Court Opinion

ID: 9449414
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:11:51.979813+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:49.863477
License: Public Domain

DeVANE, District Judge
(dissenting).
I am unable to concur in the able opinion of Chief Judge TUTTLE in this case.
*86These appellants were represented by Jack Knight, a very able criminal trial lawyer of Texas. The record in the case discloses that the District Attorney of Harris County, Texas, following his usual policy on the occasion of the commission of a serious crime, called on the regularly employed county psychiatrist Dr. Sher to examine the appellants and in addition in this case he engaged Dr. Howard Crowe, a practicing psychiatrist, to examine the appellants and Dr. Crowe engaged Dr. Jack Tracktir, a psychologist, to assist him in his examination of the appellants.
Of course, these appellants could not have been examined by these physicians without the knowledge of Jack Knight, their counsel, and this in my opinion was what led Mr. Knight to engage a criminal psychiatrist, Dr. Burch, to examine them prior to trial. Dr. Burch expressed his opinion to Jack Knight in the language set out in the main opinion in which he concluded that appellants were at the time examined by him and at the time of the commission of the alleged crime aware of the nature and extent of their acts.
Faced with his own doctor’s report, Mr. Knight saw fit to try this case without asserting the mental incapacity of the .appellants, claiming only the defense of self-defense and defense of each other, claiming that the deceased had become violent in his treatment of Carolyn Lima and a struggle ensued, which resulted in his being shot and killed by one or the other of the appellants.
I am unwilling to substitute my judgment for that of Mr. Knight at the time he tried these cases and I am unwilling to assume on this record that Mr. Knight was unaware of the examination of these appellants by Doctors Sher, Crowe and Tracktir before appellants were placed on trial.
This is not a case where the District Attorney was guilty of any misconduct by refusing to make known to Mr. Knight information he had with reference to the sanity of these appellants and based on this record I am confident that had Mr* Knight sought from the District Attorney information as to the reports of Doctors Sher, Crowe and Tracktir, he would' have been advised fully with reference-to them. This case before us was-brought by other counsel and not by Mr*. Knight.
For these reasons I dissent in this: case.
Rehearing denied; DE VANE, J.„ dissenting