Court Opinion

ID: 9667461
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:46:19.377351+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:38.098957
License: Public Domain

TODD, Justice.
Thomas J. Bouwman has been indicted on two counts of murder in the first degree. Bouwman has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental illness to both charges. The State has made a motion in limine, requesting the trial court to restrict the testimony of Bouwman’s expert psychiatric witnesses solely to the issue of whether Bouwman knew at the time of the offense the nature of his acts or that those acts were wrong. In addition, the State requested the trial court to prohibit Bouw-man from inquiring of those witnesses whether he intended or premeditated the killings or whether he possessed the requisite mental state for lesser degrees of homicide. The trial court denied the motion. Bouwman then elected to have a unitary trial. The trial court then certified the following question to this court.
May the court admit, at the trial of a defendant charged with murder in the first degree, expert psychiatric opinion testimony (not offered to establish a defense under Minn.Stat. § 611.026) that the defendant, at the time of the alleged *705crime, lacked the mental capacity to premeditate the killings or to form the specific intent to kill?
We answer the certified question in the negative.
1. The certified question addresses the role of psychiatric evidence as it relates to the obligation of the state to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intended to commit the act charged1 and, in the case of a first degree murder charge, that the defendant had premeditated the act. We first observe that the state’s burden of proof is totally unaffected by whether or not the defendant pleads not guilty by reason of insanity. This occurs under Minnesota law because the defendant has the burden of establishing mental illness as a defense.2 Thus the issue of a plea of mental illness is not involved in answering the certified question and the answer we give applies in all criminal cases as it relates to the obligation of the state to establish as part of its case, the intent or premeditation of the defendant.
In determining this issue it is essential that we differentiate between intent as a fact issue from the question of the mental capacity of the defendant. The state presents factual evidence as to the commission of the particular act the defendant has been charged with committing. Direct evidence as to the fact of intent is usually impossible because of the subjective nature of this element of the crime. What a person intends lies within the recesses of that individual person’s mind. Yet, in determining this question, inquiry is made under an objective standard, namely, the standard that people operate within the broad boundaries of what is deemed normal or sane. To put it another way, the law presumes people, including the defendant standing trial, are responsible for their acts, i.e., that they have the capacity to intend what they do. Minn.Stat. § 611.025 (1980).
Within this ambit of normality or sanity, jurors, relying on their sensory perceptions, experiences in life, and their common sense, consider the manifestations of the defendant’s conduct and determine if the defendant formed the specific intent to do what he did. The defendant has the right to offer evidence which disputes the physical facts upon which the inference of the fact of intent is sought to be established by the prosecution. However, psychiatric evidence is of no value at this part of the trial since it does not relate to the physical evidence upon which the jury is to determine the issue of intent. Rather, such expert testimony relates to the mental capacity of the defendant and is properly part of defendant’s case wherein he must establish the defense of mental illness by the appropriate standard. Such psychiatric evidence relative to the state’s obligation to establish the intent of the defendant is argumentative and of no probative value.
When, however, the insanity defense is asserted, the inquiry shifts to a different dimension. The question becomes whether the defendant, even though he has manifested the specific intent to do the thing that he did, was laboring under such a defect of reason that he lacked the capacity to form the intent that was otherwise manifested. The question becomes whether the defendant was acting outside the ambit of sanity and normality as delineated by the M’Naghten rule incorporated in Minn.Stat. § 611.026 (1980).
On this issue of capacity, expert psychiatric testimony has probative value. The inquiry is no longer on the direction the defendant’s mind took but on how the defendant’s mind worked. Here psychiatry can be of help.
There is a distinction, which society understands and accepts, between a verdict of “not guilty” and a verdict of “not guilty by reason of insanity.” Because this is so, *706it is important that the inquiry at trial into the defendant’s criminal responsibility for his acts proceeds in two stages, the first to determine intent and the second to determine capacity.
2. Also necessarily involved in answering the certified question is the role of psychiatric evidence as it may relate to a lesser degree of guilt for the commission of a specific act — generally described as the doctrine of diminished responsibility. In Bethea v. United States, 365 A.2d 64, 83-92 (D.C.1976), the reasons for rejecting this concept are stated with clarity and logic and we adopt the reasoning of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and its conclusion.
By contradicting the presumptions inherent in the doctrine of mens rea, the theory of diminished capacity inevitably opens the door to variable or sliding scales of criminal responsibility. * * * We should not lightly undertake such a revolutionary change in our criminal justice system.
365 A.2d at 88.
The law recognizes no degree of sanity. Applying socially and morally acceptable standards a line has been drawn — on one side are the legally sane, on the other side are the legally insane.
[T]o the psychiatrist mental cases are a series of imperceptible gradations from the mild psychopath to the extreme psychotic, whereas criminal law allows for no gradations. It requires a final decisive moral judgment of the culpability of the accused. For the purposes of conviction there is no twilight zone between abnormality and insanity. An offender is wholly sane or wholly insane.
Holloway v. United States, 148 F.2d 665, 667 (D.C.Cir.1945).
There are exceptions. An example is intoxication. See Minn.Stat. § 609.-075 (1980). There are, however, significant evidentiary distinctions between “partial or relative insanity” and conditions such as intoxication, medication, epilepsy, infancy, or senility. These are susceptible to quantification and lay understanding. Thus, we find no inconsistency in permitting evidence of intoxication as it relates to mens rea. We agree with the statement in Wahrlich v. State, 479 F.2d 1137, 1138 (9th Cir.1973):
Alternatively, Wahrlich contends that Arizona’s admission of the evidence of age and of intoxication for the purpose of determining specific intent and its exclusion of psychiatric evidence offered for the same purpose create an unreasonable or arbitrary classification. We think not. Exposure to the effects of age and of intoxicants upon state of mind is a part of common human experience which fact finders can understand and apply; indeed, they would apply them even if the state did not tell them they could. The esoterics of psychiatry are not within the ordinary ken. The differences are sufficiently manifest to thwart constitutional attack.
We reject the doctrine of diminished responsibility.
The certified question is answered in the negative.

. In certain crimes the nature of the act has been used by the legislature to permit the inference of the requisite intent.

. In some jurisdictions the prosecution has the burden of establishing the sanity of the defendant. See Annot., 17 A.L.R.3d 146-157-61 (1968 & Supp.1982).