Court Opinion

ID: 9448814
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:45:22.48131+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:33.594314
License: Public Domain

BASTIAN, Circuit Judge,
with whom WILBUR K. MILLER, Chief Judge, joins, dissenting.
In the early morning of June 10, 1959, the complaining witness was in her apartment alone, in the process of getting ready to go to work that day, when she heard a knock at her front door and, upon partially opening it, she found herself face to face with the appellant. He showed her a card, saying something about an address. Then he suddenly burst into the apartment, knocked her to the floor, stuffed a gag into her mouth, and informed her he was going to rape her. When she began to fight back at her attacker, kicking and scratching at him as best as she could, he proceeded to punch her into unconsciousness with his fists. When she regained consciousness, she found herself lying on her apartment floor, disheveled, badly beaten, and bleeding profusely. She had been stabbed with a sharp instrument, presumably a knife, a number of times, causing severe loss of blood and necessitating subsequent surgery. As a result of this ordeal she remained hospitalized for approximately six weeks. In the District Court, a jury convicted appellant of housebreaking, assault with intent to commit rape, and assault with a dangerous weapon.
In reversing this conviction, the majority of this court, without adequately discussing the real nature and present medical understanding of mental illness, hold inter alia that certain psychologists can qualify to give expert opinion concerning the existence vel non of a mental disease or defect and its connective relationship, if any, to criminal behavior. We cannot agree. In our opinion it should be an absolute condition precedent to expert testimony as to a medical diagnosis that the witness be a medical doctor.
In the first place, we think it must be concluded beyond doubt that the existence of a mental disease or defect is, first and foremost, a medical problem. The ascertainment of such a medical illness in a given individual with reference to kind, quality, degree and influence is, except in extreme cases, a highly unverifiable process, judged by any objective standard, even when undertaken by a medical doctor with years of special training in the detection of medical disturbances of the mind. Time and time again, where insanity is raised as a defense at the trial of criminal cases in this jurisdiction, sincere and experienced psychiatrists have taken the stand and voiced diametrically opposite opinions as to whether or not the defendant had a mental disease or defect at the time he committed the crime charged against him. And even when these psychiatrists are in some agreement that the defendant had a mental disease or defect at the time of the crime, they frequently differ widely concerning its symptoms, nature, intensity, and causal influence with respect to the offense committed.
Our emphasis of this situation is not to belittle the integrity of the psychia trists who testify at these trials, nor to disparage the integrity of the psychiatric profession, but merely to illustrate, how nebulous and uncertain is the issue of mental illness even to those of the medical profession who are experienced and trained in its diagnosis and treatment. If the issue is so debatable among conceded professional medical experts, it is sheer folly, in our opinion, to attribute to a lay psychologist, who admittedly is not a doctor of medicine, such *652presumptive medical knowledge and diagnostic acuity as to entitle him to wear in a criminal courtroom the badge of an expert witness with respect to the existence of that elusive medical condition known as mental disease or defect.
By this we do not mean to suggest that a psychologist should never be called upon to testify in insanity cases. In proper circumstances, testimony concerning the results of psychological tests administered to a defendant should be admissible as a means of enlightening a jury with respect to the specific information contributed by the psychologist to the over-all mass of information ultimately utilized by the medically trained psychiatrist in arriving at an expert opinion concerning the medical diagnosis of mental disease or defect. But to say that a psychologist is qualified to give an expert opinion with reference to a medical diagnosis is, in effect, to say that a non-medical witness can render an expert answer to a medical question on the strength of information insufficient to resolve it.1 Such an opinion is a conclusion by guesswork, as far as a valid and proper medical determination is concerned.
We are not alone in our views on this precise issue. The American Psychiatric Association, an organization “comprised of those twelve thousand qualified Doctors of Medicine who specialize and practice as psychiatrists,” in its amicus curiae brief, urges this court not to allow psychologists to qualify as experts to express opinions. We find in the brief this pertinent observation in regard to the proper medical ascertainment of mental disease or defect:
“The diagnostic synthesis of all data collected is properly carried out only by an individual Doctor of Medicine with a broad training, experience, and familiarity with all of the areas indicated, and the diagnosis must reflect a comprehensive medical judgment in which the proper weight is given to all of the data available. Further, we know of no mental illness which does not have a biological as well as a psychological component. No facet of the data can be assumed to reflect the total diagnosis until viewed in the context of the total picture. A clinical psychologist, lacking medical training and the specialization required of the qualified psychiatrist, is not qualified to make this total medical diagnosis or to testify as a medical expert thereon.” [Emphasis appears in amicus brief.]
The majority of the court ignores the above quoted wise counsel from the only undisputed experts now at work in the area of medical illness of the mind. In doing so, the court, we suggest, is bypassing all objective criteria in reaching the highly questionable and subjective conclusion that lay psychologists, whose opinions are predicated on the basis of test results, may qualify as experts on the medical question of the diagnosis of mental disease or defect, as well as experts concerning the causal relationship between a particular defendant’s mental abnormality, as such may be “diagnosed” by these psychologists, and that defendant’s criminal activity. In our opinion, the holding of the majority on this issue is wholly untenable. We would affirm the judgment and sentence of the District Court.

. It is well to remember that a psychologist’s opinion in this respect is grounded basically upon his interpretation of the results of certain psychological tests administered to the defendant. As an example of the instability of such test re-suits, we mention that in the instant case the appellant was subjected to the same I.Q. test on three separate occasions, scoring, respectively, 63 (high moron), 74 (borderline defective), and 90 (average).