Court Opinion

ID: 9671716
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:42:34.470623+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:11.384891
License: Public Domain

Jim Johnson, Associate Justice, dissenting. I dissent because the accused was denied his constitutional right to be confronted by the witnesses against him; in this case the doctors from the State Hospital. This is the third of three decisions during the past few months holding that under Article 2, Section 10, of the Arkansas Constitution, it is not necessary that all the doctors who participated in the examination of the defendant be present at the trial for cross examination. The other two decisions are Leggett v. State, 228 Ark. 977, 311 S. W. 2d 521; and Nail v. State, 231 Ark. 70, 328 S. W. 2d 836. Prior to these cases this Court had consistently held this lack of confrontation to be reversible error. Some of ■the cases holding it to be error are Smith v. State, 200 Ark. 1152, 143 S. W. 2d 190; Turner v. State, 224 Ark. 505, 275 S. W. 2d 24; and Jones v. State, 204 Ark. 61, 161 S. W. 2d 173. When a court decides to reverse its position 180 degrees, there should be sufficient reason for doing so. The majority opinion states this point was fully discussed in the Nail case, supra, and apparently defers thereto. The reasoning in the majority opinion in the Nail case seems to be one of logic and expediency. Quoting from that opinion: ‘ ‘ In the first place, only the defendant and his counsel know what defense will he relied on, and it may not be known until the day of the trial whether the defendant will plead insanity as a defense. Accordingly, it would seem most illogical, or unreasonable, to require all the doctors, who participated in any phase of the examination, to leave their varied duties and travel to some point in the state, perhaps a long distance away, solely on the possi7 bility that the defendant might want to call them as witnesses.” Ark. Stats. 1947, § 43-1301, provides that if the defense of insanity is raised at the time of the trial, the trial judge shall postpone all other proceedings in the cause and commit the defendant to the State Hospital for observation. Numerically subsequent sections of the annotated statutes provide other safeguards against the problem envisioned by the Nail opinion. The majority do not consider Dr. Shaw as having testified to anything done by any other doctor but only as to his personal recollections and observations. Dr. Shaw testified, under questioning by the prosecuting attorney, as to the different tests used to aid in deciding the question of sanity of this defendant. The number given and the names of these tests are very impressive and not all of them were given by Dr. Shaw. Since these were administered by different doctors, the defense should have had an opportunity to cross examine them as to the methods used. Under the reasoning' used by the majority there is no error because Dr. Shaw told only what he observed, namely, that all the doctors concurred. Suppose I had been present at the consultation knowing nothing of these things. Could Dr. Shaw have not also said I concurred? That they all concurred and that this was within the personal knowledge of Dr. Shaw is not the point. The point is that they may not have known anything about what they were doing and this is the reason for the constitutional guarantee of confrontation which is actually only a guarantee that the witnesses will be subject to cross examination and under the influence of the sobering effect of the witness chair of the judiciary. I agree that it is burdensome to require all the doctors participating in an examination to travel all over the state to testify. I agree that it is inconvenient to the Court to have to stop the proceedings to send the defendant to the State Hospital if the defense pleads insanity on the day of the trial. I agree that perhaps the moulders of our Constitution did not anticipate such a problem as the present one. I also know that no law requires all the doctors at the State Hospital to participate in the examination and that they might, in order to circumvent my views, were they the majority views, just use one doctor on each examination and therefore not do as good a job as they are capable of doing. All these things would be worthy of consideration if we were the legislative branch of government rather than the judicial. Constituting, as we do, a Court of law, we should be bound by the express words of the constitution. Also, Ark. Stats. § 43-1302, shows that the legislature recognized the problem raised by the constitutional guarantee of confrontation : ‘ ‘... Witnesses employed by the State Hospital shall be so summoned to appear as to require as little loss of time as possible from their other duties.” In this, and similar cases of late, the evidence has been heavy against the accused so one might ask what difference does it make whether we hold as we do, and one might answer as Justice Frank Smith did in Byler v. State, 210 Ark. 790, 197 S. W. 2d 748; “Twill be recorded for a precedent and many an error by the same example will rush into the State. It cannot be. ’ ’ We are now feeling the adverse effects of the Uniform Post Conviction Procedure Act which has since been repealed. We should therefore move with more measured tread, lest the pendulum swing too far in the other direction. For this and the other reasons heretofore set ont, I respectfully dissent.