Buatte v. United States

• Decision Date: 24 August 1965
• Docket Number: No. 19912.,19912.
• Citation: 350 F.2d 389
• Parties: Lester Alvin BUATTE, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

350 F.2d 389 (1965)

Lester Alvin BUATTE, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

No. 19912.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

August 24, 1965.

Alan Philip Bayham, Phoenix, Ariz., for appellant.

William P. Copple, U. S. Atty., Tom Karas, Asst. U. S. Atty., Phoenix, Ariz., for appellee.

Before HAMLEY, HAMLIN and DUNIWAY, Circuit Judges.

HAMLEY, Circuit Judge.

Lester Alvin Buatte appeals from a judgment convicting him of assault with intent to commit murder on the person of Dan Secody, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1152 and 113(a) (1964). Consideration of the grounds for reversal urged by Buatte requires that we first review prior criminal proceedings involving this defendant.

On April 7, 1962, Buatte shot and killed fourteen-year-old Alice Secody in her parents' tent on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona. At the same time Buatte shot Alice's brother, Dan, and struck him with a hammer. Dan's injuries did not prove fatal. On April 17, 1962, Buatte was indicted for the murder of Alice Secody. At his jury trial on that charge, in December, 1962, Buatte's principal defense was insanity. On December 19, 1962, he was convicted, on a jury verdict, of murder in the second degree.

On March 2, 1964 another panel of this court reversed, with directions to grant Buatte's motion for acquittal. This court held that, according to the principle set forth in Davis v. United States, 165 U.S. 373, 378, 17 S.Ct. 360, 41 L.Ed. 750, the Government failed to maintain its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Buatte was sane in the legal sense at the time he killed Alice Secody. Buatte v. United States, 9 Cir., 330 F.2d 342.

Petitioning for a rehearing, the Government asserted among other things that if the judgment is to be reversed, this court should remand for a new trial rather than with directions to acquit. In its petition the Government undertook to indicate the additional evidence which it might produce in a new trial and which, the Government argued, would be adequate to support a conviction on the murder charge. This court denied the petition for rehearing, holding that a new trial would serve no purpose. We stated that neither evidence listed in the Government's petition "* * * nor any other conceivable evidence would suffice to satisfy the requirements set forth in Davis v. United States, * * *." Buatte v. United States, 9 Cir., 331 F.2d 848.

One day after the murder trial began, the Government obtained an indictment against Buatte charging him with assaulting Dan Secody with intent to commit murder. After the reversal of the murder conviction and the directed acquittal of Buatte on that charge, the Government moved for and obtained a dismissal of the assault charge. This was done to enable Arizona state authorities to institute an insanity commitment proceeding against Buatte in the Superior Court of the State of Arizona in and for Maricopa County.

On July 17, 1964, the superior court, after a hearing, determined that Buatte was then sane, and ordered his release from state custody. Later the same day, the United States filed a complaint again charging Buatte with assault with intent to murder Dan Secody. On August 14, 1964, Buatte was arraigned, and defense counsel was appointed; Buatte waived his right to have the matter presented to the grand jury, and an information was filed charging him with the described assault, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1152 and 113(a) (1964).

As he had done in the murder case, Buatte raised the defense of insanity. He produced substantial evidence tending to support this defense. The burden was thus placed upon the Government to establish to the satisfaction of the jury beyond a reasonable doubt, that Buatte was sane in the legal sense at the time he committed the assault. Buatte v. United States, 9 Cir., 330 F.2d 342, 345, applying the principle expressed in Davis v. United States, 165 U.S. 373, 378, 17 S.Ct. 360. In an effort to meet this burden, the Government produced both lay witnesses and expert medical testimony.

Buatte contends on this appeal that, viewing the evidence as a whole, the district court should have held that Buatte's sanity at the time of the assault was not established beyond a reasonable doubt, and on that ground the court should have granted defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal made at the close of all the evidence.

An evaluation of the evidence bearing upon the question of Buatte's sanity at the time the assault was committed requires an understanding of the background facts. On April 7, 1962, Buatte was hitchhiking through a desert in northern Arizona. He stopped, entered the tent of Charlie Secody, and asked for a drink of water. Dan Secody, age eleven, got the water for Buatte and observed appellant put his hand on the thigh of Alice Secody, age fourteen. Alice Secody told Buatte not to bother her or she would call the police. Buatte obtained a hammer and struck Dan Secody; then he shot both children in the head.

Charlie Secody, the father, was nearing the tent and honking his horn at some sheep which were in the road. He saw Buatte standing by his tent and, later, running on the highway and persistently hailing a truck to stop. The truck stopped, Buatte boarded, and the truck continued to the Gap Trading Post which was approximately ten miles away. At this place Buatte was taken into custody.

Buatte, when confronted with a holster which the police found in a bag he was carrying and asked about the location of his gun, replied that he had no gun and that he had found the holster while hitch-hiking. He also stated that he had not shot anyone, although investigating officers had not at that time established that the children had been shot. Subsequently, police found a pistol belonging to Buatte in a tarpaulin in the back of the truck where he had ridden.

Police also found a receipt for the gun in Buatte's billfold. When confronted with the receipt defendant said he owned a gun but that it had been stolen. Buatte claimed not to be able to remember any of the occurrences for the one hour during which he left the highway, went to the Secody tent, and returned to the highway to flag the truck.

Buatte presented the basis for his defense of insanity through the testimony of several expert witnesses. The defendant also introduced exhibits showing that in 1952 and 1957 the Navy and Army, respectively, discharged him after determining that he had a psychotic condition.¹

Dr. Charles R. Keith, testifying for defendant, stated that he and his staff had examined defendant for a period of three and one-half months starting in June of 1962. Based on that extensive examination Dr. Keith was of the opinion that Buatte was suffering from a schizoid personality disorder. He described this as a condition where the patient has few if any ties with other people, and the symptoms often appear only when a situation of stress arises. On cross-examination, Dr. Keith testified that in his experience he had never seen a schizophrenic reaction which lasted only one to three hours as this one was claimed to have lasted. He also stated that generally amnesia resulting from a psychosis has an abrupt onset and termination, but that this was not true in Buatte's case. Dr. Keith could not say either that a psychosis had occurred or that one had not occurred.

Dr. Sydney Smith, a clinical psychologist, was Buatte's second expert witness. He testified that he examined Buatte on December 10, 1962, eight months after the shooting, giving him four recognized psychological tests. On the basis of his examination Dr. Smith described defendant in the following manner: a "hollowshell man, who was incapable of appreciating ordinary feelings and the ordinary human relationships * * *"; having "a peculiar kind of blandness, a lack of anxiety about anything he has done or anything he has said, which is a part of his feelinglessness * * * a very common symptom * * * that appears in schizophrenic conditions"; being "autistic, by which we mean that he has a tendency quite frequently to be bound more closely to fantasy than he is to reality"; being "burdened with many, many strange irrational fears that intrude upon his consciousness and cause him often to be unsettled and deeply troubled, in ways that can lead him at times to have to act upon these fears in a very impulsive fashion, without much in the way of judgment"; being sometimes without ability to give any adequate recall; and being a "simple schizophrenic."

Dr. Smith testified that in his opinion the kind of fears Buatte apparently had immediately prior to the incident, arising from his effort to get off of the desert before darkness set in, and other events prior to the shooting, would have been sufficient to bring about a possible schizophrenic reaction during which defendant could not know right from wrong.

Dr. Harrison Baker, a psychiatrist, also testifying for defendant, stated that based on his examination of Buatte he believed that defendant was a chronic undifferentiated schizophrenic. In Dr. Baker's opinion, during the time in question Buatte was in a psychotic episode of short duration, and that he then "* * * did not have any knowledge of being, of his actions, and he could not recall them, and he was not in that period able to differentiate what was real from...