Court Opinion

ID: 9536212
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 06:56:20.801832+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:29.212716
License: Public Domain

BOOCHEVER, Justice,
dissenting.
Since there was evidence supporting the defense of insanity, the state had the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Smith was sane according to the standard set forth in AS 12.45.083(a).1 Although there was no dispute that Smith was suffering from a mental disease, the experts agreed that he had capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct. The sole issue is whether, as a result of the mental disease, he lacked substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of law. In my opinion, the state has failed to meet its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Smith had substantial capacity to so conform his conduct at the time of the shooting.
All of the medical experts agreed that Smith was suffering from a mental disease and the trial court so found. Smith’s history is replete with periods of serious mental illness requiring repeated hospitalizations. Some of the prior incidents involved violent irrational conduct. Thus, in a report of July 24, 1973, Dr. M. A. Hayes of the Marlboro State Hospital states that when Smith was taken to that hospital in an ambulance he attacked the driver of the car. “At the time of admission . . . there was [sic] some suicidal ideations and there were also some paranoid ideations; he thought people were planning against him. States he has a history of being arrested in the past for vicious conduct when he was 18.” He was admitted to the Lyons Veterans Administration Hospital in 1973 for three and one-half months. The report of Dr. A. Beke of that hospital, who diagnosed Smith as “schizophrenia paranoid,” states:
This 25 year old, white male veteran was admitted for the first time to VA Hospital, Lyons because of confusion, religious preoccupation, assaultive and unpre-dictive behavior, feeling of depression, ideas of reference, auditory and visual hallucination. During his hospitalization, he showed gradual improvement in his condition. Apparently, prior to his hospitalization he misidentified people and on one occasion he jumped on a moving truck pulling off the driver because he believed that the driver was his father-in-law. . . . Also, the veteran attacked a patient, trying to choke him and attacked an aide.
On October 16, 1975, he was taken to the Philadelphia General Hospital by police because of his aggressive assaultive behavior toward police. On October 22,1975, he was again admitted to the Veteran’s Administration Hospital “because he was not able to cope with the outside world.”
On admission, the patient was confused, lacking identity, having a defiant attitude and exhibiting an adversive variable behavior. The patient didn’t have hallucinations but presented himself with delusional ideas of not being the same person, talking about going to immigration to get his identity changed. He didn’t show homicidal or suicidal feelings. Insight and judgment were impaired.
This* is a patient with previous admissions to psychiatric institutions owing to symptoms consistent with the same for which he has been admitted to this hospital.
He was also diagnosed as a “paranoid schizophrenic.”
Smith reenlisted in the Army and, prior to the shooting incident, had been referred twice to the mental hygiene clinic by his commanding officer. Captain Tucker stated that Smith “always seemed to be somewhere else . . . spaced out . . .” Most of the time “we didn’t know where he *310was at.” Yet he was not involved with drugs. On one occasion the captain talked with him for twenty minutes and didn’t know what Smith was talking about.
Sergeant Zimmerman, who was acquainted with Smith for approximately eight months, observed Smith doing all kinds of weird and bizarre things. In Zimmerman’s opinion, Smith was getting worse in appearance and attitude. “He walked around the military complex in a daze.”
It is with this overwhelming background of mental illness that the events of September 28, 1977, must be evaluated. On that date Captain Tucker called Smith into his office and explained to him that he was being processed out of the Army and that in about seven days he would be out of the military. It was on this same day that the bizarre events occurred which led to his conviction. Yet the only doctor who testified that Smith was capable of conforming his conduct to the requirements of law2 based his conclusion that Smith was not legally insane on a theory that he was motivated by “an identifiable goal (to get out of the service) by unacceptable behavior.” In looking at the incident itself, Dr. Rader concluded that Smith intended to leave Alaska as quickly as possible. No rational explanation is even hinted at which would explain the commandeering of a vehicle immediately after Smith had been advised that he was being discharged within seven days. Similarly, the fact that Smith drove toward Seward, a direction which would not serve his purpose of leaving Alaska, ia disregarded by Rader as mere “faulty judgment.”
It is true that during the course of his wild conduct individual acts could be said to be meaningful, but such actions are not inconsistent with a lack of substantial ability to conform conduct to the requirements of law. In fact, it is well recognized that one may perform intelligent acts in the pursuit of delusionary goals.3
The majority refers to the case of Dolchok v. State, 519 P.2d 457 (Alaska 1974). There, Dolchok murdered a taxicab driver in the course of robbing him. Dolchok was clearly motivated by the rational, although reprehensible, goal of robbing the driver. Here there is no rational explanation for Smith’s leaving the base and driving toward Seward.
In the total absence of any suggested rational motive for Smith’s violent conduct and abrupt departure, and in view of his lengthy history of prior irrational violent conduct and admitted mental illness, I conclude that the state failed to meet its burden of proving that Smith was sane beyond a reasonable doubt.

. AS 12.45.083 is quoted at pages 302-303 of the majority opinion.

. All three doctors who examined Smith agreed that he was schizophrenic. Two concluded that Smith could not conform his behavior to the requirements because of his mental illness.

. In S. Arieta, American Handbook of Psychiatry at 509 (1959), the following is stated: He (Kraeplin) defined paranoia in terms of an insidiously developing, unchangeable delusional system, accompanied by clear and orderly thinking outside of the system, and without hallucinations. This is essentially the definition accepted in psychiatry today.