Com. v. Rabold

• Decision Date: 23 July 2008
• Docket Number: No. 106 MAP 2007.,106 MAP 2007.
• Citation: 951 A.2d 329
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Aaron Daniel RABOLD, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

951 A.2d 329

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Aaron Daniel RABOLD, Appellant.

No. 106 MAP 2007.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued May 13, 2008.

Decided July 23, 2008.

Bradley Warren Weidenbaum, Esq., Brodheadsville, for Aaron Daniel Rabold.

David R. Crowley, Esq., Bellefonte, for amicus curiae Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Colleen Mancuso, Esq., Elmer D. Christine, Jr., Esq., Stroudsburg, for Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

BEFORE: CASTILLE, C.J., and SAYLOR, EAKIN, BAER, TODD and McCAFFERY, JJ.

OPINION

Justice SAYLOR.

Appeal was allowed to consider a challenge to a jury instruction explaining the verdict of guilty but mentally ill.

By way of essential background, a verdict of guilty but mentally ill is authorized by Section 314 of the Crimes Code, as follows:

(a) General rule.— A person who timely offers a defense of insanity in accordance with the Rules of Criminal Procedure may be found "guilty but mentally ill" at trial if the trier of facts finds, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the person is guilty of an offense, was mentally ill at the time of the commission of the offense and was not legally insane at the time of the commission of the offense.

* * *

(c) Definitions. — For the purposes of this section and 42 Pa.C.S. § 9727 (relating to disposition of persons found guilty by mentally ill):

(1) "Mentally ill." One who as a result of mental disease or defect, lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.

(2) "Legal insanity." At the time of the commission of the act, the defendant was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.

18 Pa.C.S. § 314. See generally Commonwealth v. Kontaxes, 584 Pa. 1, 2-3, 880 A.2d 591, 592 (2005). As further developed below, in Commonwealth v. Sohmer, 519 Pa. 200, 546 A.2d 601 (1988), this Court determined that Section 314(a) does not impose a burden of proof concerning a defendant's mental illness on either party, but rather, is implicated where an insanity defense fails but evidence of the defendant's mental illness nevertheless "preponderates." See id. at 212-13, 546 A.2d at 607. The insanity defense is provided for in Section 315 of the Crimes Code, as follows:

(a) General Rule.—The mental soundness of an actor engaged in conduct charged to constitute an offense shall only be a defense to the charged offense when the actor proves by a preponderance of the evidence that the actor was legally insane at the time of the commission of the offense.

(b) Definition.—For purposes of this section, the phrase "legally insane" means that, at the time of the commission of the offense, the actor was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing or, if the actor did know the quality of the act, that he did not know that what he was doing was wrong.

18 Pa.C.S. § 315.¹

After attacking and repeatedly stabbing his brother's fiancée while in her bed, Appellant was charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, and possession of an instrument of crime. At the ensuing jury trial, Appellant advanced an insanity defense based primarily upon the testimony of a psychiatrist diagnosing psychotic disorder not otherwise specified, see N.T., March 30, 2005, at 87-88, and that of a specialist in environmental medicine to the effect that Appellant suffers from autism, see id. at 34-36.² Both experts opined that, although Appellant was capable of understanding that he was stabbing the victim and that such actions could kill her, he was incapable of understanding the wrongfulness of this conduct. See id. at 36, 83, 88-89. On this basis, the defense psychiatrist opined that Appellant was legally insane under an operative definition congruent with Section 315 of the Crimes Code. See id. at 89. In response, the prosecution presented the testimony of a forensic psychiatrist who concurred in the diagnosis of psychotic disorder not otherwise specified, see N.T., March 30, 2005, at 124,³ but expressed the opinion that Appellant was not legally insane. According to the Commonwealth's expert, Appellant was, at the time of his offenses, "mentally ill" under the definition set forth in Section 314 of the Crimes Code, because he lacked substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. See id. at 130. Further, relevant direct examination of the Commonwealth's expert psychiatrist proceeded as follows:

Q Sir, do you disagree with [the defense psychiatrist] at some point?

A Well, you see, we're both psychiatrists, and we're clinicians, and we've come to the same opinion about the mental state of the diagnosis. Applying that diagnosis to a state of mind—that is a legal test—is where we differ.

[The defense psychiatrist] gives the opinion—and I was listening carefully to him, and he tends to equate knowledge with appreciation. They're not equated. Knowledge in the test is purely cognitive. That is, does a person know intellectually, does he have the knowledge that what he did was wrong.

[The defense psychiatrist] kept saying he could not appreciate, could not appreciate. Appreciate has a culminative or an emotional component that is not cognitive. So when he throws that in there, I get confused because I don't know if he's saying he didn't know what he was doing was wrong or he could not appreciate what he was doing was wrong, and they're both different.

Appreciation is not the legal test of insanity in Pennsylvania. So my opinion is that he did know what he was doing and he knew what he was doing was against the law, that it was wrong and he could get in trouble for it.

The other thing that [the defense psychiatrist] said, I think, so well is that Mr. Rabold at the time, at the millisecond, at the time that he did this, felt that he had to do it. It was something he had to do. That has to do with volition. It doesn't have to do with cognition. So that is not the test of insanity in Pennsylvania, but it is the test of mental illness under a concept in Pennsylvania of guilty but mentally ill.

So I gave the opinion, and I still hold it, that at the time that he stabbed his brother's fiancée that he lacked substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of law. That's the test for mental illness short of insanity.

And because he was mentally ill and because he did what he felt he had to do, he really lacked substantial capacity to control his behavior. But he knew what he was doing, and he knew that it was wrong in my opinion.

N.T., March 30, 2005, at 125-26.

On rebuttal, the defense psychiatrist agreed with the legal framework discussed by the Commonwealth's expert, differentiating between knowledge and appreciation, and testified to his opinion that Appellant both did not appreciate, and also did not know, what he did was wrong at the time of his actions. See N.T., March 30, 2005, at 140.

After the close of the evidence and closing arguments, the trial court opened its charge by explaining the presumption of innocence and the Commonwealth's burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. See N.T., March 31, 2005, at 37-38 ("[I]t is the Commonwealth that always has the burden of proving each and every element of the crimes charged and that the Defendant is guilty of that crime beyond a reasonable doubt."). The court proceeded to detail the elements of the substantive offenses charged, highlighting the Commonwealth's burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt throughout. See N.T., March 31, 2005, at 41 ("In order to find the defendant guilty of attempted homicide, you must be satisfied that the following three elements have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt ..." (emphasis added)); id. at 42 (same, for aggravated assault).

The trial court then indicated that, because Appellant had asserted an insanity defense, in addition to the ordinary general verdicts of guilty or not guilty, the jury was charged with evaluating the appropriateness of two other potential, special verdicts: "not guilty by reason of legal insanity" and "guilty but mentally ill." The court proceeded to explain:

The verdict of not guilty by reason of legal insanity labels a[d]efendant as sick rather than bad. It signifies that in the eyes of the law the person because of mental abnormality at the time of the crime does not deserve to be blamed and treated as a criminal for what he did.

The verdict of guilty but mentally ill labels a[d]efendant as both bad and sick. It means that in the law's eyes that person at the time of the crime was not so mentally abnormal as to be relieved from blame and criminal punishment for what he did but that he was abnormal enough to make him a likely candidate for special therapeutic treatment.

Legal insanity excuses any crime.... A[d]efendant has a complete defense to an otherwise criminal act if he was legally insane at the time he committed the act....

N.T., March 31, 2005, at 45-46; accord PENNSYLVANIA SUGGESTED STANDARD CRIMINAL JURY INSTRUCTIONS § 5.01A(1), (2); Commonwealth v. Trill, 374 Pa.Super. 549, 583, 543 A.2d 1106, 1123 (1988) (utilizing the "sick" and "bad" rubric in explicating the guilty-but-mentally-ill verdict). The trial court then quoted and paraphrased the statutory definition of legal insanity. See N.T., March 31, 2005, at 46-47 ("Stated more simply, a person is legally insane if at the time of committing an alleged crime he is as the result of mental disease or defect either incapable of knowing what it is that he is doing or if he does know what he is doing, he's incapable of judging that it is wrong."). Further, consistent with Section 315 of the Crimes Code, the court indicated that a defendant bears the burden of proving an insanity defense by a preponderance,...