Court Opinion

ID: 9470371
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:04:09.084514+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:51.869707
License: Public Domain

POSNER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
In holding that a rational trier of fact could have found Greider, the defendant, sane beyond a reasonable doubt when he killed his two victims, and that therefore he was not denied due process of law under the standard of Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 2789, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979), my brethren have assumed a greater burden of review than is necessary. Jackson is limited to facts necessary to establish the state’s prima facie case; since sanity is not such a fact, we do not have to worry whether a rational jury could find it proved beyond a reasonable doubt. I therefore disagree with the statement in footnote 8 of the majority opinion, and in Stacy v. Love, 679 F.2d 1209, 1213 (6th Cir.1982), that once the state places on the prosecution the burden of proving a fact — any fact — beyond a reasonable doubt, Jackson applies. Neither opinion offers a reason for the statement. Stacy cites no authority for it. This court’s opinion cites Stacy and one other case, Walker v. Butterworth, 599 F.2d 1074, 1079 (1st Cir.1979), but Walker holds very nearly the opposite of the proposition that my brethren cite it for. It upheld Massachusetts’ “presumption of sanity” against the argument that it was inconsistent with the state’s judge-made rule (similar to Indiana’s) requiring proof of sanity beyond a reasonable doubt, and did so on the ground that Jackson does not require the state to comply with a judge-made burden of proof that relates to an affirmative defense rather than an element of the crime. Id. at 1079-80. It is true that the opinion in Walker contains a dictum, see id. at 1079-80 n. 6, rather casually offered as it seems to me, that if the Massachusetts legislature rather than courts had required proof of sanity beyond a reasonable doubt, the Jackson standard would apply. But the dictum is inapplicable to this case, and the holding is directly opposed to footnote 8 of this court’s opinion.
Jackson v. Virginia was a sequel to In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 1072, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970), which held that “the Due Process Clause protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged.” Jackson set forth the standard for deciding whether the requirement of Winship has been met in a particular case. To assume that any fact that the state requires its prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, such as sanity in the present case, is subject to federal judicial review under Jackson is not supported by the language of Winship (“every fact necessary to constitute the crime”) or of Jackson itself (“the standard must be applied with explicit reference to the substantive elements of the criminal offense as defined by state law,” 443 U.S. at 324 n. 16, 99 S.Ct. at 2792 n. 16), and ignores Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197, 97 S.Ct. 2319, 53 L.Ed.2d 281 (1977), which held that since Winship requires the prosecutor to prove beyond a reasonable doubt only those facts “included in the definition of the offense of which the defendant is charged,” id. at 210, 97 S.Ct. at 2327, a state may place the burden of proving affirmative defenses such as insanity on the defendant. The Court expressly reaffirmed Leland v. *1236Oregon, 343 U.S. 790, 72 S.Ct. 1002, 96 L.Ed. 1302 (1952), which had held that a state could require the defendant to prove insanity beyond a reasonable doubt. 432 U.S. at 207, 97 S.Ct. at 2325. A fortiori, the prosecutor does not — at least as a matter of federal constitutional law — have to prove the defendant’s sanity beyond a reasonable doubt. Walker v. Butterworth, supra, 599 F.2d at 1079. See also United States v. Greene, 489 F.2d 1145, 1155 (D.C.Cir.1973). It should therefore be immaterial, to a federal court asked to exercise its power under the habeas corpus statute to set aside an unconstitutional state conviction, whether the prosecution in this case failed to prove Greider’s sanity beyond a reasonable doubt.
This is true even though at the time of the killings Indiana law placed that burden on the prosecutor. It may help in seeing why it is true to contrast two views of what the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires of state criminal prosecutions. One is that it requires them to comply with specific provisions of the Bill of Rights. Another is that it requires compliance only with minimum contemporary standards of civilized criminal procedure, defined separately from the specifics of the Bill of Rights. Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 58 S.Ct. 149, 82 L.Ed. 288 (1937), is the locus classicus of this view. Although the first view is in the ascendant today, it has no application to this case, since the Bill of Rights does not specify a standard of proof in criminal cases. Only the second is available to guide our decision.
In this day and this society, proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is a component of civilized criminal procedure, but — Patterson shows — not with respect to every fact pertinent to guilt. The facts that a defendant seeks to prove in order to make out an affirmative defense are pertinent to guilt; if the defense succeeds, the defendant is not guilty of the offense charged. But Patterson makes clear that a state is not required to prove the absence of such facts — to prove sanity, for example — beyond a reasonable doubt, or even by a preponderance of the evidence. That is why we could not set aside Greider’s conviction even if his sanity had not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The fact that the Indiana courts at the time insisted that the prosecution prove the defendant’s sanity beyond a reasonable doubt means only that a failure to carry this heavy burden precluded conviction as a matter of state law. That is no concern of ours, since the due process clause does not require that state criminal convictions be free from errors of state law. Gryger v. Burke, 334. U.S. 728, 731, 68 S.Ct. 1256, 1257, 92 L.Ed. 1683 (1948); Engle v. Isaac, 456 U.S. 107, 102 S.Ct. 1558, 1568 n. 21, 71 L.Ed.2d 783 (1982).
In short, the allocation of the burden of proof with regard to affirmative defenses is up to the state, Walker v. Butterworth, supra, 599 F.2d at 1079-80 — provided the defenses do not negate an element of the offense, see United States v. Read, 658 F.2d 1225, 1232-33 (7th Cir.1981). This is an important qualification. Greider’s argument can be recast as an argument that the state failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt an essential element of the offense of murder (as it was defined by the law of Indiana when Greider killed his victims), namely “premeditated malice.” This means, so far as is relevant to this case, that “the actor’s shooting the gun (i.e., the voluntary act) was done with the subjective desire to kill a human being ... . ” Carter v. State, 408 N.E.2d 790, 794 n. 6 (Ind.App.1980) (dictum).
You can be insane yet still be capable of entertaining the subjective desire to kill a human being. But you cannot be convicted of murder if you are so crazy that you kill without knowing what you are doing. (Morris, Madness and the Criminal Law, ch. 2 (1982), explains this distinction.) Thus, if Greider was under the delusion that he was shooting two gerbils rather than two human beings, he could not be guilty of murder, but if his delusion took the form of thinking that he had a sacred duty to reduce the human population by two, he could be guilty of murder, at least guilty prima facie, though he might have a defense of insanity. Because a state of mind requirement is part of the prima facie case of *1237murder, even if the defense of insanity were abolished (as Professor Morris among others urges it should be) some insane killers would still escape conviction for murder, because their insanity had prevented them from forming the intent required of a murderer.
The validity of the suggested distinction between an insane mind and a mind incapable of premeditated malice depends, of course, on the legal meaning of “insanity.” If sanity in the law meant ability to form the intent defined as premeditated malice, then proof of sanity and proof of the mental element of the crime of murder would be the same thing and the due process clause would require proof of sanity beyond a reasonable doubt after all. That may have been the meaning of sanity in the era of the M’Naghten Rules. The language of Davis v. United States, 160 U.S. 469, 16 S.Ct. 353, 40 L.Ed. 499 (1895), which required federal prosecutors to prove sanity beyond a reasonable doubt, and which dates from the M’Naghten era, is suggestive: “No man should be deprived of his life under the forms of law unless the jurors who try him are able, upon their consciences, to say that the evidence before them, by whomsoever adduced, is sufficient to show beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of every fact necessary to constitute the crime charged.” Id. at 493, 16 S.Ct. at 360.
At a time when Indiana followed the M’Naghten Rules (supplemented by the doctrine of “irresistible impulse”), the Indiana Supreme Court, too, may have equated proof of sanity with proof of the mental element required for murder. See Flowers v. State, 236 Ind. 151, 163, 139 N.E.2d 185, 193 (1956). But that court adopted a broader definition of insanity in Hill v. State, 252 Ind. 601, 251 N.E.2d 429 (1969), and it is no longer possible to regard the legal meaning in Indiana of sanity as identical to the state of mind required to convict a man of murder. This is also suggested by Price v. State, 412 N.E.2d 783, 785 (Ind.1980), where the Indiana Supreme Court upheld the new Indiana statute, see Ind.Code § 35-41-4-1, which requires the defendant to prove insanity by a preponderance of the evidence. The statute would be unconstitutional if sanity were an element of the offense of murder (the offense involved in Price as in this case). Although the Price opinion is not entirely clear, its statement that “early Indiana cases hold that sanity is an element of a crime which requires a specific intent,” 412 N.E.2d at 785, implies, in context, that later cases do not. Finally, in a recent decision of the Indiana Supreme Court we find the explicit statement that “the test in Indiana does not require the action of the defendant to be ‘unknowing’ to afford the defense of insanity.” Ward v. State, 438 N.E.2d 750, 753 (Ind.1982).
Winship, applied to this case, thus required proof beyond a reasonable doubt not of Greider’s sanity but of something distinct and less difficult to prove — his “premeditated malice.” See Hughes v. Mathews, 576 F.2d 1250, 1255 (7th Cir.1978). And therefore Jackson requires us to determine not whether a rational jury could have found Greider sane beyond a reasonable doubt but only whether it could have found that the state had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Greider had acted with premeditated malice.
Greider must have been conscious when he shot his two victims — otherwise he could not have shot so straight — and his behavior right after the shooting, though maybe consistent with drug-induced insanity, is inconsistent with an inference that he was so crazed at the time of the shooting that he could not have appreciated the significance of what he was doing — could not have formed “the subjective desire to kill a human being.” This much a rational trier of fact certainly could have found beyond a reasonable doubt; if so, we need go no further in order to affirm the denial of Greider’s petition for habeas corpus.
I should add that I find the majority opinion (all but footnote 8) persuasive; but I would place decision on a different ground.