Court Opinion

ID: 9853600
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:50:54.691782+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:55.075235
License: Public Domain

CLARK, J., Dissenting.
While fully concurring in Justice Richardson’s dissenting opinion, I am compelled to emphasize the significance of the majority’s holding. Today’s majority opinion shatters California’s intricate and enlightened system of criminal responsibility, replacing it with a vague behavioral test to be determined by court psychiatrists. The venerable equations of right versus wrong, good versus evil, go down in favor of an experiment determining criminal conduct by probing a defendant’s metaphysical thought process. (See, Platt & Diamond, The Origins of The “Right and Wrong” Test of Criminal Responsibility (1966) 54 Cal.L.Rev. 1227.) Worse, the majority orders its new rule to apply retroactively, requiring retrial of dozens, if not hundreds, of criminal cases.
Why? Our Constitution does not require the change, the Legislature does not mandate it, neither party to this case requests it. It was raised by the author of the majority opinion apparently because, as Justice Richardson points out in his dissenting opinion, “its primary appeal is that it is different.”
The majority has charged our coequal branch of government with “legislative inaction” citing Marvin v. Marvin, 18 Cal.3d 660, 681 [134 Cal.Rptr. 815, 557 P.2d 106], among other cases for authority to create today’s liberalized code of conduct; it might be hoped that the legislative response will be swift and certain in restoring our state’s established system of mental defenses.
Respondent’s petition for a rehearing was denied November 1, 1978. Clark, J., and Richardson, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.