Court Opinion

ID: 9567857
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:58:25.887268+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:20:46.981797
License: Public Domain

Jordan, Justice,
concurring specially.
I cannot concur with the decision of a majority of the court in Division 3 that the motion to suppress the written confession of the appellant was properly denied.
It is my view that there was compelling evidence that the appellant was insane at the time she made her confession, and that it should have been suppressed.
The special jury trying the issue of her competency to stand trial, at a time shortly after her confession was given, found that she was insane. The medical testimony was uncontradicted that she had a severe psychotic condition of the schizophrenic type, and that this condition had existed for some time before their examination. The written statement itself indicates her confused mental state. She repeatedly stated that she did not know why she administered the poison, that she loved her husband, sons, and grandson. The fact that she appeared to be sane and intelligent to the officers *486interviewing her did not make any real issue as to her mental competency to waive her constitutional rights, since such appearance would be consistent with her schizophrenic condition as described by the medical experts.
Mr. Chief Justice Warren, delivering the opinion of the United States Supreme Court in Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U. S. 199, 207 (80 SC 274) (1960), stated: "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; and this judgment can without difficulty be articulated in terms of the unreliability of the confession, the lack of rational choice of the accused, or simply a strong conviction that our system of law enforcement should not operate so as to take advantage of a person in this fashion.” See also Fikes v. Alabama, 352 U. S. 191 (77 SC 281).
While I agree with the statement in the majority opinion that a finding by a trial judge on the voluntariness of a confession will not be reversed unless clearly erroneous, it is my view that the evidence on the question of the mental competency of the appellant at the time of her confession demanded a finding, under the totality of the circumstances of this case, that she was mentally incompetent to make a voluntary confession.
Therefore, I would reverse the trial judge’s denial of the motion to suppress the appellant’s confession, as well as the denial of the motion for a sanity trial.
I am authorized to state that Justice Gunter and Justice Ingram join me in this special concurrence.