Court Opinion

ID: 9430751
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:29.814962+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:52.839339
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice Marshall joins, dissenting.
Today the Court denies Mr. Connelly his fundamental right to make a vital choice with a sane mind, involving a determination that could allow the State to deprive him of liberty or even life. This holding is unprecedented: “Surely in the present stage of our civilization a most basic sense of justice is affronted by the spectacle of incarcerating a human being upon the basis of a statement he made while insane . . . .” Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U. S. 199, 207 (1960). Because I believe that the use of a mentally ill person’s involuntary confession is antithetical to the notion of fundamental fairness embodied in the Due Process Clause, I dissent.
I
The respondent s seriously impaired mental condition is clear on the record of this case. At the time of his confession, Mr. Connelly suffered from a “longstanding severe mental disorder,” diagnosed as chronic paranoid schizophrenia. 1 Record 16. He had been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons five times prior to his confession; his longest hospitalization lasted for seven months. Id., at 12. Mr. Connelly heard imaginary voices and saw nonexistent objects. Tr. 56. He believed that his father was God, and that he was a reincarnation of Jesus. 1 Record 15.
At the time of his confession, Mr. Connelly’s mental problems included “grandiose and delusional thinking.” Id., at 16. He had a known history of “thought withdrawal and insertion.” Id., at 14. Although physicians had treated Mr. Connelly “with a wide variety of medications in the past including antipsychotic medications,” he had not taken any antipsychotic medications for at least six months prior to his confession. Id., at 12. Following his arrest, Mr. Connelly initially was found incompetent to stand trial because the *175court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Metzner, “wasn’t very confident that he could consistently relate accurate information.” Tr. 68. Dr. Metzner testified that Mr. Connelly was unable “to make free and rational choices” due to auditory hallucinations: “[W]hen he was read his Miranda rights, he probably had the capacity to know that he was being read his Miranda rights [but] he wasn’t able to use that information because of the command hallucinations that he had experienced.”’ Id., at 56-57. He achieved competency to stand trial only after six months of hospitalization and treatment with anti-psychotic and sedative medications. Id., at 68; 1 Record 16.
The state trial court found that the “overwhelming evidence presented by the Defense” indicated that the prosecution did not meet its burden of demonstrating by a preponderance of the evidence that the initial statement to Officer Anderson was voluntary. While the court found no police misconduct, it held:
“[T]here’s no question that the Defendant did not exercise free will in choosing to talk to the police. He exercised a choice both [sic] of which were mandated by auditory hallucination, had no basis in reality, and were the product of a psychotic break with reality. The Defendant at the time of the confession had absolutely in the Court’s estimation no volition or choice to make.” App. 47.
The trial court also held that the State had not shown by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant had waived his Miranda right to counsel and to self-incrimination “voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently.” App. 48.
The Supreme Court of Colorado affirmed after evaluating “the totality of circumstances” surrounding the unsolicited confession and the waiver of Miranda rights. 702 P. 2d 722, 728 (1985).
*176M h-i
The absence of police wrongdoing should not, by itself, determine the voluntariness of a confession by a mentally ill person. The requirement that a confession be voluntary reflects a recognition of the importance of free will and of reliability in determining the admissibility of a confession, and thus demands an inquiry into the totality of the circumstances surrounding the confession.
A
Today’s decision restricts the application of the term “involuntary” to those confessions obtained by police coercion. Confessions by mentally ill individuals or by persons coerced by parties other than police officers are now considered “voluntary.” The Court’s failure to recognize all forms of involuntariness or coercion as antithetical to due process reflects a refusal to acknowledge free will as a value of constitutional consequence. But due process derives much of its meaning from a conception of fundamental fairness that emphasizes the right to make vital choices voluntarily: “The Fourteenth Amendment secures against state invasion . . . the right of a person to remain silent unless he chooses to speak in the unfettered exercise of his own wall . . . .” Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1, 8 (1964). This right requires vigilant protection if we are to safeguard the values of private conscience and human dignity.
This Court’s assertion that we would be required “to establish a brand new constitutional right” to recognize the respondent’s claim, ante, at 166, ignores 200 years of constitutional jurisprudence.1 As we stated in Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U. S. 568 (1961):
*177“The ultimate test remains that which has been the only clearly established test in Anglo-American courts for two hundred years: the test of voluntariness. Is the confession the product of an essentially free and unconstrained choice by its maker? . . . The line of distinction is that at which governing self-direction is lost and compulsion, of whatever nature or however infused, propels or helps to propel the confession.” Id., at 602 (emphasis added).
A true commitment to fundamental fairness requires that the inquiry be “not whether the conduct of state officers in obtaining the confession is shocking, but whether the confession was Tree and voluntary’ . . . .” Malloy v. Hogan, supra, at 7.
We have never confined our focus to police coercion, because the value of freedom of will has demanded a broader inquiry. See Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U. S., at 206-207. The confession cases decided by this Court over the 50 years since Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278 (1936), have focused upon both police overreaching and free will. While it is true that police overreaching has been an element of every confession case to date, see ante, at 163-164, n. 1, it is also true that in every case the Court has made clear that ensuring that a confession is a product of free will is an independent concern.2 The fact that involuntary confessions *178have always been excluded in part because of police overreaching signifies only that this is a case of first impression. Until today, we have never upheld the admission of a confession that does not reflect the exercise of free will.
The Court cites Townsend v. Sain, 372 U. S. 293 (1963), and Blackburn in support of its view that police wrongdoing should be the central focus of inquiry. In Townsend, we overturned a murder conviction because the defendant’s conviction was determined to be involuntary. The defendant suffered from stomach pains induced by heroin withdrawal. The police properly contacted a physician who administered medications alleviating the withdrawal symptoms. The defendant then confessed. 372 U. S., at 298. Although the physician denied that he purposely administered “truth serum,” there was an indication that the medications could have had such a side effect upon a narcotic addict. Id., at 302.
The Townsend Court examined “many relevant circumstances”: “Among these are [the defendant’s] lack of counsel at the time, his drug addiction, the fact that he was a ‘near mental defective,’ and his youth and inexperience.” Id., at 308, n. 4. According to today’s Court, the police wrongdoing in Townsend was that the police physician had allegedly *179given the defendant a drug with truth-serum properties, and that the confession was obtained by officers who knew that the defendant had been given drugs. Ante, at 165. But, in fact, “the police ... did not know what [medications] the doctor had given [the defendant].” 372 U. S., at 299. And the Townsend Court expressly states that police wrongdoing was not an essential factor:
“It is not significant that the drug may have been administered and the questions asked by persons unfamiliar with hyoscine’s properties as a ‘truth serum,’ if these properties exist. Any questioning by police officers which in fact produces a confession which is not the product of a free intellect renders that confession inadmissible. The Court has usually so stated the test.” Id., at 308 (footnote omitted; emphasis in original).
Furthermore, in prescient refutation of this Court’s “police wrongdoing” theory, the Townsend Court analyzed Blackburn, the other case relied upon by this Court to “demonstrate” that police wrongdoing was a more important factor than the defendant’s state of mind. The Court in Townsend stated:
“[I]n Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U. S. 199, we held irrelevant the absence of evidence of improper purpose on the part of the questioning officers. There the evidence indicated that the interrogating officers thought the defendant sane when he confessed, but we judged the confession inadmissible because the probability was that the defendant was in fact insane at the time.” 372 U. S., at 309 (emphasis added).
Thus the Townsend Court interpreted Blackburn as a case involving a confession by a mentally ill defendant in which the police harbored no improper purpose.
This Court abandons this precedent in favor of the view that only confessions rendered involuntary by some state action are inadmissible, and that the only relevant form of state *180action is police conduct. But even if state action is required, police overreaching is not its only relevant form. The Colorado Supreme Court held that the trial court’s admission of the involuntary confession into evidence is also state action. The state court’s analysis is consistent with Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278 (1936), on which this Court so heavily relies. Brown, a case involving the use of confessions at trial, makes clear that “[t]he due process clause requires ‘that state action, whether through one agency or another, shall be consistent with the fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions.’” Id., at 286 (emphasis added), citing Hebert v. Louisiana, 272 U. S. 312, 316 (1926). Police conduct constitutes but one form of state action. “The objective of deterring improper police conduct is only part of the larger objective of safeguarding the integrity of our adversary system.” Harris v. New York, 401 U. S. 222, 231 (1971) (Brennan, J., dissenting).3
*181The only logical “flaw” which the Court detects in this argument is that it would require courts to “divine a defendant’s motivation for speaking or acting as he did even though there be no claim that governmental conduct coerced his decision.” Ante, at 165. Such a criticism, however, ignores the fact that we have traditionally examined the totality of the circumstances, including the motivation and competence of the defendant, in determining whether a confession is voluntary. Even today’s Court admits that “as interrogators have turned to more subtle forms of psychological persuasion, courts have found the mental condition of the defendant a more significant factor in the ‘voluntariness’ calculus.” Ante, at 164. The Court’s holding that involuntary confessions are only those procured through police misconduct is thus inconsistent with the Court’s historical insistence that only confessions reflecting an exercise of free will be admitted into evidence.
B
Since the Court redefines voluntary confessions to include confessions by mentally ill individuals, the reliability of these confessions becomes a central concern. A concern for reliability is inherent in our criminal justice system, which relies upon accusatorial rather than inquisitorial practices. While an inquisitorial system prefers obtaining confessions from criminal defendants, an accusatorial system must place its faith in determinations of “guilt by evidence independently and freely secured.” Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U. S. 534, 541 (1961). In Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S. 478 (1964), we justified our reliance upon accusatorial practices:
“We have learned the lesson of history, ancient and modern, that a system of criminal law enforcement which comes to depend on the ‘confession’ will, in the long run, be less reliable and more subject to abuses than a system which depends on extrinsic evidence independently secured through skillful investigation.” Id., at 488-489 (footnotes omitted).
*182Our interpretation of the Due Process Clause has been shaped by this preference for accusatorial practices, see Miller v. Fenton, 474 U. S. 104, 109-110 (1985); Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S., at 7; Watts v. Indiana, 338 U. S. 49, 54 (1949), and by a concern for reliability, see Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U. S. 880, 925 (1983) (Blackmun, J., dissenting); Foster v. California, 394 U. S. 440, 442 (1969).
Our distrust for reliance on confessions is due, in part, to their decisive impact upon the adversarial process. Triers of fact accord confessions such heavy weight in their determinations that “the introduction of a confession makes the other aspects of a trial in court superfluous, and the real trial, for all practical purposes, occurs when the confession is obtained.” E. Cleary, McCormick on Evidence 316 (2d ed. 1972); see also Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 466 (1966); Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 685 (1961). No.other class of evidence is so profoundly prejudicial. See Saltzburg, Standards of Proof and Preliminary Questions of Fact, 27 Stan. L. Rev. 271, 293 (1975). “Thus the decision to confess before trial amounts in effect to a waiver of the right to require the state at trial to meet its heavy burden of proof.” Cleary, supra, at 316.
Because the admission of a confession so strongly tips the balance against the defendant in the adversarial process, we must be especially careful about a confession’s reliability. We have to date not required a finding of reliability for involuntary confessions only because all such confessions have been excluded upon a finding of involuntariness, regardless of reliability. See Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 368, 383-386 (1964).4 The Court’s adoption today of a restrictive definition of an “involuntary” confession will require heightened scrutiny of a confession’s reliability.
*183The instant case starkly highlights the danger of admitting a confession by a person with a severe mental illness. The trial court made no findings concerning the reliability of Mr. Connelly’s involuntary confession, since it believed that the confession was excludable on the basis of involuntariness. However, the overwhelming evidence in the record points to the unreliability of Mr. Connelly’s delusional mind. Mr. Connelly was found incompetent to stand trial because he was unable to relate accurate information, and the court-appointed psychiatrist indicated that Mr. Connelly was actively hallucinating and exhibited delusional thinking at the time of his confession. See supra, at 174. The Court, in fact, concedes that “[a] statement rendered by one in the condition of respondent might be proved to be quite unreliable . . . .” Ante, at 167.
Moreover, the record is barren of any corroboration of the mentally ill defendant’s confession. No physical evidence links the defendant to the alleged crime. Police did not identify the alleged victim’s body as the woman named by the defendant. Mr. Connelly identified the alleged scene of the crime, but it has not been verified that the unidentified body was found there or that a crime actually occurred there. There is not a shred of competent evidence in this record linking the defendant to the charged homicide. There is only Mr. Connelly’s confession.
Minimum standards of due process should require that the trial court find substantial indicia of reliability, on the basis of evidence extrinsic to the confession itself, before admitting the confession of a mentally ill person into evidence. I would require the trial court to make such a finding on remand. To hold otherwise allows the State to imprison and possibly to execute a mentally ill defendant based solely upon an inherently unreliable confession.
III
This Court inappropriately reaches out to address two Miranda issues not raised by the prosecutor in his petition *184for certiorari: (1) the burden of proof upon the government in establishing the voluntariness of Miranda rights, and (2) the effect of mental illness on the waiver of those rights in the absence of police misconduct.5 I emphatically dissent from the Court’s holding that the government need prove waiver by only a preponderance of the evidence, and from its conclusion that a waiver is automatically voluntary in the absence of police coercion.
A
In holding that the government need only prove the volun-tariness of the waiver of Miranda rights by a preponderance of the evidence, the Court ignores the explicit command of Miranda:
“If the interrogation continues without the presence of an attorney and a statement is taken, a heavy burden rests on the government to demonstrate that the defend*185ant knowingly and intelligently waived his privilege against self-incrimination and his right to retained or appointed counsel. This Court has always set high standards of proof for the waiver of constitutional rights, and we re-assert these standards as applied to in-custody interrogation.” Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S., at 475 (emphasis added; citations omitted).
In recognition of the importance of the Due Process Clause and the Fifth Amendment, we always have characterized the State’s burden of proof on a Miranda waiver as “great” and “heavy.” See, e. g., Tagne v. Louisiana, 444 U. S. 469, 470-471 (1980); North Carolina v. Butler, 441 U. S. 369, 373 (1979); Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218, 236 (1973). Furthermore, under the Sixth Amendment, we have required the prosecution to meet a clear and convincing standard in demonstrating that evidence is not tainted by the absence of counsel at police lineups. See United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218, 240 (1967). Imposing the weakest possible burden of proof for waiver of Miranda’s right to counsel plainly ignores this precedent.
The Court bases its holding on Lego v. Twomey, 404 U. S. 477 (1972). The four-Member Lego Court concluded that a confession obtained when the defendant was not in custody could be admitted into evidence if the prosecution proved its voluntariness by a preponderance of the evidence.6 The Lego Court’s rationale rested on two related premises. First, since all involuntary confessions were excluded, even if truthful, the voluntariness determination was not based on reliability. Thus the requirement of proof beyond reasonable doubt for every feet necessary to constitute the charged crime, In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, 364 (1970), was not *186applicable, because the concern of the Winship Court was the reliability of verdicts. 404 U. S., at 482-486. Second, the four Justices constituting the majority in Lego rejected the petitioner’s argument that proof beyond reasonable doubt would best serve the constitutional values that the exclusionary rule was meant to protect. The four again emphasized that reliability of evidence was not a concern since all involuntary confessions were excluded. It found no evidence that federal rights had suffered by imposing the weakest standard of proof for exclusionary rules. Id., at 487-489.
I adhere to my Lego dissent. The constitutional ideal that involuntary confessions should never be admitted against the defendant in criminal cases deserves protection by the highest standard of proof — proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Id., at 491. The lower standard of proof results “in the admission of more involuntary confessions than would be admitted were the prosecution required to meet a higher standard.” Id., at 493. “Compelled self-incrimination is so alien to the American sense of justice that I see no way that such a view could ever be justified.” Id., at 494.
But even if the four Justices in Lego were correct, their holding is irrelevant to this case. The presumption underlying the reasoning in Lego was that reliability was not an important concern because involuntary confessions were always excluded. Today the Court redefines voluntariness so that involuntary confessions that are not the result of police wrongdoing are no longer excluded under the voluntariness standard. My analysis in Part II-B shows that reliability should now become a major concern in the admission of such confessions. Since the reliability of verdicts is at stake, proof beyond a reasonable doubt constitutes the appropriate standard.7
*187Finally, Lego involved a situation in which the defendant was not in custody. By contrast, a Miranda waiver is found while a defendant is in police custody. The coercive custodial interrogation atmosphere poses an increased danger of police overreaching. The police establish the isolated conditions of custody and can document the voluntary waiver of Miranda rights through disinterested witnesses or recordings. See Miranda v. Arizona, supra, at 475. It is therefore appropriate to place a higher burden of proof on the government in establishing a waiver of Miranda rights.
The ultimate irony is that, even accepting the preponderance of the evidence as the correct standard, the prosecution still failed to meet this burden of proof. The Colorado Supreme Court found that Dr. Metzner, the court-appointed psychiatrist and the only expert to testify, “clearly established” that Mr. Connelly “was incapable” of making a “free decision” respecting his Miranda rights. 702 P. 2d, at 729. Thus the prosecution failed — even by the modest standard imposed today — to prove that Mr. Connelly voluntarily waived his Miranda rights.
B
The Court imports its voluntariness analysis, which makes police coercion a requirement for a finding of involuntariness, into its evaluation of the waiver of Miranda rights. My reasoning in Part II-A, supra, at 176-181, applies a fortiori to involuntary confessions made in custody involving the waiver of constitutional rights. See also Miranda v. Arizona, supra, at 460. I will not repeat here what I said there.
I turn then to the second requirement, apart from the vol-untariness requirement, that the State must satisfy to establish a waiver of Miranda rights. Besides being voluntary, *188the waiver must be knowing and intelligent. See Moran v. Burbine, 475 U. S. 412, 421 (1986). We recently noted that “the waiver must have been made with a full awareness both of the nature of the right being abandoned and the consequences of the decision to abandon it.” Ibid. The two requirements are independent: “Only if the ‘totality of the circumstances surrounding the interrogation’ reveals both an uncoerced choice and the requisite level of comprehension may a court properly conclude that the Miranda rights have been waived.” Ibid, (emphasis added).
Since the Colorado Supreme Court found that Mr. Con-nelly was “clearly” unable to make an “intelligent” decision, clearly its judgment should be affirmed. The Court reverses the entire judgment, however, without explaining how a “mistaken view of voluntariness” could “taint” this independent justification for suppressing the custodial confession, but leaving the Colorado Supreme Court free on remand to reconsider other issues, not inconsistent with the Court’s opinion. Such would include, in my view, whether the requirement of a knowing and intelligent waiver was satisfied. See ante, at 171, n. 4. Moreover, on the remand, today’s holding does not, of course, preclude a contrary resolution of this case based upon the State’s separate interpretation of its own Constitution. See South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364, 396 (1976) (Marshall, J., dissenting).
I dissent.

 Cf. Bram v. United States, 168 U. S. 532, 547-548 (1897) (reviewing the “rule [of law] in England at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and of the Fifth Amendment” and citing W. Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown (6th ed. 1787): “[a] confession, therefore, whether made upon an official examination or in discourse with private persons, which is obtained from a defendant, either by the flattery of hope, or by the impressions of fear, *177however slightly the emotions may be implanted,... is not admissible evidence; for the law will not suffer a prisoner to be made the deluded instrument of his own conviction”) (emphasis added).

 E. g., Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 398 (1978) (“It is hard to imagine a situation less conducive to the exercise of ‘a rational intellect and a free will’ than Mincey’s”); Greenwald v. Wisconsin, 390 U. S. 519, 521 (1968) (“Considering the totality of these circumstances, we do not think it credible that petitioner’s statements were the product of his free and rational choice”); Beecher v. Alabama, 389 U. S. 35, 37 (1967) (“Still in a ‘kind of slumber’ from his last morphine injection, feverish, and i(n intense pain, the petitioner signed the written confessions thus prepared for him”); Davis v. North Carolina, 384 U. S. 737, 742 (1966) (“His level of intelli-*178genee is such that it prompted the comment by the court below, even while deciding against him on his claim of involuntariness, that there is a moral question whether a person of Davis’ mentality should be executed”); Reck v. Pate, 367 U. S. 433, 440 (1961) (“If [a defendant’s will was overborne], the confession cannot be deemed ‘the product of a rational intellect and a free will’”); Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U. S. 568, 583 (1961) (“[A]n extra-judicial confession, if it was to be offered in evidence against a man, must be the product of his own free choice”); Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U. S. 560, 567 (1958) (footnotes omitted) (“It seems obvious from the totality of this course of conduct, and particularly the culminating threat of mob violence, that the confession was coerced and did not constitute an ‘expression of free choice’ ”); Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U. S. 143, 147 (1944) (“He was induced by the fear of violence at the hands of a mob and by fear of the officers”).

 Even if police knowledge of the defendant’s insanity is required to exclude an involuntary confession, the record supports' a finding of police knowledge in this case. The Court accepts the trial court’s finding of no police wrongdoing since, in the trial judge’s view, none of the police officers knew that Mr. Connelly was insane. Tr. 83-84. After plenary review of the record, see Miller v. Fenton, 474 U. S. 104, 115 (1985), I conclude that this finding is clearly erroneous.
When the defendant confessed to Officer Anderson, the officer’s first thought was that Mr. Connelly was a “crackpot.” Tr. 8. Today’s Court describes Officer Anderson as “[ujnderstandably bewildered.” Ante, at 160. After giving Miranda warnings, the officer questioned the defendant about whether he used drugs or alcohol. He also asked Mr. Connelly if he had been treated for any mental disorders, and the defendant responded that he had been treated in five different mental hospitals. Tr. 14, 17. While this Court concludes that “Detective Antuna perceived no indication whatsoever that respondent was suffering from any kind of mental illness,” ante, at 161, the record indicates that Officer Anderson informed the detective about the defendant’s five hospitalizations in mental institutions. Tr. 18. Thus, even under this Court’s test requiring police wrongdoing, the record indicates that the officers here had sufficient knowledge about the defendant’s mental incapacity to render the confession “involuntary.”

 Prior to establishing this rule excluding all involuntary confessions, we held the view that the Fifth Amendment, at bottom, served as “a guarantee against conviction on inherently untrustworthy evidence.” Stein v. New York, 346 U. S. 156, 192 (1953).

 In deciding to hear this case, this Court took “the unprecedented step of rewriting a prosecutor’s certiorari petition for him, enabling him to seek reversal on a ground he did not present himself.” Colorado v. Connelly, 474 U. S. 1050, 1051 (1986) (BRENNAN, J., dissenting from briefing order). The prosecutor expressly limited his petition to this Court to the issue of the suppression of the involuntary confession. Pet. for Cert. 15. Despite this, the Court directed the parties to brief the question of whether the defendant’s mental condition rendered his waiver of Miranda rights ineffective.
In addition, the Court today decides yet another issue neither raised nor briefed by either party. It holds that the government may establish the defendant’s voluntary waiver of his Miranda rights by only a preponderance of the evidence.
The Court also requires the state court to readdress a separate and independent basis for finding the waiver invalid. Quite apart from finding the Miranda waiver involuntary, the Colorado Supreme Court found that it was not an intelligent and knowing decision. Although unaffected by this Court’s new analysis of the voluntariness requirement, the state court is forced to reconsider this independent justification for its decision. Ante, at 171, n. 4. Such actions reinforce the Court’s “appearance of being not merely the champion, but actually an arm of the prosecution.” 474 U. S., at 1052.

 Contrary to this Court’s assertion, nowhere does the Lego Court state that “the voluntariness determination ... is designed to determine the presence of police coercion.” Ante, at 168. See Lego v. Twomey. The Lego Court did not distinguish coercion by police from coercion exerted from other sources.

 Furthermore, Lego established only that proof beyond a reasonable doubt was an inappropriately high standard. The decision has been criticized for never demonstrating affirmatively that the choice of the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard was more appropriate than the *187use of the clear-and-convincing-evidence standard. See Saltzburg, Standards of Proof and Preliminary Questions of Fact, 27 Stan. L. Rev. 271, 278 (1975). Here the Colorado Supreme Court chose to apply the clear-and-convincing-evidenee standard and the Lego analysis cannot justify rejection of this intermediate standard.