Court Opinion

ID: 9740020
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:25:54.217265+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:15.458295
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Judge,
dissenting.
When the jury returned its verdict that appellant Higgins was guilty but mentally ill, it necessarily concluded that he was at the time of the crime suffering from a psychiatric disorder which, while leaving him able to know right from wrong, substantially disturbed his thinking, feeling, or behavior and impaired his ability to function. LC. 35-86-1-1. Upon this verdict the sentence was to be rendered as though the verdict had been simply, guilty, but however, was to impose a special duty upon the State to evaluate and treat him for mental illness, even in the confines of our State mental hospitals. LC. 85-86-2-5. This sentence was also to be special in that it was to carry a thirty year enhancement under the separate habitual offender statute because of prior convictions.
The question presented here, is whether or not it is the intention of the legislature that a defendant convicted upon a verdict of guilty but mentally ill, that is, the defendant was at the time of the crime substantially disturbed as a result of mental illness and thereby impaired in function, should be placed in the class of convicted defendants subject to thirty year sentence enhancement because of prior convictions. Again, as I concluded in dissent in Harris v. State (1986), Ind., 499 N.E.2d 723, the statutes are ambiguous in this respect, and until the legislature clearly announces its judgment *344that such seriously ill and impaired persons like Higgins, warrant and deserve the greatly more severe habitual offender punishment, the habitual offender statute should not be enforced against them. If the legislature intends so severe a result, where the deterrent effect of past convictions and penalties is at low ebb, it must clearly so state.