Court Opinion

ID: 9468796
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:23:57.388641+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:03.671612
License: Public Domain

PELL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority opinion after a careful step-by-step analysis of the record in this case concludes that a state trial court judgment should be vacated in the exercise of the habeas power of the federal courts. What the majority opinion in essence is saying is that Theodore Ross did not have a constitutionally fair trial in the state court. I cannot agree and respectfully dissent.
Ross after meeting privately, but separately, with his girlfriend and his pastor confessed to stabbing Mrs. Abrams with a kitchen knife, trying to choke her, beating her with a two-by-four, and then stabbing her again, twenty-six times altogether. He then placed her face down in a bathtub full of water.1 No place in the record do I find any indication that this confession was not voluntarily and freely given nor is there any real contention that Ross did not commit the acts which he described in his confession.
At the state court trial Ross introduced the following testimony: the testimony of his girlfriend who described various instances of strange conduct on his part; the testimony of his mother who told of strange accidents and behaviors on his part; the testimony of a psychologist who had examined Ross and found that he had overall good contact with reality but had signs of latent schizophrenia; the testimony of a professor of psychology who had examined Ross and found signs of latent schizophrenia although doubting that this would hinder him from contact with reality; the testimony of a psychologist who diagnosed Ross as having a schizophrenic disorder; the testimony of a psychiatrist who had examined Ross and found a latent schizophrenia.
The majority opinion finds particularly significant the closing argument of defense counsel and states that it plainly shows that Ross did not concede commission of the offense but in fact challenged the state’s evidence. I am unable to read the closing argument as does the majority. Defense counsel was well aware at the time he made the argument that there was no straight or simple not guilty verdict form to be submitted to the jury. It is true that during the course of a wide-ranging argument he did discuss some deficiencies in the state’s evidence which other than the confession was of a circumstantial nature as the only two eyewitnesses were the decedent and Ross. The main thrust, however, of the argument, which is contained in some thirty pages of transcript, was lack of mental capacity on the part of Ross. The argument concluded as follows:
I don’t think you would have any trouble in considering that evidence that beyond any reasonable doubt Ted Ross is insane. But the judge will instruct you that it works another way, because the state has the burden — that is the way it should be, because the State has all the power; the State has the burden of proving to you beyond a reasonable doubt that Theodore Ross was sane. They have not done so.
I have faith that once you retire to the jury room, when you go over the evidence, as I said to you at the beginning, your verdict will have to be not guilty because Ted Ross was insane and he is still insane.
*943It seems to me that in analyzing the significance of the closing argument we should, just as we do in the case of instructions, consider the totality of the argument and not take segments out of the overall context. From that point of view it appears quite plain to me that defense counsel did nothing more than engage in a carefully orchestrated artful ploy which, in view of the present majority opinion, has reaped a dividend which he was not seeking or perhaps did not even anticipate at the time of the argument. That ploy, putting it quite simply, was that the expert witnesses not having come down strongly supporting the insanity defense strength could be lent to it by the red herring of pointing out the deficiencies in the direct evidence such as there having been insufficient time for Ross to have laundered his clothing after the crime with the ultimate hope that the jurors by way of compromise could bring back the verdict which he asked them to bring, not guilty by reason of insanity.
Because I do think that the majority opinion has misread the final argument I turn to it in some detail. After opening by referring to his opening statement that the pieces of the puzzle would come together he said that they had now come together and then he said
I told you that when this case stops at this point, that you will see a picture of a very sick, very disturbed, a very twisted mind of a young man, Theodore Ross.
He then pursued further support for his thesis in the evidence of the difficulties that had beset Ross as a child:
As we went over the evidence, those pieces that came from the stand, I think the evidence shows that while growing up, Ted received a lot of injuries to his head. When he was a little boy, when he was about four, he got a deep cut on the top of his head. It was so deep his mother said she could see his skull. But there were several other very bad gashes on his head.
Later in life, he was in an automobile accident where he hurt his head again. You heard that they had to dig glass out of his head.
I think we also heard testimony that there was a scar on his chin. That is only part of it. There are a lot of strange and unusual things that happened to Ted while he was growing up.
Probable the strangest thing that I think we can consider was Ted’s relationship with his mother. It doesn’t seem Ted and his mother got along very well. It appears that Ted was very bitter and very resentful toward his mother.
She testified that Ted, at about the time he was eight years old, sort of blamed her for his diabetic condition.
Counsel then pursued at some length the relationship that Ross had had with his own mother, mentioning various specific incidents. While a young boy he had been hunting one day with a shotgun. His mother told him to clean the gun. He refused and pointed the gun at her and started to pull the trigger. At another time for no apparent reason and out of nowhere Ross had picked up a pot of hot coffee and thrown it at his mother. At another time when he was a teenager he had picked up a baby’s chair, held it over his head and tried to kill his mother.
Counsel pointed out that any child could build up a certain amount of resentment toward a disciplinary parent “but for Ted, it seems that his resentment, his bitterness, was a lot more intense, a lot more unusual and very strange.” Counsel also mentioned the incident when Ross was 16 years old he came home and told his mother he wanted to marry his girlfriend and upon her refusal to give consent he stated he was going to kill himself. The mother later went to the medicine chest and found six empty bottles and Ross spent the next three days in the hospital. It appears to me that the development of this mother-hate relationship while showing a bizarre behavior pattern further was a lead-in to his relationship with the decedent which counsel characterized in final argument as a “mother-son relationship.” Implicit is the thought that, as counsel said, Ross “probably did look upon Mrs. Abrams as a mother figure,” and *944his insane dislike of his mother could suddenly be transferred to the substitute mother figure.
Counsel continued dwelling upon other evidence of mental instability. The chief of police characterized Ross as a strange kid, “he was a loner. He was, quote, ‘removed from reality,’ that he fantacized a lot.”
Counsel then referred to the testimony of Ross’s girlfriend who was pregnant by him at the time of the homicide. Counsel referred to the fact that she was now in college and had come back to testify although she was upset:
But nevertheless, she came back and testified to what I think was very important in this case. This is the only thing that is really important to the issues in this case.
She said that on at least one occasion she watched Ted and his sister Lynn and brother-in-law Ron, watched, picked a little kitten they had, for no reason like Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, picked the kitten up and slammed it up against the wall several times for no reason.
She said that they went out on dates. They usually went to movies. The only kind of movies that Ted liked to go and see were disaster movies where people were dying, people were being hurt. They might see a lot of pictures like that, scenes of disaster were of interest to Ted Ross.
Counsel continued by referring to her testimony that she did not think that Ross had the capacity to conform his behavior to what is required by law, “because it was after the time he was arrested for burglary, she said, ‘Why did you do it?’ He said, T don’t know.’ I think that was part of the reason. He felt that way about death, thought of death that way.”
Counsel then took up the expert testimony:
You heard the doctors testify that Ted Ross was and still is a very sick young man. Each and every one of those doctors classified Ted as a schizophrenic. Two of them said latent type of schizophrenia. Two said paranoid schizophrenia. But all four of them told you that schizophrenia is a very serious mental disease, that it is very severe, that it affects the perception of the world, and that it affects the way one acts and the control one has to one’s behaviour.
By this time, having finished approximately one-fourth of his argument, counsel summarized what I regard as the principal thrust of the argument:
So at this time I am merely reciting this to say that I am confident by those pieces of evidence that we have presented that we have kept our promise to you. I think that we demonstrated very effectively by the best evidence that we could provide that Ted Ross was and still is legally insane. I promised from this evidence that you would have a reasonable doubt as to the sanity of Ted Ross on March 10th, 1975, to be present in your minds at this time.
The counsel then took up the state’s evidence, pointing out, as has already been indicated, minor deficiencies, such as that there had been no technicians from the crime laboratory to testify that there were no blood stains on the two-by-four with which, according to Ross’ confession, he had struck the decedent. Throughout the remainder of the argument there is an undercurrent of emphasis on the mental instability of Ross. At one point counsel spent some time reminiscing about his own army experience (more than three pages of the record) in which it had developed he had pneumonia although the army doctors had told him he was not sick:
But I only repeat this story to tell you and help underline what I think, that we don’t need anybody to tell us that Ted Ross is sick, that something is wrong with his mind; that if you believe this evidence which is really just a confession, if you believe this, that he stabbed a lady that was like a mother to him for no reason under the sun,2 and he stabbed her *945twenty-seven times; that if you believe he beat her with a two-by-four or anything else, I think you have to also believe that Ted Ross was insane.
Among other deficiencies in the state’s case counsel argued, was the matter of some apparently missing jewelry and he emphasized Ross had not been charged with theft or stealing or burglary and that there was not any evidence of it. This ambivalent remark then followed, “I think it is a little bit unfair, but nevertheless you have to consider it.” Also of possible significance although, in fairness, the counsel may not have been correctly reported, the transcript shows:
We know he stabbed somebody twenty-six times. For money? Or jewelry?
In other aspects of the majority opinion, I have difficulty in accepting that the elimination of a form of not guilty verdict “unconstitutionally directed a verdict against the petitioner.” If there was any possibility whatsoever that this jury would have found on the record in this case the defendant not guilty, and there was not any form so to indicate, all the jury needed to say was that it was unable to agree upon any of the verdict forms and present the court with a hung jury. Juries that are not able to agree are not unknown in the law. Indeed instances are known of juries writing other matters on verdict forms. Here all that needed to be done was to cross out the reference to mental condition on one of the not guilty forms including such a reference.
The majority opinion attaches significance to the fact that the defense moved for a directed verdict at the end of the state’s evidence. I find little basis for significance in this. The fact that there is no ghost of a chance for a directed verdict being granted does not customarily seem to discourage the filing of such a motion. In any event, in this particular case, as is indicated by the final argument of counsel, the jury already having been advised on opening statement that unsoundness of mind was to be the defense, a motion of directed verdict was appropriate in support of the contention that the state had not proved that Ross was of sound mind at the time the offense was committed.
Thére are very few attorneys who cannot relate some instance of a jury behaving in an aberrant manner and bringing in a verdict which was without any justification whatsoever or at least the attorneys, for one reason or another so regard it. If it were not so no judgment n. o. v. would ever be upheld. I question, however, whether the constitutional protection of a fair trial should be extended to protect the right to have an aberrative jury verdict. That is what would have resulted here if there had been a straight not guilty verdict. Therefore, in any event, unless we say harmless error can never exist, it appears to me that the writ of habeas should not be granted in the present case. I would therefore for any of the foregoing reasons affirm the judgment of the district court.
In any event, noting that the majority opinion finds that the colloquy between the judge and counsel on the refusal to give a straight not-guilty verdict form did not constitute a waiver of Ross’ right to have the jury pass on this issue, it appears to me that it would have been more appropriate, rather than to set aside the state trial court conviction to have remanded the case to the district court for an evidentiary hearing to determine what did happen at the time of the colloquy and whether it could have been properly considered to have been a binding waiver on the part of Ross.
APPENDIX TO DISSENT
Q. How long in space of time did you stab her?
A. One right after the other.
Q. Okay. How long did that go on?
A. Fifteen or twenty seconds.
Q. Then what happened?
A. Then she stopped struggling and she crawled over by the entrance of her bedroom next to the wall.
Q. Okay.
A. And I went over and got the two by four that I had placed earlier in the window when I opened it in the afternoon.
*946Q. Was that just to let the air come in the house?
A. Yes.
Q. What did you do with that two by four? By the way, could you describe it for us?
A. I believe it was a two by four. It could have been a two by five or two by six. It was about four feet long.
Q. About four feet long?
A. Three and a half to four feet long.
Q. What did you do with that?
A. I then hit her. She was covering her head with her elbow and I hit that.
Q. Was she covering her head with both elbows?
A. No. Just one.
Q. One hand like that?
A. Yes.
Q. Was she saying anything to you as this time?
A. No.
Q. Okay. What did you do?
A. I hit her in the head a couple of times.
Q. How many times?
A. I don’t remember.
Q. Did you see any bones smash or anything like that?
A. I believe when I hit her in the elbow I broke her arm. I don’t know. Then I hit her three or four times in the head.
Q. Did you hear anything crack in her head or anything when you were doing it?
A. All I heard was the noise from the board hitting her head.
Q. Can you tell us what the noise sounded like?
A. Like a twenty-two.
Q. A sharp noise?
A. A twenty-two pistol.
Q. It was a sharp cracking sound?
A. Yes.
Q. And after you hit her over the head a couple of times, then what did you do?
A. Then I hit her in the head a couple of times and then she rolled over and knocked the mirror down and broke it and I hit her one more time.
Q. Where did you hit her that time?
A. In the head. I believe that’s what killed her, the last one.
Q. Did she say anything during this period of time while you were hitting her over the head?
A. I don’t believe she could speak.
Q. Why do you say that?
A. Because I had jammed the knife into her throat.

. The viciousness of the crime is demonstrated by an extract from the confession attached hereto in an appendix.

. Just as Ross had “for no apparent reason, out of no where,” picked up a pot of hot coffee and thrown it at his mother.