Court Opinion

ID: 9706360
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:41:36.879779+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:21.965539
License: Public Domain

GLICKMAN, Associate Judge,
with whom SCHWELB, Senior Judge, joins,
concurring:
I have serious misgivings about several aspects of this court’s decision in Frendak v. United States, 408 A.2d 364 (D.C.1979), particularly (though not exclusively) its unconsidered assumption that it is for the trial judge to decide whether an insanity defense should be presented on behalf of a defendant who lacks the capacity to waive the defense. The source of this assumption was Whalem v. United States, 120 U.S.App. D.C. 331, 346 F.2d 812 (1965) (en banc), overruled by United States v. Marble, 291 U.S.App. D.C. 279, 940 F.2d 1543 (1991), which had held that a trial judge has discretion to impose an unwanted insanity defense even on a competent defendant. Although we recognized in 1979 that the “philosophical basis” of Whalem had been “substantially undermined by subse*165quent Supreme Court decisions,” Frendak, 408 A.2d at 879 n. 27, and accordingly held that the trial judge “will now have the discretion to raise an insanity defense sua sponte only if the defendant is not capable of making, and has not made, an intelligent and voluntary decision,” id. at 379, we nonetheless accepted the premise that, at least for such incapacitated defendants, the choice of whether to present an insanity defense is a proper exercise of judicial authority.
That premise should not go unexamined. Merely because a criminal defendant may lack the capacity to waive an insanity defense does not mean that it is necessarily the judge who should decide whether that defense should be pursued. A judge’s loyalties are not to the defendant, and the judge may be motivated by considerations other than the defendant’s best interests. There are alternatives to assigning the decision to the judge which Frendak did not consider, such as appointing a guardian to investigate and make the choice for the defendant in a confidential and uncon-flicted manner.
Having flagged the issue, I acknowledge that no question has yet been raised in the present case about this or other dubious (at least to me) aspects of Frendak. I therefore join the majority opinion, leaving the task of reconsidering Frendak for another occasion.