Court Opinion

ID: 9456645
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:59:31.161322+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:03.873833
License: Public Domain

ELY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent. The state court judge accepted Laudermilk’s plea of guilty to a charge of first degree murder knowing that Laudermilk had recently been confined in different hospitals for the mentally ill and having been advised that Laudermilk was then uncooperative with his own attorney. One of the medical reports before the judge, that of a Dr. Hoffman, recited the doctor’s opinion to the effect that Lauder-milk was afflicted with a severely paranoid personality and should be given psychiatric treatment. Despite all this information, the trial judge accepted Laudermilk’s plea and ordered him confined to prison for life without conducting a sanity hearing to determine whether Laudermilk was mentally competent to enter the plea.
I cannot reconcile the result reached by my Brothers with Pate v. Robinson, 383 U.S. 375, 86 S.Ct. 836 (1966), and my views thoroughly coincide with those of Mr. Justice Peters of the California Supreme Court, set forth in his dissenting opinion in People v. Laudermilk, 67 Cal.2d 272, 288-296, 61 Cal.Rptr. 644, 655-660, 431 P.2d 228, 239-244, (1967), cert. denied, sub. nom. Laudermilk v. California, 393 U.S. 861, 89 S.Ct. 139 (1968). At the point when the trial judge accepted Laudermilk’s plea, the situation was such as to require that a hearing be conducted. The judge could not, I submit, undertake to resolve the competency question, then readily apparent, by simply weighing conflicting written reports.
I adopt Mr. Justice Peters’ opinion as my own, and I think it so perceptive and so carefully documented as to merit republication in the Federal Reporter. It reads: