Fowler v. State

• Decision Date: 11 February 1965
• Docket Number: No. 134,134
• Citation: 237 Md. 508,206 A.2d 802
• Parties: Leonard A. FOWLER v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 508

237 Md. 508

206 A.2d 802

Leonard A. FOWLER v.STATE of Maryland.

No. 134.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Feb. 11, 1965.

Joseph R. Hardiman, Baltimore, for appellant.

Loring E. Hawes, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Thomas B. Finan, Atty. Gen., Charles E. Moylan Jr. and William T. S. Bricker, State's Atty. and Asst. State's Atty., respectively, for Baltimore City, Baltimore, on the brief), for appellee.

Before PRESCOTT, C. J., and HAMMOND, HORNEY, SYBERT and ROBERT E. CLAPP, Jr., Specially Assigned, JJ.

CLAPP, Judge.

This is an appeal from a sentence of life imprisonment imposed after a jury verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree without capital punishment.

The appellant, Leonard Augusta Fowler, was indicted on December 6, 1963, for the murder of his brother, Franklin Richard Fowler, on October 18, 1963.He was arraigned on December 9, 1963, at which time he was represented by counsel of his own choice, this attorney having been recommended to him by friends.At that time pleas of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity at the time of the commission of the alleged crime were entered and the court directed that he be transferred from the Baltimore City Jail to Clifton T. Perkins State Hospital for examination.

On April 28, 1964, trial was had before a jury with counsel of his own selection representing him and this jury found the appellant to be sane at the time of the commission of the crime and guilty of murder in the first degree without capital punishment.After imposition of sentence, the appellant appealed to this Court in proper person as an indigent and present counsel was appointed to represent him.

Two questions for decision were presented by the appellant both in his brief and in oral argument as follows:

1.Was the trial court's instruction that the burden is upon the defendant to prove insanity by a preponderance of the evidence prejudicial error?

2.Was appellant's trial counsel incompetent?(The brief and oral argument inform us that this issue is here raised for the first time at the specific direction of the appellant).

At the outset, it should be noted that no objection was made at the trial to any portion of the trial court's instruction and Rule 756 g would ordinarily preclude the appellant from raising any objection to the charge on appeal.However, as the charge dealt with the burden of proof in cases where a sanity plea is filed and as this charge was given six days before the decision of this Court in Bradford v. State, 234 Md. 505, 200 A.2d 150, we have decided to take cognizance of the issue raised by the appellant as permitted by Rule 756 g.

Before the decision in Bradford, it had been the practice in some of the trial courts to instruct on the basis of the preponderance of evidence and the burden on the defense in connection with insanity pleas as was here done.See for example, the charge of Chief Judge Niles in Thomas v. State, 206 Md. 575, 586-587, 112 A.2d 913, Judge Macgill in Bell v. State, 234 Md. 254, 198 A.2d 895, and Judge Grady in O'Connor v. State, 234 Md. 459, 199 A.2d 807.Until Bradford, the question of the propriety of this instruction had not been decided by this Court, because there was in those cases insufficient evidence to rebut the initial presumption of sanity present in every criminal case.Bradford, however, decided that once evidence of insanity has been introduced which, if believed, would be sufficient to overcome the presumption of sanity, the State has then the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was sane at the time of the alleged commission of the offense.

The holding in Bradford, accordingly, means that the charge to the jury that 'the burden is on the defense to prove insanity by a preponderance of the evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt,' should not be given.The trial court should decide, as a preliminary matter of law, whether there has been sufficient proof of insanity introduced which, if believed, would raise a question in the minds of reasonable men whether the defendant was or was not sane under the M'Naghten-Spencer test.If the trial court decides this preliminary question of law in the affirmative, then the jury should be instructed that the burden is upon the State to prove the defendant sane beyond a reasonable doubt.If the trial judge decides this preliminary question in the negative, the issue of insanity should be withdrawn from consideration by the jury, still, of course, leaving to the jury the question whether the State has proved the commission of the alleged crime beyond a reasonable doubt.O'Connor v. State, supra, and cases therein cited.See also15 Md.L.Rev. 157, 162.

The State maintains, however, that even though the instruction of the trial court, in the light of Bradford, should not have been given, there was no reversible error because there was no sufficient evidence of insanity adduced at the trial to require the submission of the issue of insanity to the jury and, therefore, the submission of that issue to the jury (which found him sane) was more than the appellant was entitled to.With this contention we agree.

The record discloses that the appellant at the time of the alleged crime was a 19 year old youth with a ninth grade education who throughout his life had suffered from an 'emotional deprivation' which resulted from an 'unstable childhood' spent in various children's homes and a foster home, in addition to living with his mother after the death of his father.Some five months before the alleged crime he had met and begun living with a girl in a husband-wife relationship (without the sanction of clergy), she being the first person who, according to him, had ever shown him real affection.On her 18th birthday, four days before the alleged crime, they had applied for a marriage license but on the day following he returned to the apartment where they had been living and found that she had left.He searched for her, and, finally, his sister told him that the girl was now living with his brother in another part of Baltimore.The appellant went to the place where they were living the day before the shooting to ask the girl to return to him but she refused.

On the day of the shooting, the appellant went to this place with a pistol that he had bought from a taxi driver a considerable time before.He found the girl and his brother in bed together and waited until they arose, at which time she cooked breakfast for them and they played some records.Some three to four hours later and after the arrival of his sister, the appellant wrote a letter to his mother stating that he was going to shoot his brother and, about ten minutes thereafter, during a discussion with his brother about whether a door to the apartment should be opened or closed, he shot his brother, by his own admission at the trial, at least once.The deceased was shot three times, once in the right shoulder, once in the wrist and once in the chest; the last shot lacerated the lung, causing massive hemorrhage and bringing on death.The appellant testified that he remembered firing only the one shot that struck the shoulder and claimed that his sister fired one shot.He did not remember a third shot.Neither the girl with whom he had been living nor his sister confirmed the fact that his sister had fired the pistol.

The only expert psychiatric testimony produced at the trial hearing on the mental condition of the appellant was that of Dr. William Cushard, Superintendant of Clifton T. Perkins State Hospital, a witness produced on behalf of the appellant.He testified in chief as to the details of the pretrial evaluation of the appellant and said that his early life and environment would not have been productive of a well-balanced individual, that the girl was of extreme...