Court Opinion

ID: 9551691
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:57:33.252887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:24:24.652029
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I dissent. Admittedly there are more than superficial similarities between the instant case and People v. Wolff (1964) 61 Cal.2d 795 [40 Cal.Rptr. 271, 394 P.2d 959], But there are also crucial legal and factual distinctions. In Wolff each of the four psychiatrists who testified gave as his medical opinion that the defendant suffered from a permanent form of schizophrenia, characterized by a complete dissociation between intellect and emotion, an inability to think conceptually, and an impaired judgment. Mr. Justice Sehauer, writing for the court, makes repeated reference to the defendant’s “undisputed mental illness” (p. 821), to “indisputably on the record, the defendant was not and is not a fully normal or mature, mentally well person” (p. 822), to his being “vague and detached” (p. 822), and to the “circumstances of his undisputed mental illness” (p. 823). (Italics added.) The key to Wolff was the total lack of conflict as to the youth's mental abnormality at the time he killed his mother.
Here, by contrast, there not only was a serious conflict in the testimony concerning the mental condition of the defendant, there was persuasive supportive evidence upon which the jury could reach its determination.
I pause to note that this was obviously a reflective and discerning jury. It eschewed the simple solution of declaring things to be all black or all white. The verdicts found defendant guilty of first degree murder in killing his father, and second degree murder in the deaths of his mother, sister and brother; they found defendant sane when he killed his father, and insane when he committed the other offenses. The jury thus concluded: (a) defendant killed his father, mother, sister and brother; (b) the killing of his father was wilful, deliberate and premeditated; (c) in that killing defendant had sufficient mental capacity to act with deliberation and premeditation, and to know and understand the nature and character of the act he was committing and that it was a violation of the rights of another; (d) he acted with diminished capacity when he killed his mother, sister and brother; (e) as a result of the heinous act of killing his father, he *863suffered a dissociative reaction and did not have the mental capacity to know and understand the nature and character of his subsequent acts and did not then know the difference between right and wrong. The question before us is whether this conclusion is tenable under the evidence introduced.
There may be a normal inclination to assume that a religious young man would have to be of unsound mind to murder his father. There is, of course, a considerable school of academic thought contending that all homicides and, indeed, all crimes, are committed by persons who are mentally ill. (See, e.g., Abrahamsen, Who are the Guilty? (1952) pp. 125, 194.) I do not necessarily deprecate that concept, except to note that it has not as yet prevailed in either legislative or judicial forums.
This defendant, however, studiously planned and executed the murder of his father. At the camp he deliberately announced two or three times that he was sleeping in his car, in order to be able to leave and return undetected. He rolled his car down the hill and then let the clutch out so that the starting would not awaken any campers. Upon reaching his home he parked across the street, and took his shoes off when entering the house. After the murders, he washed blood off himself, then opened drawers and emptied the contents of his mother’s purse onto the floor; the police later noted that the house had the appearance of being ransacked. En route back to camp, defendant disposed of the knife with which he had stabbed his father, stopped at a gas station and again washed himself and also washed some of his clothing. He slipped into the camp unnoticed. Upon returning to his home the next day with Miss Lansing, he preceded her inside and loudly .announced his arrival, then feigned disbelief at finding the bodies.
His was a diabolically clever plot, in short, that might have succeeded except for his failure to remove a few tiny specks of blood from his hair and ear. This aroused police interest, and thereafter defendant’s responses to routine investigatory questions confirmed their suspicions.
Concededly, time and plot alone do not automatically transform a homicide into murder of the first degree. (People v. Wolff (1964) supra, 61 Cal.2d 795, 822.) They are, however, strong evidence of the defendant’s maturitjq the extent of his understanding and reflection upon the deed, as well as an indication that he was aware of the enormity of the evil and the consequential reaction of society. Equally persuasive is *864the undisputed evidence of defendant’s clever and almost successful efforts to throw the police off the scent by disarranging the contents of the house to simulate a burglary, by disposing of the knife and surreptitiously reentering camp, and by feigning shock on discovering his victims’ bodies—all in marked contrast to the prompt and meek surrender of the defendant in Wolff. This careful planning demonstrates, in the terminology of Wolff and Holt (People v. Holt (1944) 25 Cal.2d 59 [153 P.2d 21]), the substantial “quantum of his moral turpitude and depravity. ’'
The majority here maintain that “Defendant’s actions during the commission of the killings and afterwards were completely foreign to his character and to his relationship with his family. ...” This assertion may be accurate with regard to his mother, sister and brother, but it does not square with the facts regarding his father. Indeed, there is considerable evidence of discord between son and father, some of it heated. They had quarreled as recently as the Tuesday before the killing; defendant had desired to leave the household but his father, who was also his employer, refused to permit him to do so; his father had struck him on at least one occasion ; he resented his father’s domination; several witnesses testified to hearing conflicts between them; and shortly before the murder, communication between the two had broken down. There is also evidence that defendant’s “character” was not as exemplary as the majority opinion suggests. He had a poor record in high school and college, and was apparently no longer welcome at the church camp.
I turn now to the psychiatric testimony. Unlike Wolff, in which the prosecution offered nothing whatever to rebut the unanimous defense expert views on the defendant’s diminished mental capacity, here we have a direct conflict on the issue. Dr. Robert Lentz testified that defendant was in a dissociative state from the time he went to sleep in his car until he awakened the next morning, and that there was a lack of consciousness as to any events occurring during the night. Dr. Carl Graner testified that defendant was incapable of forming any intent during the night in question.
Conversely, Dr. Gloria Taylor expressed the opinion that defendant did not sustain a dissociative reaction, and that he had the capacity to form an intent on the night of the killings. Prior to trial, Dr. Taylor had examined defendant and found he had certain characteristics of a schizoid personality. This is, of course, far short of schizophrenia, a psychosis.
*865Finally, Dr. Alfred Larson testified to his examination and expressed the opinion that defendant was capable of exercising judgment during the period in question, and was not suffering from any disorder which might impair his mental ability. Dr. Larson then discussed the phenomenon known as dissociation, describing it as a state in which one committing a crime of violence feels as if someone else is performing the act. He explained that “This happens, I would say, greater than ninety per cent of the inmates I have talked to described some sort of a reaction like this and it may have lasted from a few moments to a few minutes to a few hours and I have come to the conclusion that dissociative reaction in situations like this very often is the product of the crime, rather than the cause of it. It’s a way of the mind to protect itself from the consequences of such a brutal thing that is going on in front of the individual, in which they themselves are committing the act. . . . When you take a youngster who has a weapon in his hand and is beating his father and mother to death, he has to do something with his mind to escape the severe penalty, the disgrace, the shame of the action, to hide from his eyes and from his personality what is going on, so the mind sort of normally goes into a state of dissociation to permit the act to be completed and I think this is what probably occurred in this case.” (Italics added.)
Again, later in the proceedings, Dr. Larson testified that “the human mind, in most people, at least in our present civilization, is not keyed to the act of committing heinous crime, such as chopping up even strangers, let alone near relatives and when someone embarks upon such a rather heinous crime that is striking out, hitting, shooting, stalking or killing someone flesh and blood, near and dear to you, the mind must take some protective measure to you to stop the shock of it upon yourself. In this particular case the mind tends to dissociate for as much as needed to protect from the shock, otherwise people might break down hysterically right on the spot after the first blow, it’s the only way for the mind to protect itself. . . . ’ ’
The majority apparently view the opinion of Dr. Larson with some skepticism. But it is obvious that the jury which saw and heard him was persuaded by his testimony. Certainly the conclusion that defendant was sane and capable of premeditating when he fatally assaulted his father, became dissociative as a result of the animal ferocity of that attack, and in the subsequent moments of insanity concluded the *866slaying of the members of his family, is not an inherently illogical explanation of the tragedy.
It is not the function of an appellate court to reweigh the evidence when there is substantial testimony in support of the conclusion of the trier of fact. (People v. Hillery (1965) 62 Cal.2d 692, 702-703 [44 Cal.Rptr. 30, 401 P.2d 382]; People v. Robillard (1960) 55 Cal.2d 88, 93 [10 Cal.Rptr. 167, 358 P.2d 295, 83 A.L.R.2d 1086].) Neither a bizarre case nor what to some may appear to be a paradoxical result justifies departure from this fundamental rule. Reliance upon Wolff should not be employed to absolve an emotionally unstable parricide from guilt of first degree murder where the evidence supports the judgment. As we said in Wolff on the sanity issue, “to accept defendant’s thesis would be tantamount to creating by judicial fiat a new defense plea of ‘not guilty by reason of schizophrenia. ” To do so (assuming arguendo that it were within our power) would be bad law and apparently still worse medicine.” (61 Cal.2d at p. 815.)
I would affirm the judgment in its entirety.
McComb, J., concurred.