Court Opinion

ID: 9463020
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:56:21.344271+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:54.128439
License: Public Domain

HUFSTEDLER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting, with whom Circuit Judge ELY concurs.
My disagreement with the majority opinion stems not from its restatement of the rule of Pate v. Robinson (1966) 383 U.S. 375, 86 S.Ct. 836, 15 L.Ed.2d 815, but from the majority’s application of the rule to the facts of this case. I believe that the majority agrees that in determining whether a state trial court’s failure to hold a hearing on a criminal defendant’s competence to stand trial violated Pate, the district court in a habeas proceeding is confined to the record before the state trial court made during the course of the state criminal proceedings anteceding the petitioner’s conviction and sentence, unless the trial court record is not available, accurate, or complete.1 A hearing for the purpose of taking evidence on matters that were not before the state trial court is inappropriate; what was not before the trial court is irrelevant to the issue of whether what was before the trial court created a Pate doubt. Thus, testimony at the evidentiary hearing before the district court from de Kaplany’s lawyer and from psychiatrists about observations and events that were not part of the record before the state trial court is irrelevant to the Pate issue before us.
In the state trial the evidence was not specifically focused on de Kaplany’s competence to stand trial or to plead guilty.2 Nevertheless, before the trial was over, a substantial amount of information had been
generated about his competency. The evidence was conflicting. The doctors called by the prosecution testified that de Kaplany was legally sane; the defense doctors said that he was legally insane. The defense doctors’ terminology for their diagnoses varied (“paranoid-schizophrenic,” “multiple personality” with “acute schizophrenic reaction”), but they were in agreement that he was suffering from a serious mental disease when he committed the acts. In the course of the reports and testimony, some of the doctors referred to de Kaplany’s hospitalization for mental illness in 1946, his family history of mental illness, and his suicide attempt while he was in jail awaiting trial. Dr. Shoor, a prosecution witness, observed, as did the defense doctors, that de Kaplany was obsessively suicidal, but he concluded, as did the other doctors called by the prosecution, that de Kaplany was not suffering from any gross mental disorder, that he was intelligent, alert and well oriented.
de Kaplany’s demeanor during the trial varied. When the guilt phase of the trial began on January 14, 1963, he was mute, immobile and withdrawn. On the second day, the prosecution exhibited a photograph of his nude wife lying in the morgue. He jumped to his feet and lunged at the photograph shouting “No, no, what did you do to her?” He was forcibly reseated and restrained. The following day he changed his plea to guilty.
The trial court asked his'defense counsel whether he had explained the nature and consequences of the change of plea to his client, and defense counsel answered affirmatively. The trial court then addressed several perfunctory questions to de Kaplany, inquiring whether he knew that he had *989been indicted for murdering his wife, whether he had discussed the matter with his counsel, and whether he fully understood the consequences of his change of plea; de Kaplany’s answers are responsive but very brief: “Yes, your Honor,” “Yes, I did,” “I do,” “That’s correct,” and “It is.” The trial court did not pursue any further inquiry in an effort to elicit fuller responses.
There was some evidence that de Kaplany was delusional and occasionally hallucinatory. Moreover, the nature and circumstances of his killing his wife were sufficiently bizarre that an inference could be drawn that he was mentally ill, at least at that time, de Kaplany graduated from medical school in Hungary in 1951. He earned a Ph.D. in 1954. He completed his residency at Harvard University, taught anesthesiology at Yale, and was licensed to practice medicine in four states including California. On August 28, 1962, shortly after de Kaplany heard that his bride of five weeks had been unfaithful to him, he bound and gagged her, cut her with a knife, and poured nitric acid over her nude body. She survived for over a month and died from the acid burns. The commission of this grisly killing by a person highly trained in medicine strongly suggests that the perpetrator had sustained some kind of mental breakdown.
In my view, the evidence indicating doubt about de Kaplany’s competence was at least as strong, if not stronger, than that in both Pate v. Robinson, supra, and in Drope v. Missouri (1975) 420 U.S. 162, 95 S.Ct. 896,43 L.Ed.2d 103, in both of which the Supreme Court held that a competency hearing was constitutionally compelled. The record is unlike that in Laudermilk. (Laudermilk v. California Department of Corrections (9th Cir. 1971) 439 F.2d 1278; People v. Lauder-milk (1967) 67 Cal.2d 272, 61 Cal.Rptr. 644, 431 P.2d 228.) In Laudermilk, all four psychiatrists concluded that Laudermilk was sane at the time of the offense, able to assist in his defense, and knew the nature and purpose of the proceedings against him. The only information arguably to the contrary was his lawyer’s conclusory statement that his client could not assist in his own defense and a “psychiatric impression” by one of the psychiatrists that Laudermilk had a “paranoid personality,” although he was not “overtly psychotic” and he was competent to stand trial. I agree with the Laudermilk courts that this evidence was too fragile to create a Pate doubt.
In de Kaplany’s case, the expert opinion bearing on competence divided almost evenly. The majority opinion assigns no weight at all to the expert opinion that de Kaplany was overtly psychotic. It appears to assume that one set of psychiatrists’ opinions demolished substantial doubt of competency created by another set of psychiatrists’ opinions. In so doing, the majority improperly undertakes the role, eschewed by the California Supreme Court, of discarding expert opinion evidence “for mere psychiatric speculation clearly outside our province.” (Laudermilk v. California Department of Corrections, supra, 61 Cal.Rptr. at 655, 431 P.2d at 239.) Moreover, it discards as readily all of the other evidence that casts doubt upon his competence.
The totality of evidence raising doubt of de Kaplany’s competence was at least as substantial as the evidence tending to dispel doubt. Under these circumstances, the real doubt lingers and it could not be resolved without a Pate hearing both to determine de Kaplany’s competence to stand trial and to plead guilty.
I would reverse for Pate error and remand with directions to grant the writ unless the State afforded de Kaplany a new trial within a reasonable time.

. Of course, if the trial court record is deficient, an evidentiary hearing is available to cure the deficiencies. For example, the trial record may not contain reports and exhibits that were properly before the trial court and that were not introduced into evidence, or the record may not reflect the demeanor of the petitioner during the trial. An evidentiary hearing is an effective way, and sometimes the only way, to present to the district court the full picture before the trial court.
As we pointed out in Moore, “evidence” in the trial record “encompasses all information properly before the court, whether it is in the form of testimony or exhibits formally admitted or it is in the form of medical reports or other kinds of reports that have been filed with the court.” Moore v. United States, supra, 464 F.2d at 666.

. None of the doctors was asked to examine de Kaplany to ascertain his competence to stand trial or to plead guilty.