Court Opinion

ID: 9700817
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:50:11.120564+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:14.753426
License: Public Domain

Frost, J.,
dissenting. I am unable to concur in the majority opinion for the following reasons.
Exception numbered 143 was to the instructions of the trial justice to the jury when he said in speaking of the *213plea of insanity, “When the evidence is evenly balanced, the plea fails. If you cannot agree upon a finding of insanity, his plea again fails. If the evidence leaves a doubt in your minds about his sanity, that is insufficient also to support the plea. It does not avail him.” I assume that by the last sentence the trial justice meant that to find the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity there must be more than a doubt of his sanity; there must be a positive finding by a fair preponderance of the credible evidence that he was insane. In my opinion no one of the sentences quoted was an erroneous statement.
In State v. Harris, 89 R. I. 202, 152 A.2d 106, which is the law of the state, this court said that to find a defendant guilty the jury must be unanimous and to reach a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity there must be a like unanimity. As I see it, no one of the three sentences quoted is a statement contrary to the law of the Hams case. There was no testimony from a physician or any other person that the defendant was insane at the time of the shooting.
The jury in this case, after some deliberation, asked that the testimony of Bernard C. Schaeffer be read to them. That was done. The jury retired in the morning after the trial justice’s charge and reported a verdict at 6:25 p.m. The jurors were individually polled.
If there is a question of the clearness of the instruction to which exception was taken, which I do not find, I would use the language of Mr. Justice Douglas in State v. Quigley, 26 R. I. 263, where he said at page 278, “In view of the overwhelming preponderance of the whole evidence that the accused was guilty of willful murder, we can not assign to the error, if it was one, any appreciable influence on the minds of the jury.”
I have read the transcript of evidence. In my judgment the defendant had a fair trial, and I would overrule all the exceptions and remit the case to the superior court for further proceedings.
*214J. Joseph Nugent, Attorney General, Raymond J. Pet-tine, Assistant Attorney General, for State.
Aram A. Arabian, Public Defender, for defendant.