Chase v. State

• Citation: 369 P.2d 997
• Decision Date: 27 March 1962
• Docket Number: No. 100,100
• Parties: Frederick F. CHASE, Appellant, v. STATE of Alaska, Appellee.
• Court: Supreme Court of Alaska (US)

Page 997

369 P.2d 997

Frederick F. CHASE, Appellant, v. STATE of Alaska, Appellee.

No. 100.

Supreme Court of Alaska.

March 27, 1962.

T. N. Gore, Jr., Fairbanks, for appellant.

William Taylor, Dist. Atty., Fairbanks, Ralph E. Moody, Atty. Gen., John E. Havelock, Michael M. Holmes, Asst. Attys. Gen., Juneau, for appellee.

Before NESBETT, C. J., and DIMOND and AREND, JJ.

DIMOND, Justice.

Chase admittedly shot his wife to death, climaxing marital difficulties. Within a few minutes he attempted suicide by gunshot but was unsuccessful. At his trial, following an indictment for first degree murder, he relied solely on the defense of insanity. The jury found him guilty of murder in the second degree, and he has appealed.

1. Test of Criminal Responsibility.

Our first question is whether the trial court fairly instructed the jury on criminal responsibility as it related to the defense of insanity. The instruction given read in relevant part as follows:

'Insanity, as the word is used in these instructions, means such a diseased and deranged condition of the mental faculties of a person as to render him incapable of knowing the nature and quality of his act and of distinguishing between right and wrong in relation to the act with which he is charged.

'The test of accountability is this: Did the party have sufficient mental capacity to appreciate the character and quality of the act? Did he know and understand that it was a violation of the rights of another, and in itself wrong? If he had the capacity thus to appreciate the character and to comprehend the probable or possible consequences of his act, he was sane under the law, and is responsible to the law for the act thus committed.'

Chase claims it was error to give this instruction; that the jury ought to have been told to find him not guilty by reason of insanity if they believed the killing of his wife was the product of mental disease or mental defect.

The 'disease-defect-product' standard for determining criminal responsibility, known as the 'Durham rule', was formulated by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1954. ¹ It represented a departure in that circuit from the previously existing 'right-wrong' test based on the M'Naghten rules ², as modified by the irresistible impulse doctrine. ³

The Durham opinion has generated considerable debate. It has received favorable comment ⁴, but has also been criticised. ⁵ The most recent criticism that has come to our attention is by a judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. In the case of Blocker v. United States, ⁶ decided March 3, 1961, Judge Burger in a separate opinion made a thorough and penetrating analysis of the whole subject of criminal responsibility. With persuasive reasoning he pointed out the inadequacies and defects of the Durham rule. He recommended that it be abandoned in favor of a rule which would place squarely before the jury the elements of knowledge and capacity to control behavior--that is, whether the act and its consequences were understood and appreciated by the accused, and whether the act was a manifestation of will or choice. ⁷ Judge Burger also pointed out that every court which had considered Durham had rejected it: three federal courts of appeal, the United States Court of Military Appeals, and the highest courts of twenty states. ⁸

We are not persuaded to adopt Durham in this jurisdiction. The 'disease-product' test has no real meaning to us, and we venture to say, would have none to jurors who would apply it to the facts nor to the judges who would frame instructions. The terms 'mental disease' and 'mental defect' are not defined, and hence they would mean in any particular case whatever the experts say they mean. A further difficulty is that the psychiatrists disagree on what is meant by 'mental disease', or even if there is any such thing. ⁹ We shall not impose upon the trial courts and jurors the formidable, if not impossible task of understanding and applying terms whose meaning is unclear to acknowledged experts. ¹⁰

We fully recognize the great difficulty in many cases of ascertaining the mental condition of an accused and of assessing its effect on his conduct at the time of the commission of the criminal act. It is difficult because the criterion of responsibility cannot be defined with complete scientific precision; psychiatric evidence is technical and complex, and diametrically opposed views will frequently be expressed by expert witnesses. Because of these factors we consider it important that the jury, which must make the final decision as to criminal accountability, should be given as far as possible clear and simple principles on which to base their verdict. ¹¹ Such is not accomplished by the Durham rule.

We hold that it was not error for the trial court to refuse to give the Durham instruction which Chase had requested. The ultimate question that we must decide is whether the instruction given was erroneous so as to require reversal, entirely apart from a consideration of the Durham test.

The trial judge told the jury substantially that Chase would be criminally responsible for killing his wife if he had sufficient mental capacity to appreciate the character and quality of his act, to comprehend the probable or possible consequences, and to know and understand that what he did was a violation of the rights of another and in itself wrong. If he did not possess such mental capacity, then he was to be acquitted by reason of insanity. This instruction dealt primarily with the faculty of the intellect, the work or function of which is to know, to understand, to see what is. If this faculty were so impaired that Chase did not know or appreciate what he was doing--if he were not then living in the reality of things--then he was not sane and accordingly was not to be held accountable for what he did.

On precedent alone we would be justified in finding no reversible error this instruction; for it is basically the 'knowledge' or 'right-wrong' test, laid down in M'Naghten's case ¹² in 1843 and firmly established by a long line of subsequent cases. It is the primary test of criminal responsibility in the United States, and the exclusive test in a majority of American jurisdictions and in England and Canada. ¹³ The Supreme Court of the United States has stated that although the science of psychiatry had made tremendous strides since M'Naghten, 'the progress of science has not reached a point where its learning would compel us to require the states to eliminate the right and wrong test from their criminal law.' ¹⁴ It is true that this statement was made nearly ten years ago, but the highest court has said nothing since then to indicate its viewpoint has changed.

In his instruction to the jury the trial judge referred only to knowledge. He did not deal specifically with man's other faculty, his will, the function and work of which is to choose, to act, to decide. A substantial minority of American courts hold that the test of knowledge alone is not sufficient; that a person who understood that he was committing a wrongful act should nevertheless be excused from responsibility if he was incapable of controlling the impulse to commit it. ¹⁵

Whether this doctrine should be adopted to supplement the 'knowledge' or 'right-wrong' test of M'Naghten has been the subject of divergent views. Apparently a valid psychological concept is that man functions as a unitary being, his faculties of reason and will being interdependent and integrated. ¹⁶ From this premise Professor Hall has argued that one faculty cannot be severely disordered while at the same time another, fused with the first, may be so little impaired as to remain within the realm of normality. ¹⁷ Logically, it would appear to follow from this that if the rational functions, including knowledge of right and wrong, are unaffected, there can be no case where an impulse or urge to commit a wrongful act could be truly 'irresistible'; there could not be by reason of insanity lack of power of control.

In answer to this argument, Professor Weihofen, while admitting that the processes of the mind are interrelated, points out that certain forms of mental disorder may affect one process more than the other. 'A disorder manifesting itself in impulsions which can be said to have been 'irresistible', may affect intelligence somewhat, but not necessarily to such extent as to obliterate knowledge of right and wrong.' ¹⁸ And a psychiatrist, Doctor Roche, although admitting the 'logical validity' of Hall's argument, contends that it is 'empirically false'. ¹⁹ He refers to experience with human behavior where it is found that some persons know what they ought not do, and morally deplore and condemn such acts, yet nevertheless do them just the same. 'Such persons', Doctor Roche says, 'appear to themselves as well as to others to be impelled by an inner imperative to carry out the forbidden behavior.' ²⁰

Another psychiatrist, Doctor Cavanagh, discusses at some length the subject of the will and irresistible impulse. ²¹ Preferring the terminology 'unresisted urge' to 'irresistible impulse', he defines an unresisted urge as 'one which, because of mental illness, so far causes the individual to lose his power of choice in regard to particular acts that in spite of the fact that he may recognize an act as wrong, he feels so impelled to act that he is unable to adhere to what he considers rights.' ²² In considering this concept in reference to the psychopath he says:

'The psychopath knows the difference between right and wrong, his subjective judgment is correct but he has no feeling for right and wrong. He is amoral, he has no ethical sense. If we accept then the concept of irresistible impulse as the ability to distinguish right and wrong but inability to adhere to the right then we have a perfect description of the psychopathic personality. Therefore a clear defense for every psychopath would be the...