Court Opinion

ID: 9559164
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:23:44.078349+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:53.105823
License: Public Domain

*331HOWELL, J.,
specially concurring.
I concur in the majority opinion for the sole reason that the state did not request that the defendant answer questions concerning the defendant’s conduct and the circumstances existing at the time of the commission of the crime. The state only requested that the defendant be required to answer questions other than those relating to "acts or conduct immediately near the scene of the crime.” Obviously, the state’s position was predicated upon our decision in Shepard v. Bowe, 250 Or 288, 442 P2d 238 (1968), where we held that a defendant does nqt have to answer questions concerning his conduct relating to the offense charged.
I believe that Shepard v. Bowe, supra, places the state in an almost impossible situation and should no longer be followed. The majority opinion recognizes, as this court did in Shepard, that in many cases it would be difficult for the state’s psychiatrist to form a professional judgment as to the mental condition of the defendant if the psychiatrist cannot inquire into the defendant’s conduct and the circumstances existing at the time of the commission of the crime. It would not only weaken the state’s case but would grant one side an unfair advantage.
I believe the proper procedure which would retain the state-individual balance would be to allow both psychiatrists the right to interrogate not only regarding the history of the defendant but also, more importantly, concerning the defendant’s conduct, his mental condition, and his motivation at the time of the incident.1 Any problem concerning a Fifth Amend*332ment privilege would be obviated by not allowing the state’s psychiatrist to testify to statements by the defendant relating to the commission of the crime unless, of course, such evidence was previously offered by the defendant or his psychiatrist or by defendant’s counsel in his statement to the jury, or elicited by cross-examination of the state’s psychiatrist. See United States v. Bohle, 445 F2d 54 (7th Cir 1971).

 I agree with the following statement by the court in United States v. Cohen, 530 F2d 43, 47-48 (5th Cir 1976):
"* * * Since any statement about the offense itself could be suppressed, a rule forbidding compelled examinations would prevent no threatened evil, and the government will seldom have a satisfactory method of meeting defendant’s proof on the issue of sanity except by the testimony of a psychiatrist it selects — including, perhaps, the *332testimony of psychiatric experts offered by him — who has had the opportunity to form a reliable opinion by examining the accused. To hold that compelled psychiatric examinations are forbidden because sanity is an element of the offense and that the privilege against self-incrimination prohibits compulsory elicitation of statements going to an element of the offense would be confining ourselves within an analytical prison. * * *” (Footnotes omitted.)