Court Opinion

ID: 9686572
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 15:56:15.253831+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:20.368727
License: Public Domain

Hallows, J.
(concurring). The appellant has urged upon this court a need to re-examine the test of insanity in criminal cases in the interest of justice. There is merit to this argument. The M’Naghten rule as applied in Wisconsin should be modified and changed.
This court has been committed to the M’Naghten rule, commonly called the right-and-wrong test, which was formulated over one hundred years ago in M’Naghten's Case (1843), 10 Clark & F. 200, 209, 8 Eng. Reprint 718. As originally stated the accused was not legally responsible if he was “laboring under such a defective reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.” This test applied to the accused’s lack of knowledge of right and wrong in respect to the specific act challenged and of its nature and quality, but in practice the test has sometimes been stated to the jury in the abstract and conversely in the affirmative as a test of sanity. See Wilson v. State (1956), 273 Wis. 522, 78 N. W. (2d) 917. Although the M’Naghten rule has been subject to much criticism, it is still the test in the majority of states, but in several of them the rule has been modified or supplemented by the irresistible-impulse test. See Anno. 45 A. L. R. (2d) 1447, Criminal Law Irresponsi*650bility. The M’Naghten Case was an attempt to state a legal standard in terms of the nature of man, of his mental process, and of his moral responsibility. It is considered defective in that it emphasizes only the cognitive and omits the volitional aspect of man’s nature and is not in keeping with present-day thinking of medical science.
In Oborn v. State (1910), 143 Wis. 249, 272, 126 N. W. 737, after a review of the earlier Wisconsin cases, this court reaffirmed the M’Naghten rule and rejected the irresistible-impulse modification of it saying: “This court is 'not committed to the doctrine that one can successfully claim immunity from punishment for his wrongful act, consciously committed with consciousness of its wrongful character, upon the ground that, through an abnormal mental condition, he did the act under an uncontrollable impulse rendering him legally insane. One, at his peril of punishment, commits an act while capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, and conscious of the nature of his act. He is legally bound, in such circumstances, to exercise such self-control as to preclude his escaping altogether from the consequences of his act on the plea of insanity, though his condition may affect the grade of the offense. Thus far the charity of the law goes and no farther.” This reasoning assumes that one who has knowledge of right and wrong and of the nature of the act, necessarily has the power or capacity of choice or self-control.
In Jessner v. State (1930), 202 Wis. 184, 231 N. W. 634, the original M’Naghten rule was somewhat modified and, so far as the inability to distinguish between right and wrong in respect to the specific act, was affirmed, but doubt was expressed as to the correctness of the additional element of the rule referring to the lack of knowledge of the nature and the quality of the act. Oehler v. State (1930), 202 Wis. 530, 535, 232 N. W. 866, stated the rule to be “such a perverted condition of the mental and moral faculties as to render the *651person incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong.” In State v. Johnson (1940), 233 Wis. 668, 290 N. W. 159, in answering the argument that the right-and-wrong test was abolished by ch. 620, Laws of 1917, when “or feeble-minded” was added to sec. 357.11, Stats., now sec. 957.11, governing pleas of insanity, this court again reaffirmed the right-and-wrong test, including the element relating to the nature and quality of the act, stating (p. 670) : “It does not follow, however, that one of less mental caliber than another but still knowing the nature of his act and whether it is right or wrong is to be excused from responsibility therefor.” In Simecek v. State (1943), 243 Wis. 439, 447, 10 N. W. (2d) 161, this court said: “One may be medically insane and yet be criminally responsible for his acts.”
In the latest expression of this court in State v. Carlson (1958), 5 Wis. (2d) 595, 93 N. W. (2d) 354, it was stated that some members of the court were of the opinion that the M’Naghten rule should be modified but since the question was not raised it should not be decided in that opinion. ( However, the court in passing upon the admissibility of evidence stated (p. 607) : “We are of the opinion, however, that if the offered testimony, together with other expert testimony, had sufficiently tended to prove that at the time of the offense defendant was subject to a compulsion or irresistible impulse by reason of the abnormality of his brain, the testimony should have been admitted. Even under the right-wrong test, no evidence should be excluded which reasonably tends to show the mental condition of the defendant at the time of the offense.” By the language in the Carlson Case we did not adopt the irresistible-impulse test, but the case does cast doubt upon the Johnson and Oborn decisions.
It is important and necessary that the law of criminal responsibility in this state should be clarified in keeping with *652such present medical and psychiatric knowledge as is in accord with basic principles of criminal responsibility and with the respective duties of the court and jury. No test should require the court or the jury to abdicate their functions by allowing medical witnesses and psychiatrists to determine the ultimate fact on theories and standards unrecognized and unapproved by law.
In 1953, a royal commission in England in its report on capital punishment, 1949-1953, reported that the M’Naghten rule was so defective that the law on the subject ought to be changed. The majority was in favor of total abrogation of the rule, leaving the jury to determine whether at the time of the act the accused was suffering from a disease of the mind (or mental deficiency) to such a degree that he ought not to be held responsible. The difficulty with this test is a lack of the definition of the word “ought” to guide the jury. Three members of the commission believed the rule should be extended to add that if at the time of the act as a result of a disease of the mind (or mental deficiency) the accused was incapable of preventing himself from committing it, he was not responsible.
In 1954, the old New Plampshire test was rephrased in Durham v. United States (1954), 94 U. S. App. D. C. 228, 241, 242, 214 Fed. (2d) 862, 874, 45 A. L. R. (2d) 1430. This rule is “simply that an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect.” This decision in suggesting instructions under the rule stated that an accused suffering from a mental disease or defect would still be responsible for his unlawful act if there was no causal connection between such mental abnormality and the act. Perhaps causation is what is meant by the ambiguous word “product” in the test. If it is, the formulation of the rule ought to state it expressly and to what required degree. Moreover, the deci*653sion expressly contemplates leaving the ultimate question of fact to the jury to apply its ideas of moral responsibility in each case to the individual prosecuted for the crime. “The jury’s range of inquiry will not be limited” and would “be guided by wider horizons of knowledge concerning mental life. The question will be simply whether the accused acted because of mental disorder.”
The Durham rule, while paying lip service to “freedom of the will,” is so broad that it ceases to be a practical and workable test under the jury system. While the subject of much discussion and hailed by some psychiatrists, generally those of the psychoanalytical school, the Durham rule has not been followed by some eight state and two federal circuit courts which have had the occasion to re-examine this question. Over fifty years before the Durham Case, this court rejected the “product test” in Eckert v. State (1902), 114 Wis. 160, 89 N. W. 826.
The Durham rule’s great weakness is that it provides no legal standard by which a jury can test conflicting medical and psychiatric testimony or by which the jury can evaluate such opinions. Psychiatrists differ radically in their theories of mental illness, of the nature of man, and of the mental process. /They range from those who contend all criminals are insane in some sense of the word and no one is responsible for his acts, to those who believe man is endowed with the power of self-control which may be destroyed or impaired by a mental disease or defect through no fault of his own./The determinists and some psychoanalysts consider man’s actions to be so influenced or controlled by urges, impulses, and the subconscious as to be caused or determined without any power within man to control or choose his course of conduct in any situation. Other psychiatrists believe that man is a highly complex, integrated personality with the power of self-choice and determination, and whose *654mental process has a unity of perceiving, apprehending, judging, and willing which may be interfered with by a disease or defect of the mental order through no fault of his.
Criminal law and responsibility are based upon the fact that an individual human being is mentally free to exercise a choice between possible courses of conduct in respect to those acts condemned by the law and therefore morally and legally responsible. A human being has inherently and within himself a free will — the power of self-control. In those situations when the volitional power is impaired to such a degree or is totally destroyed or the requisite psychological conditions are not present for the exercise of a free choice, because of mental disorder or defect, responsibility for such act should not be imputed to that person. The original M’Naghten rule deals with two requirements for the free exercise of the will- — knowledge and reason. Lacking either, the will is not free. But there are other conditions of the mind which affect the freedom of choice. The mind does not function in departments but as an integrated whole. The various steps involved in the mental process which produces a physical act are affected differently by various mental diseases and defects, and differently in many individuals. A test of legal insanity must include the essence of insanity. No one-sentence definition has been devised which is entirely satisfactory. But for legal purposes, the standard should include those effects on the mental process caused by mental disease or defect which have a direct relation to the justice of the conviction.
One who has the power in a given situation to choose between the doing or the not-doing of an unlawful act and freely chooses to do the unlawful act must be held criminally responsible in our society./' And, conversely, if the accused did not have such volitional capacity because of its total or substantial destruction or of its inability to function freely in a given situation, either in the light of knowledge *655or because of the lack of it, and such incapacity was caused by and was the result of a mental disease or defect, such individual is not criminally responsible for such act and is legally insane. -4iowever, in cases when the normal function-^ ing of the will is affected temporarily because of the overpowering influence of passion or emotion which the accused might have and ought to have controlled, such person should be criminally liable. A person cannot knowingly allow his emotions, urges, and passions to take control of him. Such so-called irresistible impulses are merely unresisted urges.
The concept of man’s freedom of self-control is in accord with the basic theory of criminal law to punish those who ought to be punished. This test is not based on any new idea, but it enlarges the present concept of insanity in criminal cases in this state by including and emphasizing the volitional factor in human conduct expressly as a part of the test of insanity. It acknowledges that the volitional faculty in man is a prime element of criminal responsibility and the lack of it or the inability to exercise it freely as the essence of legal insanity when caused by a mental disease, or defect, and not self-induced by emotions or impulses which the accused might have controlled.
Somewhat-similar tests, but perhaps broader in their wording stressing the volitional aspect of criminal responsibility, are stated in Parsons v. State (1886), 81 Ala. 577, 585, 2 So. 854, 859, as follows: “No one can deny that there must be two constituent elements of legal responsibility in the commission of every crime, and no rule can be just and reasonable which fails to recognize either of them: (1) Capacity of intellectual discrimination; and (2) freedom of will,” citing many cases, and in State v. White (1954), 58 N. M. 324, 330, 270 Pac. (2d) 727, 731, which followed the minority view of the royal commission on capital punishment and added to the M’Naghten rule the following: “(c) Was incapable of preventing himself from committing it.” *656See 22 University of Chicago Law Review, 317-404, for a series of articles by law professors and psychiatrists under the caption, “Insanity and the Criminal Law — A Critique of Durham v. United States.” There is also a collection of the cases and a discussion of the problem in 45 A. L. R. (2d) 1447.
The most-satisfactory statement of our views in rule form and the one which should be adopted is formulated in the Model Penal Code of the American Law Institute and favored by a substantial majority of its council. Draft 4, sec. 4.01 of the Model Penal Code provides (p. 27) :
“(1) A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law.
“(2) The terms ‘mental disease or defect’ do not include an abnormality manifested only by repeated criminal or otherwise antisocial conduct.”
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Currie and Mr. Justice Dieterich concur.