Court Opinion

ID: 9851717
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:18:30.696433+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:13.907455
License: Public Domain

Ingram, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority’s reliance upon Justice Rehnquist’s concurring opinion in Mullaney v. Wilbur, supra, to sustain Leland v. Oregon, supra, in support of its conclusion is misplaced. A careful reading of the majority opinion written by Justice Powell in Mullaney makes it clear that the ratio decidendi of Leland has been eviscerated by In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, and the majority opinion in Mullaney.
Winship and Mullaney require the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt every element of the crime charged against a defendant. Indeed, Mullaney dramatically emphasizes the limitation imposed upon the states in dealing with the decisional foundation of Winship. As noted by Justice Powell, writing for the majority, "Moreover, if Winship were limited to those facts that constitute a crime as defined by state law, a state could undermine many of the interests that decision sought to protect without effecting any substantive change in its law. It would only be necessary to redefine the elements that comprise different crimes, characterizing them as factors that bear solely on the extent of punishment. . . Winship is concerned with substance rather than . . . formalism. The rationale of that case requires an analysis that looks to the 'operation and effect of the law as applied and enforced by the State,’ St. Louis S.W. R. Co. v. Arkansas, 235 U. S. 350, 362 (1914) and to the interests of both the state and the defendant as affected by the allocation of the burden of proof.”
This leads us to consider the operation and effect of insanity in the criminal law as applied and enforced in Georgia. Does a finding of insanity under Georgia law negate an element of the crime? I submit that it does because one cannot have insufficient mental capacity to distinguish between right and wrong but nevertheless *683possess sufficient mental capacity to form a criminal intent.
We need only look to several illustrative Georgia cases for clarification of the legal effect of a finding that an accused was insane at the time of commission of the act charged against him. At least as early as 1868, this court said: "It is, in all crimes one of the ingredients of the offense that there shall be a joint operation of act and intent, and an insane person cannot, in a legal sense, have any intent. Indeed, in murder, soundness of mind, in the perpetration of the act, is a part of the definition of the crime.” Long v. State, 38 Ga. 491, 507. (Emphasis supplied.)
The language of Long leaves no reasonable doubt in my mind that we are dealing with an element of the crime and that insanity and criminal intent cannot simultaneously coexist in the same human mind.
Long v. State was quoted with approval by this court in Handspike v. State, 203 Ga. 115 (45 SE2d 662) (1947). It is true that in these earlier decisions, this court approved the practice of placing the burden on the defendant to prove his insanity by a preponderance of the evidence rather than upon the state to prove the defendant was sane. In fact, most of the older cases do not even discuss the implications of shifting this burden to the defendant. But it must be remembered that all of these cases were decided long before Winship and its progeny which have made clear that shifting the burden of proof to the defendant to require him to disprove an element of the crime violates the Due Process Clause.
Chief Judge Benjamin Harvey Hill, of the Court of Appeals of Georgia, was sorely troubled with placing the burden of proof on the defendant in 1911. In Wilson v. State, 9 Ga. App. 274, 286 (70 SE 1128), he wrote this in an assault with intent to rape case on appeal from Cobb Superior Court: "I am not unmindful of the repeated decisions of the Supreme Court that all persons are presumed to be of sound mind, and that the burden is upon the accused to rebut this inference of sanity by a preponderance of evidence. Carter v. State, 56 Ga. 463; Carr v. State, 96 Ga. 284 (22 SE 570); Danforth v. State, 75 Ga. 614 (58 AR 480). This rule is not, however, *684universally approved, and seems to be inconsistent with the presumption of innocence. The criminal intent is a material allegation of every indictment, and is traversed by the plea of not guilty, which puts in issue the question of criminal intent; and the state, in my opinion, should be required to show its existence beyond a reasonable doubt. The Supreme Court has, however, somewhat mitigated the severity of this rule, and greatly lightened, if not entirely removed, this burden from the accused, by holding that if the jury entertain a doubt on the whole showing, including the question of insanity, they must give the benefit of that doubt to the accused and acquit.” (Emphasis supplied.)
I note also this issue subsequently raised its head in this court in 1918 when counsel for a defendant in a murder case argued the trial court erred in not charging the jury that if they entertained "a doubt on the whole showing, including the question of insanity,” they should give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant. Counsel’s argument was that the failure to charge this principle deprived the defendant of the benefit of the reasonable doubt doctrine on the question of intent. This court found no error because the trial judge had charged the jury that they should not convict unless the state proved all material allegations of the indictment beyond a reasonable doubt "and that the existence of and the ability to form a criminal intent was a material element in the case.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Thus, the winds of the present controversy have been blowing for many years. The basic due process difficulty inherent in requiring the defendant to disprove a fact essential to conviction has concerned some lawyers and judges for years. The full implications of it are now placed sharply in focus by these recent decisions of the U. S. Supreme Court and they require that we confront the present issue consistent with the due process standards enunciated in these decisions and in our own state law.
It is inconceivable to me that any court today would seriously entertain the notion that the defendant can be made to disprove the criminal act with which he is charged. Likewise, the defendant cannot be made to disprove the criminal intention with which he is charged. *685As both act and intention are necessary to constitute the actual crime, both are part of the burden of proof the state must carry in our system of criminal justice.
Perhaps, it can be argued that proof of act and proof of intent should not be subject to the same burden standard. After all, intent is typically considered a fact peculiarly within the knowledge of the defendant whereas the act itself is not. Can this distinction be used to justify a different standard and allocation of the burden of disproving intent to the defendant? Justice Powell answers this question in Mullaney with this observation, "And although intent is typically considered a fact peculiarly within the knowledge of the defendant, this does not, as the court has long recognized, justify shifting the burden to him. See Tot v. United States, 319 U. S. 463, 469 (1943); Leary v. United States, 395 U. S. 6, 45 (1969). Nor is the requirement of [the state] proving a negative unique in our system of criminal jurisprudence ... Thus, we discern no unique hardship on the prosecution that would justify requiring the defendant to carry the burden of proving a fact so critical to criminal culpability.”
These words were written to strike down the State of Maine’s requirement that a defendant charged with murder prove that he acted in the heat of passion on sudden provocation in order to reduce the homicide to manslaughter. That holding points inescapably to the due process infirmity of Georgia’s requirement that a defendant charged with murder, as in the present case, prove he lacked the necessary intent to commit the crime of murder. The defendant Grace admitted the act, but denied the criminal intent to commit murder in this case.
I would hold that when the defendant introduced evidence showing he lacked sufficient mental capacity to form the necessary criminal intent to commit murder, an issue arose as to the defendant’s sanity and the burden was upon the state to prove the defendant’s sanity in order to prove his criminal intent.
The issue of the defendant’s sanity (criminal intent) was the only real issue in the trial of this murder case. That issue went to the jury with the instruction that it was up to the defendant to prove he was insane. I do not believe this instruction can be reconciled with the requirement of *686the Due Process Clause of our Federal and State Constitutions that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt every fact essential to conviction, every element of the crime, both act and intention.
Finally, I would add this postscript: Every appellate judge knows some give and take in language is sometimes required to gain a majority vote on a court composed of members conscientiously divided on critical issues. Thus, a majority opinion written by one judge is often a composite view and is representative of several views held by those who join the majority opinion. It may not go as far as the author would have it go but it may nevertheless disapprove of the principles of decision in a case that cannot be overruled without losing one or more concurring judges.
I think this is basically what may have happened in Mullaney by the different treatment given Leland v. Oregon in the majority opinion written by Justice Powell and in the concurring opinion written by Justice Rehnquist. Although the votes of Chief Justice Burger, who joined the concurring opinion, and Justice Rehnquist were not needed for a majority, we have no written opinion by another justice. Thus, we know from the decision only that the remaining justices joined the majority opinion.
I do not believe a majority of the members of the U. S. Supreme Court can hold there is no constitutional requirement for the state to shoulder the burden of proving the sanity of the defendant, in a Georgia case where the defendant’s insanity negates mental capacity to form a criminal intent, without compromising the reasoning in Winship and Mullaney. Even if they were to do so, my present opinion is that a different result would still be required by the Georgia Constitution and statute law as explained in the dissents in Grace v. State, 231 Ga. 113 (200 SE2d 248). I am not persuaded that the accused would receive an unfair advantage by our recognition of the due process obligation of the state to carry this burden of proof. See Coker v. State, 234 Ga. 555.1 dissent from the majority opinion approving the jury charge given in this murder case, as it placed the burden on the defendant to prove the only fact in issue in the trial of the case.
*687I am authorized to state that Justice Gunter joins in this dissent.