Court Opinion

ID: 9631303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:33:56.593945+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:29:00.579706
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mb. Justice Musmanno,
I dissent from the affirmance of the lower court’s decision, not because 1 minimize the seriousness of the terrible crime committed by the defendant, but because I ■ apprehend-the imposed penalty wras one-.directed to the offense and not to the offender; - • ■ ' •
*79There is no punishment in the scale of justice heavy enough to make atonement for what Theodore Elliott did, hut for what Theodore Elliott is, a different scale, it seems to me, must be used. Punishment is to be applied according to the capacity of the individual, as well as to the enormity of the delinquent act.
The defendant here is a mental defective with a long record of abnormal conduct. On February 27, 1937, he sustained a head injury and two years later hospitalization was recommended for “therapeutic encephalography.” The diagnosis made on November 22, 1939 was “middle-grade moron cerebral trauma.”
An out-and-out insane person is never executed, even though he burn down a city. If an insane multiple slayer is saved from death or even not punished at all except to be restrained of liberty on account of his dangerous character, any nearness to mental irresponsibility must also receive consideration on the basis of avoidance of the death penalty.
If Elliott’s mental irresponsibility was such as to decrease his free choice of action, might that margin of irresponsibility not be enough to explain the ferocity of the killing, which fact seems to be the principal basis for the lower court’s imposition of the death penalty?
One of the judges of the lower court indicated from the bench that a sentence of life imprisonment is not to be regarded as a lesser penalty than that of death. I challenge that statement categorically. It can be stated as a universal truth stretching from nadir to zenith that regardless of circumstances, no one wants to die. Some person may, in an instant of spiritual or physical agony express a desire for death as an anodyne from intolerable pain, but that desire is never full-hearted because there is always the reserve of realization that the silken cord of life is not broken *80by a mere wishing. There is no person in the actual extremity of dropping from the precipice of life who does not desperately reach for a crag of time to which to cling even for a moment against the awful eternity of silence below. With all its “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” life is yet sweet and death is always cruel.
In view of the fact that the defendant pleaded guilty, to murder and the court fixed the degree of murder at first degree, the whole and only issue left for determination was that of life imprisonment as against death. What, therefore, was meant by the following colloquy?
“Judge Carroll: May I interrupt you for a moment? I do not consider a change in a sentence from the electric chair to life imprisonment a reduction in sentence.
Mr. Winkelman: May I say in reference to that—
Judge Carroll: You do not have to answer it. I just want you to orient yourself to the way some of us think.”
The learned Judge who thus spoke might philosophically assume that the suffering of daily incarceration for the remainder of one’s existence would in its cumulative misery exceed the momentary pain of electrocution, but this personal philosophy he cannot force on another who still prefers awakening daily into a living world with its never-ceasing song of hope. To the extent, therefore, that one of the three judges who passed on the awesome question of life or death, actually believed that the mold of the grave was no grimmer than the cold of a cell, to that extent his participation in the consideration of the appropriate penalty for the defendant at bar was of no worth whatsoever. His conclusion was unfortunately verified by his further remark from the bench that he did not care to look at *81clinical reports from the hospital in which the defendant had been treated.
The report in question was one from St. Luke’s and Children’s Hospital which told of the defendant’s head injury on February 8, 1937. One item reads: “2-23-37, an incision was made over the left frontal area and drainage established.”
Another item read: “3r22. incision in parietal region about 3 to 4 inches above frontal incisions to allow through and through drainage.”
Excerpts from other clinical reports reveal the following entries: “In the past sixteen months this boy has advanced but six months in mental age and his intellectual inferiority is now very apparent. It is unlikely that he will make much further progress for he shows no capacity for intelligent reasoning nor for mastering new ideas. He is childish, irresponsible, and easily led, with very superficial ideas of moral values.” November 10, 1939.
“Boy easily led. Associated with bad group of boys. Boy mentally defective, extraverted and hyperactive and activities with knives lead to conclusions that he is dangerous * * *.
“Volunteers symptoms of cerebral trauma, headaches and noises. Had had a head injury in February, 1937 * * *
“The recommendation: hospitalization and therapeutic encephalography.
“Diagnosis: middle grade moron: cerebral trauma. I. Q. 68.” November 22, 1939.
“NEURO-Psychiatric Clinic House of Detention
Chron. Age: 15 Yrs. 9 mons.
Mental Age: 9 Yrs. 9 mons.
IQ. 66” October 15, 1946.
*82“Re-Examination—
10-15-42 Report of Psychiatrist:
This boy is mentally deficient, and now rates, reacts, and reasons on a middle-grade moron basis. He is quiet, but is slippery, evasive, insincere. He is not to be trusted at all, and he is set on a dangerously lawless life. Has not profited by Glen Mills. His record is long and significant. In it are at least two knife episodes, and now comes implication in armed hold-up. RECOMMEND-Huntingdon.
Diagnosis: Middle-Grade Moron Constitutional Psychopathic Inferior
D. G. Davidson, M. D.,
Psychiatrist”
“From Medical report of Dr. David J. Boon of 8-4-38
1. Dr. Weber: persistent headache and history of fractured skull three years ago, with a penciled notation ‘No Fracture.’
From ‘House of Detention Investigation of 5-31-36’ —First episode — at that time, Mrs. Elliott said ‘keep the boy locked up until God calls him if he gets in any more trouble.’ ”
Perhaps if the authorities had followed up the defendant’s mother’s recommendation, the dreadful murder which brought about this case would not have occurred. However, speculation as to what might have happened is futile. We are confronted with the precise question as to whether a young man whose vision in life has been curtained by cerebral darkness should be held to the same degree of responsibility as one into whose brain falls the clear daylight of unclouded reason.
*83Mr. Justice Linn in the case of Commonwealth v. Stabinsky, 313 Pa. 231, 238, quoted with approval a statement from Grasset, “The Semi Insane and the Semi Responsible”: “ ‘Diminished responsibility is a scientific fact, scientifically established and capable of being analyzed”
We may, as we indeed do, look with horror upon Theodore Elliott’s deed, but if the measure of the penalty is to equal and not exceed the measure of responsibility, it can scarcely be said, in the light of modern penology, that Elliott can only expiate his crime in the electric chair.
The court below properly said: “There were no economic pressures which excited this lust for crime. His work record was steady; his earnings adequate. We have searched his history carefully for some justifiable explanation. We have none, only a depraved, cruel, ruthless and brutal individual.”
The failure to find an explanation for this depraved and brutal crime is the very thing which argues for the defendant’s diminished responsibility. Of course, if a tiger is to be killed simply because it is a tiger, then discussion in a case of this character is superfluous. But if in ascertaining the reasons and causes which make a man-tiger, we find a moral responsibility which does not keep pace with the bestial development, we are charged with the duty of considering whether that failure in moral capacity should not soften the blow of the iron hammer of retribution.
Theodore Elliott is a dangerous creature and must be restrained, as the tiger is restrained. Life imprisonment would do this. If it could be shown that Elliott had a freedom of selection as to the shape of his head and the brain that went into it and also had the free choice as to whether his brain should be jolted by the force of an automobile blow, then no one could rea*84sonably challenge the law and society in taking its ultimate toll. But since Theodore Elliott did not have that choice, I believe, and I say this with the utmost deference to those who, in the conscientious discharge of their duty, think otherwise, his life should be saved.