Court Opinion

ID: 9859474
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 21:53:06.645443+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:50:13.836853
License: Public Domain

Weintraub, C. J.
(concurring). I join in the opinion of Mr. Justice Bulling but I follow a different route in concluding that the M’NagMen rule should not be abandoned.
Whether M’NagMen is sound depends upon the starting point one selects. M’NagMen presumably stemmed from the premise upon which our criminal law is based. The common law required the “concurrence of an evil-meaning mind with an evil-doing hand.” Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246, 251, 72 S. Ct. 240, 96 L. Ed. 288 (1952). In general terms, mens rea consisted oí a sense of wrongdoing. It is not surprising, therefore, that the common law lawyer conceived legal insanity to be something which negated the mental ingredient of the crime, i. e., an appreciation of the wrongfulness of the act.
The common law concept of criminal liability was doubtless “scientifically” determined. Men then, as now, had the urge to understand and to act reasonably upon the basis of what they comprehend. They thought it “just” to deal criminally with men who commit hostile acts with a sense of wrongdoing. It was a moral or ethical judgment distilled from the total circumstances of the times, including beliefs as to why men act as they do.
The pull from the common law mens rea has been in opposite directions. Mens rea has been abandoned with respect to certain statutory offenses, and in fact some writers describe the common law concept in somewhat watered terms which would require only an intentional doing of a forbidden act. On the other hand, critics of M’NagMen would heighten the required mental element. Their avenue is a broader *83view of insanity as a “defense,” but, as I see it, the attack in essence is upon the mental ingredient of crime, for although we deal with insanity as a defense, we do so for procedural purposes only, the State being permitted to proceed on the presumption of sanity while the defendant must carry the burden of persuasion on his denial of mens rea by reason of insanity.
No one will dispute that society must be protected from the insane as well as the sane. The area of disagreement is whether a civil or a criminal process should be employed when forbidden acts have been committed. If we could think of a conviction simply as a finding that the mortal in question has demonstrated his capacity for anti-social conduct, most of the battle would be decided. What would remain is the employment of such post-conviction techniques as would redeem the offender if he can be redeemed and secure him if he cannot. The proposal before us, however, does not relate to post-conviction disposition but rather to the question whether the criminal process shall be invoked to adjudge a basis for deprivation of liberty. It is in that frame of reference that we are asked to abandon M’Naghten in favor of another concept of insanity which will excuse. I cannot subscribe to the proposal for a number of reasons.
The first is essentially negative — a rejection of the criticism that in retaining M’NagTiten the law has improperly failed to keep abreast of psychiatric advances. The frame of reference, as I have said, is not the post-conviction disposition of an offender but rather his amenability to adjudication in the criminal process. So long as we have two processes which may be employed to deal custodially with anti-social conduct, one criminal and the other civil, the test for their application must be the existence or non-existence of blameworthiness in a personal sense. Here, I believe, there is an irreconcilable conflict between the present thesis of the criminal law and the thesis I find implicit in the psychiatric view of man. Our social order accepts a postulate, held in *84varying degrees by most citizens and buttressed by religious tenet, that every man is endowed with the capacity to choose a correct course of behavior so long as he is able to detect it. In separating the sick from the bad, we start with the indisputable ability of man to adhere to the right. Upon that assumption, M’NagMen is unassailable. On the other hand, the psychiatric approach inevitably challenges this basis for a finding of personal blameworthiness. Psychiatry does recognize the existence of a volitional apparatus, but conceives it to be inseparably integrated with the intellect and the emotions. Erom its objective view, no man can be said (or shown) to have selected the dimensions of these faculties and hence to be the author of the inadequacy of any of them. Indeed, the unconscious is deemed to mock and play havoc with the conscious. Upon that approach the sick and the wicked would be equally free of blame in a personal sense. There could be no denominator which in terms of justice to the individual would differentiate one from the other. Hence the thrust of the psychiatric thesis would be to discard all concepts of insanity as a defense, be it IFNaghien, Durham, or some other, and to deal with all transgressors as unfortunate mortals.
It is not my purpose here to choose between these conflicting theses. Rather my point is that they move in opposite directions and hence a conglomeration of the two will not solve the riddle of what is “just” to the individual. Man may one day obtain a better glimpse of himself, but until a basis for personal blameworthiness can be scientifically demonstrated, I would not tinker with the existing law of criminal accountability. Rather I would permit the scientist’s growing knowledge of human behavior to have a wider sway in the area in which it can safely be utilized with evident fairness to society and to the individual. I refer to the post-conviction disposition of the offender. In essence, that is the course the Legislature followed in adopting the sex offender statute. There it did not provide that a pattern of repetitive, compulsive behavior shall be a *85defense, but rather made it a factor in the determination of whether the convicted offender shall be placed in custody for treatment or shall be confined in a penal institution. N. J. 8. 2A :164-5 et seq.
The second reason why I can not adopt another concept of insanity follows hard upon what I have already said. It is the vagueness of the doctrines proposed. I think they are vague and will remain vague (or arbitrary) until some one demonstrates a rational basis for a finding of personal blameworthiness and devises a test rooted to it. I gather that critics of M'Nagbten would recognize a psychosis as the kind of illness which should excuse. But what of the neurotic or the psychopathic, to say nothing of the victims of other mental defects or disorders? What is a disease or defect of the mind? What, in terms appropriate to "criminal responsibility, differentiates the functional aberration called a disease or defect of the mind from what is inscrutably called a defect of character? However helpful such classifications may be in the approach to the treatment of the sick, I cannot find in them a pivotal fact upon which criminal liability would depend, a key fact to which the trial and the jury’s consideration could be addressed. I suspect that if psychiatrists were asked to fix a line, most would resort to an ethical or social concept, the truth of which they could not expertly demonstrate.
The third and most important reason is the inability of the judiciary to deal with the total problem. We all agree that society must be protected. If we are to excuse an offender from the criminal process because of insanity, there must be a civil process adequate for the area abandoned. I doubt that civil commitment could be ordered under existing statutes in all cases in which an acquittal would follow under Durham or some such doctrine. And if that hurdle could be overcome judicially, the problem of release would be formidable. The testimony in this case illustrates my point. A defense psychiatrist found Lucas to be schizophrenic and irreversibly so, but he added that whether Lucas *86could live harmlessly within his fantasy of religion depended upon whether in fact he did set fires. If he did, then he should be confined; otherwise he was entitled to his freedom. Another expert, testifying for the State, was satisfied that Lucas was a psychopath, but on cross-examination agreed that whether he was a -sexual deviate depended upon whether he did in fact deviate and that whether he was a pyromaniac depended upon whether he did in fact commit arson. That same witness had signed a commitment application based, I gather, not upon the underlying illness he found, but rather upon tensions which he detected and which he feared might erupt into a psychosis. Still further, while the defense psychiatrist mentioned above was certain that the psychosis was irreversible and degeneration would continue, yet the head of the mental institution, who found Lucas schizophrenic on admission, later discharged him as free of any overt sign of eommittable illness. All of these witnesses are men of imposing qualifications and I do not question the sincerity of their views, but I am not willing to let the security of society depend upon a science which can produce such conflicting estimates of probable human behavior. A release from custody would be something else if (1) it depended upon an affirmative medical opinion that a recurrence of illness is strongly negatived; (2) there were parole supervision; (3) there were a firm grip upon the man to the end that he could be returned to custody upon signs of possible recurrence without awaiting the commission of another anti-social act; and (4) the heads of mental institutions were oriented to the added responsibility which would be theirs. In my judgment, only the legislative and executive branches can provide the techniques which would be necessary if the judiciary ventured from its present view of criminal responsibility.
There is a further consideration, the weight of which would depend upon the course of events under an expansive view of insanity as a defense. Existing psychiatric facilities are inadequate for the present scene. It can hardly be denied *87that much of our penal population suffers from mental disorders for which treatment cannot now be provided. If a broad concept of the defense were adopted and the decision whether to raise it were left with the accused, the problem would not be acute because a defendant would rarely advance the defense in a case other than murder. But if the proper disposition of the insane offender is deemed to be a matter in which society has the overriding stake and hence the State should invoke the civil process if mental disorder appears, the hospitals and their staffs would be incapable of coping with the added burden in the absence of additional resources which only the other branches of government can supply.
Eor all practical purposes the furor over M’Naghten is confined to the disposition of offenders convicted of murder. It is the death penalty which sparks the quarrel. Whatever may be their thesis of personal blameworthiness and of justice to the individual, I should think that all thoughtful persons would at least pause when judging a man at the portal of death. All doubts must congregate there. The ultimate responsibility with respect to capital punishment is, of course, legislative. But there is an area within the present statutory scheme in which the judiciary can and should move to accommodate the divergent views. I refer to the admission of full psychiatric testimony for the jmry’s consideration in determining whether a man should live or die.
I have no doubt that such testimony belongs in the case for that purpose. I am convinced the Legislature so intended when in resolving a controversy over capital punishment it provided that the jury shall fix the punishment. State v. White, 27 N. J. 158 (1958). The mental condition of a man is so inseparable from the issue of a just disposition— just to him and to society — that it is inconceivable that the Legislature intended to exclude it.
The functions of the mind are an integral part of the criminal event itself. The law requires a mens rea. The *88specific mental operations necessary for guilt, be they premeditation, deliberation, and willfulness, or a felonious intent in a felony murder, cannot be isolated from the total functions of the mind of the offender. To limit the proof to that part of the total mental activity which technically bears upon the issue of guilt is to conceal part of the event itself. The whole truth should be disclosed so that in deciding the question of life or death the jurors will know who it is who stands before them. That disclosure is necessary for the moral judgment the jurors must reach.
Hence I agree with the view of Mr. Justice Francis in his concurring opinion in Slate v. White, supra, that such testimony should be admitted on the matter of punishment. The result would not be perfect justice, but it would be a stride toward it. It would meet what I believe is the underlying reason for the attack upon M’Naghten. It would preserve for society the lifetime grip upon the offender which it needs for its protection. And finally it would satisfy the well-founded complaint of the psychiatrist that he cannot testify as a medical expert when he is artificially fettered to the legal concept of insanity.
Jacobs and Sciiettino, JJ., concurring in result.
For affirmance — Chief Justice Weintraub, and Justices Burling, Jacobs, Francis, Proctor, Hall and Schettino — 7.
For reversal — None.