Court Opinion

ID: 9478373
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:47:44.186282+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:24.127295
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
A nineteen-year-old with a mental age of thirteen who had been in and out of institutions, including Willowbrook, from the age of seven to the time he committed the crime, and who had been diagnosed as having “frantic schizophrenia],” is found competent to have waived his Miranda rights on the basis of non-expert testimony by the police officer who arrested him and took his statement. Since I do not believe it was sufficiently shown that Toste’s waiver was “made with a full awareness both of the nature of the right being abandoned and the consequences of the decision to abandon it,” Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 421, 106 S.Ct. 1135, 1141, 89 L.Ed.2d 410 (1986), I respectfully dissent.
Nor can I agree with the district court’s harmless error analysis endorsed sub silen-tio by the panel majority. That analysis went only to the substantial evidence that Tosté did in fact commit the crime. But Toste’s defense was not that he did not commit the crime. Instead, it was that he was insane, i.e., as a result of mental disease or defect, he lacked substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to control his conduct within the requirements of law. See Conn.Gen. Stat. § 53a-13 (1985). Statements taken *784by the police were used on cross-examination of the defense’s expert witness on mental health to undercut Toste’s insanity defense: By showing that Tosté planned the crime ahead of its commission, the statements tended to indicate his ability to control his impulses.
I would grant the writ unless the State retries Tosté within sixty days but permit the State at a further suppression hearing to adduce expert testimony that he was sufficiently capable of understanding the Miranda warnings to waive them.