Court Opinion

ID: 9884382
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:54:31.952531+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:38:13.347987
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE GOLDENHERSH, dissenting: I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion. In my opinion the trial court’s error in holding that the defendant’s statements to Dr. Roberts were admissible as evidence that defendant had killed Miss Mondragon and the inconclusive and unsatisfactory nature of the proof adduced by the People on the issue of insanity, when considered in the light of other admitted error, require reversal of the judgment and remandment for a new trial. In approving the trial court’s ruling that defendant’s statements to Dr. Roberts could be considered as evidence of guilt, the majority cites 8 Wigmore, Evidence (McNaughton Rev. 1961, sec. 2390(2)) which is not in point. Wigmore states, “To call a physician to the stand, and examine him as a witness to one’s physical condition formerly communicated to him, is a waiver of the privilege in regard to all of his knowledge of the physical condition asked about. No reasoning could maintain the contrary.” Of course, as Wigmore states, the statements were to be considered on the issue of defendant’s mental condition, but that is not the issue here presented, and obviously the quotation from Wigmore does not touch on the question of whether the statements are evidence of defendant’s having committed the offense. The majority also cites section 1048(2) of Wigmore which discusses hearsay evidence, and is also not in point. The issue presented here is not whether the defendant’s statements were hearsay, but the extent to which, and for what purpose, they were to be considered by the jury. The majority concedes that if “Dr. Roberts had examined the defendant in connection with a court-ordered examination, the statements made to him by the defendant could not have been admitted against the defendant on the issue of his guilt.” As I have pointed out, the quotation from Wigmore does not support the distinction which the majority attempts to draw and no other authority is cited. In Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49, 52, 93 L. Ed. 1801, 1805, 69 S. Ct. 1347, 1349, Mr. Justice Frankfurter said, “And there comes a point where this Court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men.” This court must recognize as a practical matter that if the rule which the majority has laid down stands, no defendant will run the risk of seeking an independent psychiatric examination and the only testimony ever adduced on the issue of insanity will be that of the psychiatrist who makes the court-ordered examination. This record demonstrates dramatically why a defendant should not be confronted with this Hobson’s choice. On the issue of insanity the People offered the testimony of three psychiatrists whose opinions were stated in response to hypothetical questions and not one of whom had examined the defendant. It does not seem inappropriate to suggest that the least that should be required of a disciple of Aesculapius whose opinion may subject a defendant to the death penalty (the original sentence in this case) is that he examine, and not perfunctorily, the individual whose mental state he purports to evaluate. The same reasons which justify the physician-patient and attorney-client privileges require that a defendant whose sanity is in issue in a criminal case be able to obtain an independent psychiatric examination without fear that disclosures essential to a diagnosis of his condition be treated as confessions of guilt. Furthermore, confronted with so inexact a science as psychiatric medicine, in which the same clinical evidence results in widely divergent diagnoses, the question of whether the statements made to the physician by the patient are to be admitted solely to show the basis for the diagnosis, or whether they are also to be substantive evidence of guilt should not depend upon the artificial distinction which the majority has drawn. The majority opinion recognizes that the trial court erred in admitting the tom photograph into evidence and erred in excluding the testimony of the bridesmaid, and states that “in a case in which the proof was less convincing than this one” the asking of the improper questions with respect to defendant’s parents’ failure to attend Miss Mondragon’s wake would warrant reversal. We, of course, do not know the extent to which these errors affected the jury’s verdict nor can we measure the weight given the admissions made to Dr. Roberts in determining defendant’s guilt. Furthermore, considering the statements to Dr. Roberts as what they are, disclosures made to a physician for purposes of diagnosis, and not as substantive evidence of guilt, this court might find the proof of guilt “less convincing.” Save for the circumstance of the Supreme Court’s decision in Moore v. Illinois, 408 U.S. 786, 32 L. Ed. 2d 706, 92 S. Ct. 2562, this would be a capital case and this court, previously, has gone to great lengths to insure careful review of the record in capital cases to the end that the judgment be based on a record free of prejudicial error. The fact that defendant cannot be executed should not diminish the degree of care with which the record is examined and although the evidence of guilt is strong and the crime heinous, defendant should not be deprived of a trial free of error.