Court Opinion

ID: 9752144
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:39:17.248714+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:08.431336
License: Public Domain

EAGEN, Justice
(dissenting).
In Commonwealth v. McCusker, 448 Pa. 382, 292 A.2d 286 (1972), a majority of this Court overruled a multitude of prior decisions and held that psychiatric testimony is admissible at trial to aid the fact finder in determining if one who kills another did so in the heat of passion. Today a majority of the Court takes a further leap into the unknown and attributes to the science of psychiatry the ability to say with a reasonable degree of certainty that the instant killer, who admittedly was sane and acted with malice and had the mental capacity to know what he was doing and to know what he was going was wrong, lacked the mental capacity to form a specific intent to kill.1 I dissented in McCusker, and I dissent here again.
The science of psychiatry has advanced materially in recent years and undoubtedly is now able to present reliable information as to human behavior in certain situations ; however, the psychiatric testimony, here involved, is so patently devoid of reliability it should not receive judicial sanction.
Some psychiatrists will continue to dig up excuses for criminal behavior (as witness, the recent Hearst trial) even though some such “excuses” may border on the ridiculous and be totally lacking in scientific reliability. Unfortunately, some members of the judiciary will join them in accepting these excuses.
As to the assertion by the majority that the views of this writer on the present reliability of psychiatric testimony are personal, I submit that my position represents *225the long and well established view that such testimony is not admissible for the purposes which the majority now holds it admissible. Moreover, nothing in the record before this Court shows this testimony is anymore reliable today than yesterday. Because the trial court had no power to overturn our prior rulings, it did not hear evidence to establish the reliability of this testimony. Yet the majority reverses our prior rulings based not on a showing of reliability in the record but on their personal knowledge and beliefs about psychiatry. If the majority is concerned with facts, they would at least remand the case for a hearing on reliability. Thus, while I defer to the well established rule, the majority not only expresses their personal beliefs, they subject the entire Commonwealth to those beliefs and they do so in the face of division as to the reliability of such testimony even within the psychiatric field. See, “Mercenary Psychiatry”, New Republic March 10, 1976.
The majority also states my position represents an expression of distrust of the judgment of the citizens of this Commonwealth. To the contrary, my trust in citizens serving as jurors has never and is not now waning. My concern is with submitting unreliable evidence to those jurors and thereby complicating their deliberations. I do not think jurors should have to evaluate evidence which has not been shown to be reliable.
Further, the majority correctly notes that the legislative response to Commonwealth v. Graves, supra, also repudiated a previous legislative determination. What the majority fails to note is that the legislative provision was little known and that Commonwealth v. Graves, supra, caused the public furor. Finally, the legislative response is indeed contrary to the views expressed by me in Commonwealth v. Tarver, 446 Pa. 233, 284 A.2d 759 (1971) but Tarver merely reiterated the well established law of Pennsylvania, see Commonwealth v. Eyler, 217 Pa. 512, 66 A. 746 (1907); Tarver did not change the law of *226Pennsylvania as did Graves, supra, and as does today’s decision merely because of the personal views of a majority of this Court as to the reliability of psychiatric testimony.
O’BRIEN, J., joins in this dissent.

. Compare this opinion with that in Commonwealth v. Graves, 461 Pa. 118, 334 A.2d 661 (1975), which gave rise to public furor several months ago. To the eternal credit of the Pennsylvania Legislature, Graves was nullified through recent legislation.