Court Opinion

ID: 9464637
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:38:44.061275+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:44.000752
License: Public Domain

GEE, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring):
While I concur in the majority’s disposition of this case, I cannot agree that a criminal defendant’s claim of amnesia must give rise to a case-by-case analysis of his competence to stand trial. In my view the accused’s amnesia, insofar as it entails no more than a present inability to recall events at the time of the crime, is in itself insufficient to establish that a criminal defendant is incompetent under 18 U.S.C. § 4244.
As the majority opinion notes, mental incompetency under this statute may be found on a showing that the accused is *530“presently insane or otherwise so mentally incompetent as to be unable to understand the proceedings against him or properly to assist in his own defense.” In its very abbreviated opinion in Dusky v. United States, 362 U.S. 402, 80 S.Ct. 788, 4 L.Ed.2d 824 (1960), the Supreme Court has said that under section 4244 the “test must be whether [a criminal defendant] has sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding — and whether he has a rational as well as factual understanding of the proceedings against him.”
The claim of incompetency, of course, entails considerations quite different from those of the insanity defense. The latter concerns the defendant’s ability to control his acts at the time of the crime, whereas the former concerns our unwillingness to try one who is at least figuratively “absent” from the proceedings: just as we decline to try a criminal defendant who is not present to face his accusers, so do we decline to try one who cannot comprehend the nature or significance of his accuser’s charges and actions. Clearly the main purpose of section 4244 is to assure that a criminal defendant can comprehend the proceedings against him and can rationally communicate to his attorney his own wishes and views on such strategic decisions as his defense may present. Just as clearly, this main purpose is not necessarily defeated by a criminal defendant’s lack of recall about the events of the crime, since his amnesia entails neither present insanity nor present . inability to understand the proceedings and communicate with his attorney.
Our only question, then, is whether section 4244 as interpreted by Dusky encompasses some further purpose in addition to this main purpose of assuring present comprehension and ability to communicate at trial. In particular, we might ask whether the defendant’s ability to assist in his own defense means that he must be able to relate his own version of the facts of the crime, either to his attorney or to the trier of fact or to both. The majority opinion seems to say that the Dusky test in itself entails no such further purpose; rather, the majority states that beyond Dusky the trial court is to consider other factors “additionally.” These factors in addition to Dusky revolve chiefly about the defendant’s ability to testify and about the nature and strength of the evidence against him.
In insisting that the trial court take into account these evidentiary factors — whether or not they are a part of the Dusky test— the majority opinion parallels some cases from sister circuits that are at least mildly sympathetic to the claim of amnesia as a ground for incompetence. Their sympathy, too, appears to derive chiefly from the view that a defendant’s competence — or at least his right to a fair trial — includes some consideration of his ability to state his own remembered version of the facts of the crime, particularly where his entire defense must be constructed from that version, and cannot be reconstructed from other evidence. See, e. g., United States ex rel. Parson v. Anderson, 481 F.2d 94 (3d Cir. 1973); United States v. Borum, 464 F.2d 896 (10th Cir. 1972); Wilson v. United States, 129 U.S.App.D.C. 107, 391 F.2d 460 (1968).
It is my view that these evidentiary considerations, important though they may be to the construction of a criminal defense, have no bearing on a defendant’s competence to stand trial. The Seventh Circuit, in United States v. Stevens, 461 F.2d 317 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 948, 93 S.Ct. 292, 34 L.Ed.2d 218 (1972), rejected the view taken by the majority today and in so doing discussed some of the chief weaknesses of the majority’s position. The Stevens opinion pointed out that the defendant’s memory — or rather the loss thereof — is no different in kind from the loss or lack of any other potentially exculpatory evidence. Thus, the defendant may have been alone at the time of the crime; or his chief alibi witness may die or abscond. Certainly the absence of the favorable evidence that would have existed, had these events been other than what they were, cannot render the defendant incompetent. By the same token, his own lapse of memory may destroy evidence that might have substantial*531ly assisted him in the construction of his defense. But the absence of this evidence, serious though it may be, does not render a defendant incompetent to stand trial.1
I readily concede that a criminal defendant’s inability to remember the events of the crime may indeed present him with significant evidentiary impediments in the construction of his defense — although the same may be said of the death of a key alibi witness. But this is at most a ground for more extensive criminal discovery, or perhaps even for a continuance where it can be shown that his memory is improving and that a delay will not contribute substantially to the decay of other evidence. These, however, are matters for the proper conduct of the trial proceedings. See United States v. Sullivan, 406 F.2d 180 (2d Cir. 1969). They ought not be elevated into grounds for a finding of incompetence — a finding which, as the majority correctly notes, may mean that the defendant must be released without any trial at all.
I am especially persuaded of this view by two practical considerations. One is the extraordinary commonness of forgetfulness and, most particularly, forgetfulness of unpleasant or anxiety-provoking events. Retrograde amnesia is common and known to be so. See Sullivan, supra at 186. In holding that a criminal defendant may be found incompetent to stand trial simply because he cannot recall events at the time of a crime, we may well make a substantial dent in the presumption of every defendant’s competence. Second, I cannot but note the ease with which a claim of amnesia can be advanced and the difficulty of testing a particular defendant’s claim where he asserts no more than his inability to recall the events at the time of the crime. I fear we are planting dragon’s teeth, that in future many defendants who do not plan to testify will advance this new bar to trial routinely.
In other circuits several cases raising this claim have involved defendants who suffered from some other malady that could reasonably be viewed as bearing a causal relation to the purported amnesia. Thus, in Wilson, the case most sympathetic to the amnesia claim, the defendant had been critically injured in an auto chase immediately following the crime and had indeed been unconscious for some three weeks thereafter. The defendant in Sullivan claimed that his inability to recall resulted from his heavy alcoholism; the defendant in Stevens claimed that his sustained and heavy drug use had caused his memory lapses. I have no doubt • that mental shocks alone may causé mental deficiencies quite as severe as these physical ailments. But requiring the presence of some causative physical manifestation might at least arguably give the court a concrete basis for believing that the asserted amnesia is genuine and that it may be of a serious nature; even in such cases the courts have by no means uniformly credited the amnesia claim. But where, as in this case, there is no accompanying malady and no concrete benchmark whatever, a case-by-case analysis of each amnesia claim is an invitation to fraud. A criminal defendant has temptation enough to fraud as it is. We ought not encourage him further.
I would hold that the bare claim of amnesia cannot form the basis for a finding of incompetency.

. In addition, I must express my skepticism that a defendant’s entire defense can ever rest solely upon his ability to relate his version of the facts, either to his attorney or to the trier of fact. The burden is always on the government to present sufficient evidence to convince the jury of the defendant’s guilt, and it is always open to the defendant to attempt to impeach the government’s evidence.