Court Opinion

ID: 9579216
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:52:48.968329+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:34:36.204880
License: Public Domain

Head, Presiding Justice,
dissenting. In order to overcome the
commandment of our law that no insane person shall be tried or put upon trial for any offense during the time he is insane {Code § 27-1504), and the conclusiveness of a valid judgment entered upon a verdict of a jury in the manner provided by law adjudicating the defendant insane in October, 1943, the majority opinion relies upon a presumption that the trial judge performed the duties incumbent upon him by law, and “that the defendant was restored to sanity after being 'discharged in the manner prescribed by law’ [Code § 27-1502].” The presumption that the trial judge did his duty is met with the presumption that a mental state once proved to exist is presumed to continue. Code § 38-118. The statement that he was “discharged in the manner prescribed by law” is met in the first instance by the statement in the opinion that: “This record does not affirmatively reveal any restoration to sanity by any of the procedures provided by law. . .”
By an act of the General Assembly approved March 9, 1956 *581(Ga. L. 1959, pp. 585, 586-587; Code Ann. Supp. § 49-610.9) it is provided in part as follows: “In the event a person who has been committed to Milledgeville State Hospital is released therefrom as being sane, under order of the superintendent, a copy of such order shall be transmitted by the superintendent, within five (5) days of the date of such order, to the ordinary of the county from which such person was committed, and thirty (30) days from the date of the receipt of such copy by the ordinary, such person shall be deemed to have been legally restored to sanity, and it shall be the duty of the ordinary to issue an order to that effect and enter such order on his minutes along with a copy of the order of the superintendent. .
Decisions of this court prior to the 1956 act can not be substituted for the positive commandment of the law as enacted by the General Assembly in 1956. Upon failure of the State to show that the defendant had been restored to sanity pursuant to the command of the 1956 act, there could be no valid trial of the defendant on an indictment charging him with the commission of a crime prior to the judgment of the court declaring him insane.
Reference is made in division 2 of the opinion to a presumption of sanity at the time of the commission of the alleged crime. No insane person can be put upon trial during the period of such insanity, and whether the defendant was sane or insane at the time of the offense alleged can not properly be brought into issue where the defendant was adjudged insane in the manner provided by law, and was not thereafter adjudicated to be restored to sanity pursuant to the commandment of the law.
The 1956 statute providing for a judicial adjudication of restoration to sanity not having been complied with, it is my opinion that the purported trial of the defendant was wholly and completely void, and that it should have been so declared by this court.
I am authorized to say that Mr. Justice Quillian concurs in this dissent.