Court Opinion

ID: 9668554
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:17:58.402408+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:46.084782
License: Public Domain

Steele Hays, Justice, dissenting. I view the evidence of insanity of this appellant as overwhelming. Three psychiatrists and a clinical psychologist testified to their opinion that Shirley Marie Curry was psychotic to the extent of being incapable of appreciating the criminality of her conduct or conforming her behavior to the requirements of the law. There was no expert testimony to the contrary. The lay testimony was insubstantial, limited with one exception, to witnesses who saw the appellant once, briefly, and could offer little other than that she “appeared normal.” The one witness for the state who had any continuing contact with her corroborated the mental aberrations and delusional episodes considered so significant by the experts. Above all else, the crime itself attests to the legal irresponsibility of the perpetrator. When a mother, with cool deliberation, murders her two sons in their bed, to whom she is said to be “devoted,” murders her teenage daughter, her former husband, her former sister-in-law, and attempts yet another inner-family murder, all directed by either God or the devil, depending on which delusion is current, the product of a badly deranged mind is inescapable. The evidence relied on to affirm this conviction includes reference to appellant’s calm demeanor during and after the crimes. In reality, this is evidence to the contrary. One who can conduct the calculated assassination of a family with calm and remain so afterwards demonstrates a derangement far better than someone who becomes distraught. The experts were cognizant of this abnormality, whereas the layman misread it. I recognize that under the law the jury may ignore competent, expert testimony of insanity even in the absence of opposing expert testimony, but if lay testimony consists of little more than superficial observations that the defendant “appeared normal” then it fails to meet the requirement of substantiality when weighed against the combined, uncontradicted testimony of four specialists in the field of psychiatry, whose opinions are based on extensive testing, observation and interview with the appellant. While, as here, the totality of the evidence is so convincing that reasonable minds can come to no other conclusion then it becomes our duty to reverse. Justice Hickman joins in this dissent.