United States ex rel. Roberts v. Yeager, 17139.

• Decision Date: 04 November 1968
• Docket Number: No. 17139.,17139.
• Citation: 402 F.2d 918
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America ex rel. Nathaniel ROBERTS, Appellant, v. Howard YEAGER, Warden, New Jersey State Prison.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

402 F.2d 918 (1968)

UNITED STATES of America ex rel. Nathaniel ROBERTS, Appellant, v. Howard YEAGER, Warden, New Jersey State Prison.

No. 17139.

United States Court of Appeals Third Circuit.

Submitted on Briefs June 4, 1968.

Decided November 4, 1968.

Nathaniel Roberts, pro se.

Leo Kaplowitz, Prosecutor of Union County, Elizabeth, N. J. (Arthur J. Timins, Asst. Prosecutor, on the brief), for appellee.

Before HASTIE, Chief Judge and STALEY and SEITZ, Circuit Judges.

OPINION OF THE COURT

HASTIE, Chief Judge.

Nathaniel Roberts, a New Jersey state prisoner serving a life term pursuant to a conviction for murder, is here appealing the district court's denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Among the appellant's contentions is a claim that his conviction is invalid because he was compelled to stand trial at a time when he lacked such mental capacity as a defendant must possess in order that his trial may satisfy the constitutional standard of due process of law imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The record of the state proceedings shows that neither before nor during the trial did the defendant's counsel contend that his client was incapacitated from standing trial. It was contended that the defendant had been legally irresponsible because of mental illness at the time of the homicide. Thereafter, the trial judge instructed the jury, properly under the state law,¹ that if it should find the accused not guilty because of insanity at the time of the crime it should then determine whether that condition persisted so that he should be committed to an appropriate institution. However, since the jury did not find the accused insane at the time of the homicide and did find him guilty of murder, it did not include in its verdict any statement concerning his mental condition at the time of trial.

Moreover, a claim that a defendant is incapable of standing trial does not present the same considerations as a claim that he was legally irresponsible for his criminal behavior, though both claims may be based upon mental aberration. In common law tradition, controversies about criminal responsibility have been resolved by inquiry into capacity to understand the nature and character of conduct and to distinguish right from wrong. In contrast, a claim of trial incapacity brings into question the ability of the accused to consult effectively with his lawyer and to supply him with information relevant to the matter charged and his involvement, if any, in it. Dusky v. United States, 1960, 362 U.S. 402, 80 S.Ct. 788, 4 L.Ed.2d 824.

The nature of this legal distinction and its significance here are highlighted by the evidence concerning the defendant's mentality that appears in the state trial record. Psychiatrists and a psychologist, both the experts called by the defendant and those summoned by the prosecution, testified that the accused was well oriented in the spheres of time, place and person and that his memory was adequate. They found him able to concretize but deficient in conceptualizing and in syllogistic reasoning. This testimony, though not conclusive, was affirmative evidence of capacity to stand trial, since orientation, memory and ability to concretize are principal elements in a client's ability to convey full and correct information to his attorney. On the other hand, the defendant exhibited inability to conceptualize, to reason logically, and to generalize from particular examples,² deficiencies which related directly to the issue of legal responsibility, but may well have been less significant than adequate memory and satisfactory orientation as determinants of ability to inform and to assist counsel.

We have considered that there also was evidence that the defendant's I.Q. was 75, that his formal education had ended after the third grade, that mental illness appeared in his ancestral history, and that defense counsel pointed out to the jury that his client seemed more amused by the course of the trial than concerned. We are not persuaded that for present purposes, any or all of these outweighed the undisputed psychiatric testimony of present orientation, memory and capacity to communicate, especially when...