raised, and hence that the government was not required to prove responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt. Because there was no jury, and no instructions were necessary, it is difficult to ascertain whether the trial court considered and rejected the claim of nonresponsibility, or simply regarded the issue as absent from the ease.7 If the post-trial psychiatric report persuaded the trial judge to reevaluate his verdict, he should have made that view of the case explicit, giving both the prosecutor and the defendant the opportunity to adduce additional evidence for a fuller exploration of the issue. The defendant might have been able to elicit further testimony from Dr. Pugh, or from an independent psychiatrist.8 The prosecutor surely would have introduced evidence of appellant’s responsibility, and argued the point, rather than relying on the possibility that the trial court would find beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant’s uncontroverted impairment was not sufficiently substantia) to relieve him of responsibility for his acts.
There are some indications in the record that the trial judge considered the issue and resolved it adversely to defendant.9 But without a firm basis for concluding that the trial court found responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt, 1 would remand for a new trial on this issue.

. See, e. g., B. Wootton, Crime and the Criminal Law (1963) ; K. Menninger, The Crime of Punishment (1968).

. B. g., the convicted addict may be confined under Title II of NARA for a period of up to ten years or the maximum sentence that could have been imposed, whichever is shorter. 18 U.S.C. § 4253(a) (Supp. V, 1969). An addict acquitted for lack of criminal responsibility, on the other hand, may be confined so long as he remains mentally ill and dangerous to himself or others, a period which may be longer or shorter than the maximum confinement above. D.C.Code § 24-301 (e) - (1967) ; Bolton v. Harris, 130 U.S.App.D.C. 1, 12, 395 F.2d 642, 653 (1968). Compare the 36-month maximum for civil commitment of addicts under Title I of NARA, 28 U.S.C. § 2903(c) (Supp. V, 1969), and the 42-month maximum under Title III, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3416, 3417 (Supp. V, 1969).

. Considerable time was spent exploring the question whether narcotics addiction is a mental illness. Dr. Pugh’s professional opinion was that addiction is an illness, but he expressed doubt that such an opinion was acceptable as a matter of law. The trial judge never resolved that doubt, pursuing instead a line of questioning designed to ascertain whether addiction is regarded as a mental illness by the psychiatric profession or by St. Elizabeths Hospital. But of course appellant’s responsibility for the acts charged depends on neither the legal nor the psychiatric answer to the question whether addiction per se may be a mental illness. For the purpose of the insanity defense, a mental illness is “any abnormal condition of the mind that *559substantially affects mental or emotional processes and substantially impairs behavior controls.” McDonald v. United States, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 120, 124, 312 F.2d 847, 851 (1962) (en banc).
The label attached to narcotics addiction by Dr. Pugh, or by the Hospital, can neither create nor destroy a defense on the ground of nonresponsibility. The role of the psychiatric expert is not to tell the court which abnormal conditions constitute exculpatory illnesses and which do not, but rather to tell the court as much as possible about the extent to which an abnormal condition may impair an individual’s mental or emotional processes and behavior controls. The record in another case recently before this court indicates that Dr. Pugh has recently changed his professional evaluation of addiction, concluding that it is not after all a mental disease. See Memorandum of Appellee, Williams v. Robinson, 139 U.S.App.D.C. -, 432 F.2d 637 (decided June 19, 1970). But that of course is no more significant than his earlier insistence that addiction is a disease. It is uniquely for the factfinder, as repository of community values, to determine whether the' impairment described by the experts in the science of human behavior is sufficient to relieve a defendant of responsibility for his unlawful acts.

. See Adams v. United States, 134 U.S. App.D.C. 137, 141, 413 F.2d 411, 415 (1969) ; McDonald v. United States, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 120, 122, 312 F.2d 847, 849 (1962) (en banc) ; Tatum v. United States, 88 U.S.App.D.C. 386, 389-391, 190 F.2d 612, 615-617 (1951). Of course the character and extent of the defendant’s evidence determines the lengths to which the government must go to prove responsibility beyond a reasonable doubt. In some circumstances, the government can meet its burden simply by relying on the weakness of the defense evidence. King v. United States, 125 U.S.App.D.C. 318, 322-324, 372 F.2d 383, 387-389 (1967) ; Hawkins v. United States, 114 U.S.App.D.C. 44, 47, 310 F.2d 849, 852 (1962). On this point, however, a distinction should be made. If the defense evidence is weak because the impairment described by the experts is of a minimal nature, then the prosecution can meet its burden by persuading the jury that the impairment was not substantial enough to constitute an exculpatory mental disability. If, on the other hand, the defense experts describe an impairment so serious that it is clearly exculpatory, and the weakness lies in the fact that they are not persuasive, the prosecution can meet its burden only with contrary expert evidence.

. Davis v. United States, 160 U.S. 469, 484, 16 S.Ct. 353, 357, 40 L.Ed. 499 (1895).

. See majority opinion, supra, at note 5.

. This problem would not exist if the trial court had followed the factfinding procedure we recently commended in United States v. Carter, U.S.App.D.C. (No. 22,912, decided June 5, 1970) (slip opinion at 13-14 n.8) (Bazelon, C. J., concurring).

. If the trial judge considered the issue of responsibility to be in the case, it is hard to understand why he denied appellant’s motion for an independent psychiatric examination after receiving the ambiguous report and testimony of Dr. Pugh.
It appears that Dr. Pugh himself had formed some opinions on the relationship between appellant’s addiction and the unlawful acts, but he never expressed them because he thought that first he had to establish that appellant was' suffering from a legally recognized illness. He stated that his written report contained no statement on that matter because he preferred to wait until he could find out “exactly what the Court wished to know.” Apparently he never found out.

. Near the beginning of the post-trial hearing, the court stated that “the main purpose of having Dr. Pugh here is the opinion, the reason that he has for the mental condition on the crucial date in question and causal relationship to the crime committed.”