Court Opinion

ID: 9773654
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:52:56.085126+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:55.886652
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the holding of the principal opinion that the entry of judgment pursuant to the state’s acceptance of the plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect excluding responsibility constitutes an adjudication concerning the defendant’s mental condition at the time of the offense; that evidence of a previous adjudication of insanity is relevant in a subsequent prosecution as bearing upon defendant’s mental condition at the time of the crime for which defendant is on trial and that the trial court erred in refusing to allow the jury to consider the fact that defendant had been acquitted of a kidnapping that occurred thirty-eight days before the rape on the ground of mental disease or defect excluding responsibility.
I am unable to agree, however, that the error was harmless and therefore dissent to the portion of the opinion so holding. As I understand the facts as related in the principal opinion, defendant was in fact committed to the state hospital in Fulton and was not released until April 1980. This means his condition was bad enough that it took almost six years for it to be determined that he did not have and in the reasonable future was not likely to have a mental disease or defect rendering him dangerous to his own safety or that of others or unable to conform his conduct to the requirements of law, the requisite which must be met under § 552.040(1). While I realize that there was no way the jury in the rape trial would know that defendant would not be released from Fulton until 1980, it does satisfy me, in hindsight, that defendant’s mental condition which existed at the time of and relieved him of criminal responsibility for the kidnapping, occurring only thirty-eight days before the rape, was of a severe and long lasting nature.
In my opinion evidence of a judicial adjudication of insanity relieving defendant of criminal responsibility for a serious charge — kidnapping—just thirty-eight days before the alleged rape would have been both powerful evidence and a powerful jury argument in support of his position in the rape trial that he was suffering from mental disease or defect at the time of the rape. How can we declare with confidence that it would not have been far more persuasive to the jury than the conflicting psychiatric testimony at the trial? There was nothing conflicting or uncertain about the adjudication that he was not criminally responsible for the kidnapping by reason of mental disease or defect excluding responsibility.
So believing, I would reach on the merits the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel in failing to cite State v. Kee, 510 S.W.2d 477 (Mo.banc 1974) either to the trial court or to the court of appeals. The importance of Kee is shown by the principal opinion. It makes the difference between admission or non-admission of the evidence on adjudication of mental disease or defect. I agree with the dissent in the court of appeals that the simplest sort of research would have brought Kee to the attention of defense *102counsel. Failure to locate and cite Kee does not conform to the care and skill of a reasonably competent lawyer rendering similar services under the existing circumstances at time of the rape trial, as required by Seales v. State, 580 S.W.2d 733 (Mo.banc 1979). Defendant is entitled to relief on this ground also.