Court Opinion

ID: 9543302
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:44:07.021252+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:10:06.540968
License: Public Domain

O’Connor, J.
(dissenting, with whom Nolan and Lynch, JJ., join). “Although once the [sanity] issue has been raised it is necessary for the prosecution to prove sanity beyond a reasonable doubt, it is not necessary for the prosecution to prove sanity — nor would instructions on the presumption of sanity be appropriate — before the issue is raised.” Commonwealth v. Kostka, 370 Mass. 516, 532 (1976). This case presents the question “how is the sanity issue raised.” The question relates not to the burden of persuasion but to the burden of producing evidence. The question is, “What evidence is enough to raise the sanity issue,” thus placing on the Commonwealth the burden of proving the defendant’s sanity. I understand the court to be saying that the sanity issue may be raised by less evidence than would warrant a finding by a fair preponderance of the evidence that the defendant was insane. I disagree. In my view, the issue is properly raised only if there is evidence introduced by the Commonwealth, the defendant, or both, warranting a finding by a fair preponderance of the evidence that the defendant was insane at the relevant time.
In Commonwealth v. Kostka, supra at 528 note 11, this court recognized that, in order to raise the sanity issue, “[s]ome jurisdictions require only ‘some’ or ‘slight’ evidence of insanity, while others require evidence that raises a ‘reasonable doubt’ as to the defendant’s sanity.” The court refrained from placing the Commonwealth in one category or the other. Commonwealth v. Kostka did not require an election in that regard. However, the court’s use of the word “only” to modify the *633terms “some” or “slight” evidence is instructive. It makes clear that the court viewed “some” or “slight” evidence of insanity as less evidence than evidence that raises a reasonable doubt as to the defendant’s sanity. According to that view, evidence that does not rise to the level of “some” or “slight” evidence of insanity surely does not reach the higher level of raising a reasonable doubt that the defendant was sane.
In Commonwealth v. Laliberty, 373 Mass. 238 , 246-247 (1977), this court stated for the first time: “An insanity defense may be raised properly by the admission of any evidence which, if believed, might create a reasonable doubt concerning the defendant’s criminal responsibility at the time of the killings.” In support of that proposition, the court cited United States v. Currier, 405 F.2d 1039, 1042 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 395 U.S. 914 (1969), and A.S. Goldstein, The Insanity Defense 112-113 (1967). United States v. Currier, supra, does not hold that the sanity issue is raised by evidence that is insufficient to warrant a finding of insanity by a fair preponderance of the evidence. Furthermore, in “The Insanity Defense,” Goldstein writes: “In half the states, the production burden is on the defendant. He must produce enough to permit a reasonable jury to conclude that the evidence preponderates in favor of insanity. The production burden having been satisfied, he must then carry the ‘persuasion burden’ — that is, he must convince the jury to find that the preponderance of the evidence is with him on the issue. In the other half and in the federal courts, the ‘production burden’ is initially on the defendant but then passes to the prosecution. By introducing ‘some evidence’ of insanity, the defendant shifts the burden to the prosecution, which must then present ‘sufficient’ evidence so that reasonable men could find the defendant sane beyond reasonable doubt. The prosecution must also carry the ‘persuasion burden,’ proving to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was sane. There is some dispute, in the second group of jurisdictions, whether in order to warrant a jury instruction, the defendant’s evidence must raise a reasonable doubt of his sanity; or whether something less would be sufficient — e.g., *634‘some evidence’ or ‘slight evidence’ or ‘any evidence’ ” (emphasis added). Id. at 111-112.1
Evidence that is insufficient to warrant a finding of insanity by a fair preponderance of the evidence, the most relaxed standard of proof known to the law, cannot be considered “some” or “slight” or “any” evidence of insanity. “Some” or “slight” or “any” evidence of insanity at least “tips the scale” in the direction of insanity enough to warrant a finding that the defendant more likely than not was insane at the time of the alleged crime. As Goldstein put it, the evidence must be “enough to permit a reasonable jury to conclude that the evidence preponderates in favor of insanity.” Evidence, as here, of a mere possibility that the defendant was insane does not tip the scale, and therefore is not “some” or “slight” or “any” evidence of insanity. A fortiori, such evidence does not raise a reasonable doubt concerning the defendant’s sanity. The court is incorrect in stating that the “dissent espouses a radically new standard for testing whether an instruction on lack of criminal responsibility should be given.” Ante at 627 note 2. The proposition that a defense, such as lack of criminal responsibility, is not put in issue except by evidence of its probable existence is not new, let alone radically so. Nor is there anything new about the idea that evidence of the possible existence of a defense does not constitute evidence of the defense. Indeed, since the rule the court announces today is that the sanity issue may be raised by evidence that is insufficient to warrant a finding of insanity by a fair preponderance of the evidence, it is difficult to conceive of a case in which the Commonwealth *635will not have to prove the defendant’s sanity and the defendant will not be entitled to an instruction on criminal responsibility if it is requested.2
I believe that the court has applied the wrong test in concluding that the sanity issue was raised. Furthermore, I believe that, applying the correct test, the issue was not raised. The evidence does not warrant a finding within the realm of probability (by a fair preponderance of the evidence) that, at the time of the crime, as a result of mental disease or defect, the defendant lacked substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law. This court has never defined the words “mental disease or defect” for purposes of the McHoul rule,3 and it is unnecessary to do so here. It is enough to say that anger, jealousy, and frustration, singly or in combination, do not constitute mental disease or defect within the meaning of *636the rule, and that the record in this case fails to demonstrate that the defendant’s act resulted from any mental condition apart from those emotions.
The defendant has no history of treatment for a mental condition. There was no expert testimony supporting his insanity contention. While this court has said that “[i]n an appropriate case the very facts of a crime themselves might be some evidence of the existence of legal insanity,” Commonwealth v. Mattson, 377 Mass. 638, 644 (1979), a comparison of the present case with Mattson demonstrates that this is not the type of case to which the court’s statement referred. In Mattson, the defendant was convicted of assault with intent to murder, assault with intent to rape, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. There was evidence that the defendant was a friend of the victim’s boy friend, and that the three of them were together at the defendant’s apartment on the afternoon of the crime. The defendant and the victim’s boy friend left the apartment, and the defendant returned alone a few minutes later and attabked the victim. The victim passed out and, when she regained consciousness, the defendant asked her what had happened. The boy friend returned to the apartment and took the victim to the hospital. The defendant followed them to the hospital, where he was arrested. The victim testified on cross-examination that the defendant appeared “more forward,” “louder,” and “really different” when he returned alone to the apartment prior to the attack, and that during the attack his voice was “scary loud,” his face was “real scary,” he was “gritting his teeth” and appeared “wicked mean” and that this was in contrast to his “soft-spoken” “regular” manner throughout the earlier part of the afternoon. The arresting officer testified that, at the hospital, the defendant appeared “normal" and “cooperative.” Id. at 641-642.
On appeal to this court, the defendant argued that “the circumstances of his crime alone were sufficient to warrant submission of the insanity issue to the jury. He reli[ed] especially on the completely unprovoked ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ change in his personality from that of the ‘soft-spoken’ companion of the afternoon to that of the violent attacker, and then back to *637the ‘cooperative’ young man at the hospital who stated to the police that the victim had fallen and hit her head.” Id. at 643. this court said: “While we agree that these facts are indeed bizarre, and perhaps even in colloquial language might be labelled ‘insane,’ the defendant’s argument misconceives the essential prerequisites of legal insanity” (emphasis in original). We affirmed the judgments although the trial judge had refused to instruct the jury on the defense of insanity, as requested, and had sustained the prosecution’s objection to the defendant’s argument on the issue.
If the facts in Mattson, which the court characterized as bizarre, were insufficient to raise the insanity issue, all the more so are the facts int his case insufficient. The facts here are less bizarre than in Mattson. Unlike the Mattson case, the defendant and the victim in this case had a close relationship, and there was no evidence of an abrupt change in the defendant’s manner. The defendant’s preassault conduct, consisting of resistance to arrest, disobedience of court orders, and crossing a street without apparent concern for the traffic, only demonstrate his persistent determination to tolerate no obstacles to the continuance of his quarrel with the victim. Nor is the defendant’s case advanced by the facts surrounding the attack itself. The facts, to which the defendant testified, that, when he stabbed the victim, his mind went blank, and that he did not want to stab her, show nothing more than that the defendant’s anger overcame his good judgment. Those facts, as well as the stiffness of his body while he stabbed the victim and his apparent insensitivity to pain at that time, imply nothing about the defendant’s incapacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct, nor do they permit the inference that he stabbed the victim purusant to an uncontrollable compulsion.
The court appears to find support for its holding in the evidence that, after the attack, the defendant did not remember stabbing the victim, that he told the arresting officer to shoot him and that he wanted the officer to kill him, and that he was extremely emotional, agitated, and shaking in his cell at the police station. Without expert testimony, it would have been unreasonable for the jury to conclude that those occurrences *638were anything other than appropriate and normal responses to the trauma that not only the victim, but the defendant as well, had experienced. Indeed, as the court observed in Commonwealth v. McInerney, 373 Mass. 136, 152 (1977), quoting Commonwealth v. Goldenberg, 315 Mass. 26, 33 (1943), “[a]n attempt to commit suicide, like an attempt to escape from jail or a flight after the commission of a crime, may indicate the efforts of a guilty person to avoid punishment for his crime. ”
The result for which I contend is not inconsistent with Commonwealth v. Laliberty, 373 Mass. 238 (1977), and it finds support not only in Commonwealth v. Mattson, supra, but also in Osborne v. Commonwealth, 378 Mass. 104 (1979). In Lalib-erty, this court said that a jury instruction on insanity would have been required if it had been requested. But, the evidence in Laliberty included mutilation of the bodies of the elderly victims by a defendant of marginal intelligence who, at the time of the crime, felt strange, “kind of like floating,” “almost like . . . hallucinating.” Id. at 246. Laliberty is clearly distinguishable from the instant case. In Osborne, on the other hand, we determined that the defendant would not have been entitled to a jury instruction on insanity even if the case had gone to trial and an insanity instruction had been requested, id. at 111-113; the defendant was an alcoholic and a Viet Nam veteran who had a history of blacking out. Id. at 111 n. 6. He went outside during a blizzard dressed only in light clothing and killed a woman he did not know. Id. The defendant did not remember committing the crime and, when he was discovered hiding under an automobile, he said to the police, “How did I get out of bed?” Id. If the evidence in Osborne was insufficient to raise the issue of the defendant’s criminal responsibility, so too was the evidence insufficient in this case. On the basis of both logic and precedent, I would affirm the judgments below.

That “some” or “slight” evidence is a lesser quantum of proof than “evidence [raising] a reasonable doubt of . . . sanity” is noted in 1 W.R. LaFave & A.W. Scott, Jr., Substantive Criminal Law § 4.5, at 500 (1986), as follows: “The states are not in agreement on the quantum of evidence which is required to discharge the burden of going forward. The prevailing rule is that the evidence must raise a reasonable doubt of the defendant’s mental responsibility for the criminal act. A few jurisdictions, however, appear to require a lesser standard which is sometimes stated as merely ‘some evidence,’ ‘slight evidence,’ or a ‘scintilla’ of evidence.” (Footnotes omitted.)

Furthermore, the mischief of the present decision appears not to be limited to cases involving a question of the defendant’s sanity. Just as insanity is a defense, Commonwealth v. Kostka, supra at 527, 532, which must be raised by evidence of insanity, id. at 527-528, there are numerous other defenses, such as self-defense, defense of others, necessity, accident, entrapment and others which appear to be affected by today’s decision.

 Definition of the words “mental disease or defect” by this court would benefit the administration of justice. By fixing the legal standard against which a defendant’s mental condition is to be measured, not only will trial judges and appellate courts on review be better equipped to make the determination whether the evidence warrants submission of the insanity issue to the jury, but jurors themselves will be aided in reaching a final determination. “It is one thing ... to tolerate and even welcome the jury’s sense of equity as a force that affects its application of instructions which state the legal rules that crystallize the requirements of justice as determined by the lawmakers of the community. It is quite another to set the jury at large, without such crystallization, to evolve its own legal rules and standards of justice.” United States v. Brawner, 471 F.2d 969, 989 (D.C. Cir. 1972). The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit defines “mental disease or defect” as including “any abnormal condition of the mind which substantially affects mental or emotional processes and substantially impairs behavior controls.” Id. at 983, quoting McDonald v. United States, 312 F.2d 847, 851 (D.C. Cir. 1962). The drafters of the Model Penal Code have acknowledged this definition as consistent with the Code’s underlying theory in that it allows for the consideration of developing medical understanding. Model Penal Code § 4.01 comments, at 177 (1985).