Curtis v. State

• Decision Date: 10 September 1945
• Docket Number: 30938.
• Citation: 35 S.E.2d 310,72 Ga.App. 857
• Parties: CURTIS v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

35 S.E.2d 310

72 Ga.App. 857

CURTIS v. STATE.

No. 30938.

Court of Appeals of Georgia, Division No. 1.

September 10, 1945

Rehearing Denied Sept. 29, 1945.

Syllabus by the Court

1. An adjudication of insanity subsequently to an alleged offense is inadmissible as proof of the mental state of the accused on a date before the crime is alleged to have been committed.

2. The assignments of error in special grounds 2, 3, 4 and 7, as to the charge of the court, are without merit for the reasons given in the opinion.

3. The evidence authorized the verdict under the general grounds.

The defendant was convicted of a felony, larceny after trust. He filed his motion for new trial and afterwards added several special grounds. The motion was overruled by the court and the assignments of error are based on this judgment.

Briefly the evidence reveals that the defendant was an accountant that at the time of the alleged crime and for some time prior thereto he was engaged in making income-tax returns for the general public, enjoying a rather large clientele, and employing an all-time secretary and other help; that he was employed by the persons named in the indictment, who entrusted the funds to the defendant to make out and pay tax returns; that a sum of money was paid to the defendant for remittance to the Collector of Internal Revenue of the United States, to pay the tax which the defendant calculated to be due the Government. The defendant did not make this remittance, and the person who entrusted the money to him was required to pay the tax for that year to the government.

It was contended on behalf of the defendant that he became mentally ill about the period of time embracing the alleged conversion, was not criminally responsible, and had no recollection concerning the alleged conversion. He offered evidence and his statement in support of his defense. It will be necessary to discuss the facts further in the course of the opinion.

Graham Wright and L. H. Covington, both of Rome, for plaintiff in error.

Henderson Lanham, Sol. Gen., and Chastine Parker, both of Rome, for defendant in error.

GARDNER Judge.

1. In special ground 1, error is assigned because the court excluded from the consideration of the jury a properly certified copy of the proceedings committing the defendant to the California Insane Asylum and adjudging him to be insane. The court excluded this documentary evidence at the instance of the State, upon the ground that the offense was alleged to have occurred on March 17, 1943, and that therefore the judgment of commitment on July 14, 1943, and the proceedings upon which it was based would shed no light on the mental condition of the accused at the time of the alleged commission of the offense--approximately four months thereafter.

The State bases its contention as to the inadmissibility of this documentary evidence on the principle discussed in the opinion of this court in Murphy v. State, 70 Ga.App 387, 28 S.E.2d 198, the headnotes in which are: '1. Criminal responsibility is determined by the condition of the accused's mind at the time he committed the criminal act. 2. A copy of the inquisition or judgment in the court of ordinary finding the defendant insane, rendered a month after the crime was committed, was properly not admitted in evidence on the trial of a criminal accusation in the criminal court of Fulton County. Aliter, where the inquisition had adjudged the defendant 'habitually insane' before the commission of the crime. 3. For the purpose of shedding light upon the defendant's state of mind at the time the alleged crime was committed, evidence of his condition, as shown by his acts and conduct, or as shown by any other competent evidence, may be shown both before and after the alleged criminal act, if properly connected up. 4. If properly connected up, the defendant's condition on the very day of the inquisition, whether the inquisition was before or after the commission of the crime, may be shown by the witness or witnesses who testified in the proceeding in the ordinary's court, which adjudged [him] insane, or by any other competent evidence, that [he] was insane on that day.' The judgment of commitment in the instant case is not materially different from the one under consideration in the Murphy case. On the other hand, distinguished counsel for the defendant contends that, under a proper construction and application of the opinion of this court in the Murphy case, it was reversible error to exclude the documents. No doubt counsel in the written brief expressed their interpretation of the ruling in the Murphy case better than we are able to do. Therefore we quote it: 'While we recognize the fact that this court, in the case of Murphy v. State, held that an inquisition of insanity after the commission of the offense was not admissible, yet we submit that this case is not controlling against us in this case but is actually favorable to our contention, for the court there says that, for the purpose of shedding light on the defendant's state of mind at the time the alleged crime was committed, evidence of his condition, as shown by his acts and conduct, or as shown by any other competent evidence, may be shown before and after the alleged criminal act, if properly connected up, and we submit that in this case the evidence was properly connected up. It will be observed from the entire proceedings that it was shown by the findings of the inquisition in California that the plaintiff in error was mentally ill and was an insane person, and that he was suffering from a brain tumor during March, 1943; that his brain was trephine at Stanford Hospital at that time, but that the operation was palliative only; that he had since had periods of amnesia and aphasia with irrational actions; that he has shown mental deterioration with facial changes; that he was sluggish in thought and that he was suffering from organic brain changes; all of which facts bring this commitment record clearly within the ruling in the Murphy case, wherein the court holds that, where the inquisition had adjudged the defendant habitually insane before the commission of the crime, the record of such inquisition might be shown, and therefore under that case . . . this evidence [was] admissible.' Under the facts of this case, counsel for the State puts the proper construction on the opinion in the Murphy case, rather than able counsel for the defendant. In that case the court held, and we so hold in the case before us, that an adjudication as to the insanity of the defendant subsequently to the date of the alleged commission of the crime was not admissible for the purpose of establishing the mental state of the accused on the date of the commission of the crime. The rule of evidence as to the admissibility of a subsequent adjudication of insanity invoked by counsel for the plaintiff in error, obtains in some jurisdictions. The decisions of the appellate courts of our country are not uniform as to the evidentiary value of a judgment of insanity rendered subsequently to the date of the act under investigation. In some jurisdictions, such subsequent proceedings are admissible as a rebuttable presumption of fact. In others, such a subsequent judgment is admissible, not as a presumption, but as evidence to be considered along with all the other evidence in the case to determine the state of mind at the time of the conduct under investigation; while in other jurisdictions such a subsequent judgment has no evidentiary value. 68 A.L.R. 1314; 7 A.L.R. 568, 576, 582; 28 Am.Jur. 756. As to the introduction of evidence other than a judgment of subsequent adjudication of insanity, where sanity is an issue, the appellate courts in all jurisdictions are very liberal in the admission of testimony tending to shed light upon the state of mind at the time of the act in question. In a proper case this period may cover a period of time from the date of the trial backward to insanity of the ancestral line both direct and collateral. 22 C.J.S., Criminal Law, § 620, p. 945. Our own Supreme Court in an early opinion, Terry v. Buffington, 11 Ga. 337, 56 Am.Dec. 423, established as a rule of evidence that a judgment of...