Court Opinion

ID: 9858519
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:26:24.69051+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:54:40.773918
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent.
The decision of the court in the present case perpetuates a pattern of mischaracter-ization and obfuscation which now thoroughly permeates our decisions on the subject of diminished responsibility in criminal cases. The result is to preclude this defendant and other persons charged with crimes from offering evidence relevant and material to the basic elements of the charge which might be favorable to the accused.
There is a popular maxim among debaters that, if you allow your opponent to state the issue, your chances of success are indeed slight. The majority opinion utilizes this principle to support its result by treating the issue in the present case as if it were whether the “defense of diminished responsibility” should be further extended. In reality, the issue presented is whether a court in the trial of a criminal case may exclude relevant and material evidence concerning a basic element of the offense charged. Placing labels on similar concepts in order to foster accurate analysis and facilitate uniformity of treatment among like things is acceptable only as long as the concepts which are identically labeled are in fact similar. What something in fact is and how something in fact operates cannot be established by labels.
Commencing with the seminal decision in State v. Gramenz, 256 Iowa 134, 126 N.W.2d 285 (1964) and continuing through *589the discussion of diminished responsibility in State v. Collins, 305 N.W.2d 434, 436 (Iowa 1981) and the application of that doctrine in State v. Barney, 244 N.W.2d 316, 318 (Iowa 1976); Long v. Brewer, 253 N.W.2d 549, 557 (Iowa 1977); and Veverka v. Cash, 318 N.W.2d 447, 449 (Iowa 1982), our characterization of the use of expert testimony negating an essential element of a criminal charge has been inaccurate. Unfortunately, this error in description has produced error in application. The fundamental flaw in the analysis upon which these decisions are based is the acceptance of the premise that “diminished responsibility” is a partial defense which reduces responsibility in some types of crimes. Clearly, it is not and never has been.
An illuminating description of the use of expert testimony to negate an element of a criminal charge is contained in the following commentary:
Mental illness commonly negates an element without amounting to insanity. As a failure of proof defense, at least in cases where the defendant is still guilty of a lesser included offense, it is often called “partial responsibility” or “diminished capacity.” Its name highlights the fact that it is something short of insanity; but it is nonetheless an unfortunate choice of terms because there is nothing partial about the defense. The mental illness either negates a required element of an offense or it does not, thereby providing a complete defense to that offense or providing no defense. It is true that many offenses, especially homicide offenses, have lesser included offenses with less demanding culpability elements. Thus mental illness may negate the culpability element of the greater offense but not the lesser offense. When this occurs, the net effect of the mental illness is to reduce the defendant’s liability from the greater to the lesser_ However, this ultimate reduction effect results from the comparative culpability elements of the different offenses, not from a special rule that, when faced with diminished responsibility due to mental illness, generates diminished liability. If there is no lesser included offense, or if the mental illness also negates an element of any lesser included offense, the mental illness will prevent conviction altogether.
Robinson, Criminal Law Defenses: A Systematic Analysis, 82 Colum.L.Rev. 199, 206 (1982) (footnotes omitted) (emphasis in original).
The point which professor Robinson makes is fully applicable to the use of this type of evidence under Iowa law. The concept of partial defense exists only as an inaccurate label, spawned from the rhetoric of our decisions, but thoroughly, contradicted in the actual application of the doctrine. In the so-called specific intent crimes in which it has been allowed to operate, the doctrine of diminished responsibility in actual practice is a defense only in the respect that, in the common usage of language, any evidence presented by a defendant to negate the State’s evidence is defensive in nature.
The majority seeks to show meaningful differences between specific intent crimes and general intent crimes through the use of definitions from our cases which have no bearing on the present problem. What difference does it make that a general intent crime has been said to be complete without intent to do a further act or achieve a further consequence? The important thing is that such crime is not complete unless all elements thereof, including the required mental state, have been shown. Mens rea elements may generally be lumped into three categories: (1) an intent to cause a particular result in the commission of the actus reus of the crime; (2) awareness of certain circumstances relating in some way to the actus reus; or (3) purposefulness of the acts constituing the actus reus. Robinson & Grail, Element Analysis in Defining Criminal Liability: The Model Penal Code and Beyond, 35 Stanford L.Rev. 681, 694-97 (1983). The so-called specific intent crimes for which the majority permits evidence of diminished capacity fall under the first category. The present case falls under the second category. Other crimes *590which we have recognized as general intent crimes fall under the third category. See Eggman v. Scurr, 311 N.W.2d 77, 79 (Iowa 1981).
We recognized in Eggman that there are a variety of mind sets, differing greatly in both form and substance, which are essential elements in the proof of general intent crimes. No reason has been suggested by the majority why there is any less need, in the interest of a fair trial, for the accused to be allowed to defend himself when charged with general intent crimes than is the case with respect to specific intent crimes. Nor does it appear that such distinction is constitutionally permissible in view of the holdings in Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 302, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 1049, 35 L.Ed.2d 297, 312-13 (1973) and Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 22-23, 87 S.Ct. 1920, 1925, 18 L.Ed.2d 1019, 1025 (1967). The fact that no constitutional issue has been argued by the appellant in the present case does not relieve us of our responsibility to assure that our decisions pass constitutional muster with respect to matters of both form and substance.
The majority suggests that the evidence in question should not be admitted because there is not a psychiatric counterpart to the legal mens rea elements. This is inconsistent with the approach taken in the specific intent crimes. Moreover, such conclusion is not supported by any reference to a generally accepted psychiatric standard and, in the absence of such a standard, is an issue of fact which can only be determined on an ad hoc basis depending on the particular mental element involved and the nature of the proffered expert testimony. The mens rea elements of our statutory crimes, including those labeled as general intent crimes, have developed independently of psychiatric knowledge. But it has never been suggested that these elements, which vary greatly from crime to crime, do not relate to “actual” as opposed to “constructive” or “legally implied” states of mind. The use of expert psychiatric testimony therefore has no effect on what the elements of a crime are, but only on how they may be proved.
Although the court may properly develop by its case law the extent of an affirmative defense available to one who is otherwise guilty of a crime, it may not constitutionally limit the efforts of the accused to present relevant and material evidence tending to negate an essential element of the prosecution’s case. In recognizing that a defendant should be permitted to offer evidence on the culpability elements of all crimes, not only specific intent crimes, the court in Hendershott v. People, 653 P.2d 385, 391 (Colo.1982) observed:
The formulation and the limitation of affirmative defenses, however, must be distinguished from the accused’s right to present reliable and relevant evidence to controvert the prosecution’s case against him. “Few rights are more fundamental than that of an accused to present witnesses in his own defense.” Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 302, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 1049, 35 L.Ed.2d 297, 312 (1973); see Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 87 S.Ct. 1920, 18 L.Ed.2d 1019 (1967) (state statutory scheme which prevented an accused from securing coparticipant’s testimony at trial denied the accused his constitutional right to compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor).
The Colorado court proceeded to hold that, in all crimes in which the state is required to prove a particular mental element, “it defies both logic and fundamental fairness to prohibit a defendant from presenting reliable and relevant evidence that, due to a mental impairment beyond his conscious control, he lacked the capacity to entertain the very culpability which is indispensable to his criminal responsibility in the first instance.” Id. at 393-94. Prior to its decision in the Hendershott case, the Colorado court had suffered some of the same misdirection in this area of the law that this court has experienced. It has now steered upon the correct course and so should we.