Grace v. Hopper

• Decision Date: 02 February 1977
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 2954-Mac.
• Citation: 425 F. Supp. 1355
• Parties: Hamp Grace, Petitioner, v. Joseph HOPPER, Warden, Georgia State Prison, Reidsville, Georgia, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Georgia

425 F. Supp. 1355

Hamp Grace, Petitioner, v. Joseph HOPPER, Warden, Georgia State Prison, Reidsville, Georgia, Respondent.

Civ. A. No. 2954-Mac.

United States District Court, M. D. Georgia, Macon Division.

February 2, 1977.

Hamp Grace, pro se.

Arthur K. Bolton, Atty. Gen., David L. G. King, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., State of Georgia, Atlanta, Ga., for respondent.

OWENS, District Judge:

While the Supreme Court of the United States in 1895 in Davis v. United States, 160 U.S. 469, 16 S.Ct. 353, 40 L.Ed. 499, decided that in federal criminal trials the prosecution is required to prove every essential element of the crime charged including the mental capacity of the defendant, beyond a reasonable doubt, saying:

We are unable to assent to the doctrine that in a prosecution for murder, the defence being insanity, and the fact of the killing with a deadly weapon being clearly established, it is the duty of the jury to convict where the evidence is equally balanced on the issue as to the sanity of the accused at the time of the killing. On the contrary, he is entitled to an acquittal of the specific crime charged if upon all the evidence there is reasonable doubt whether he was capable in law of committing crime.

No one, we assume, would wish either the courts or juries when trying a case of murder to disregard the humane principle, existing at common law and recognized in all the cases tending to support the charge of the court below, that, "to make a complete crime cognizable by human laws, there must be both a will and an act;" and "as a vicious will without a vicious act is no civil crime, so, on the other hand, an unwarrantable act without a vicious will is no crime at all. So that to constitute a crime against human laws, there must be, first, a vicious will; and, secondly, an unlawful act consequent upon such vicious will." 4 Bl.Com. 21. All this is implied in the accepted definition of murder; for it is of the very essence of that heinous crime that it be committed by a person of "sound memory and discretion," and with "malice aforethought," either express or implied. 4 Bl.Com. 195: 3 Co.Inst. 47; 2 Chitty's Cr.Law, 476. Such was the view of the court below which took care of its charge to say that the crime of murder could only be committed by a sane being, although it instructed the jury that a reasonable doubt as to the sanity of the accused would not alone protect him against a verdict of guilty.

One who takes human life cannot be said to be actuated by malice aforethought, or to have deliberately intended to take life, or to have "a wicked, depraved, and malignant heart," or a heart "regardless of social duty and fatally bent on mischief," unless at the time he had sufficient mind to comprehend the criminality or the right and wrong of such an act. Although the killing of one human being by another human being with a deadly weapon is presumed to be malicious until the contrary appears, yet, "in order to constitute a crime, a person must have intelligence and capacity enough to have a criminal intent and purpose; and if his reason and mental powers are either so deficient that he has no will, no conscience, or controlling mental power, or if, through the overwhelming violence of mental disease, his intellectual power is for the time obliterated, he is not a responsible moral agent, and is not punishable for criminal acts." Com. v. Rogers, 7 Met. (Mass.) 500 41 Am.Dec. 458. Neither in the adjudged cases nor in the elementary treatises upon criminal law is there to be found any dissent from these general propositions. All admit that the crime of murder necessarily involves the possession by the accused of such mental capacity as will render him criminally responsible for his acts. (emphasis added).

Upon whom then must rest the burden of proving that the accused, whose life it is sought to take under the forms of law, belongs to a class capable of committing crime? On principle, it must rest upon those who affirm that he has committed the crime for which he is indicted. That burden is not fully discharged, nor is there any legal right to take the life of the accused, until guilt is made to appear from all the evidence in the case. The plea of not guilty is unlike a special plea in a civil action, which, admitting the case averred, seeks to establish substantive ground of defence by a preponderance of evidence. It is not in confession and avoidance, for it is a plea that controverts the existence of every fact essential to constitute the crime charged. Upon that plea the accused may stand, shielded by the presumption of his innocence, until it appears that he is guilty; and his guilt cannot in the very nature of things be regarded as proved, if the jury entertain a reasonable doubt from all the evidence whether he was legally capable of committing crime.

This view is not at all inconsistent with the presumption which the law, justified by the general experience of mankind as well as by considerations of public safety, indulges in favor of sanity. If that presumption were not indulged the government would always be under the necessity of adducing affirmative evidence of the sanity of an accused. But a requirement of that character would seriously delay and embarrass the enforcement of the laws against crime, and in most cases be unnecessary. Consequently the law presumes that every one charged with crime is sane, and thus supplies in the first instance the required proof of capacity to commit crime. It authorizes the jury to assume at the outset that the accused is criminally responsible for his acts. But that is not a conclusive presumption, which the law upon grounds of public policy forbids to be overthrown or impaired by opposing proof. It is a disputable or, as it is often designated, a rebuttable presumption resulting from the connection ordinarily existing between certain facts — such connection not being "so intimate, nor so nearly universal, as to render it expedient that it should be absolutely and imperatively presumed to exist in every case, all evidence to the contrary being rejected; but yet it is so general, and so nearly universal, that the law itself, without the aid of a jury, infers the one fact from the proved existence of the other, in the absence of all opposing evidence." 1 Greenl.Ev. § 38. It is therefore a presumption that is liable to be overcome or to be so far impaired in a particular case that it cannot be safely or properly made the basis of action in that case, especially if the inquiry involves human life. In a certain sense it may be true that where the defence is insanity, and where the case made by the prosecution discloses nothing whatever in excuse or extenuation of the crime charged, the accused is bound to produce some evidence that will impair or weaken the force of the legal presumption in favor of sanity. But to hold that such presumption must absolutely control the jury until it is overthrown or impaired by evidence sufficient to establish the fact of insanity beyond all reasonable doubt or to the reasonable satisfaction of the jury, is in effect to require him to establish his innocence, by proving that he is not guilty of the crime charged. (emphasis added).

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Strictly speaking, the burden of proof, as those words are understood in criminal law, is never upon the accused to establish his innocence or to disprove the facts necessary to establish the crime for which he is indicted. It is on the prosecution from the beginning to the end of the trial and applies to every element necessary to constitute the crime. Giving to the prosecution, where the defence is insanity, the benefit in the way of proof of the presumption in favor of sanity, the vital question from the time a plea of not guilty is entered until the return of the verdict, is whether upon all the evidence, by whatever side adduced, guilt is established beyond reasonable doubt. If the whole evidence, including that supplied by the presumption of sanity, does not exclude beyond reasonable doubt the hypothesis of insanity, of which some proof is adduced, the accused is entitled to an acquittal of the specific offence charged. His guilt cannot be said to have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt — his will and his acts cannot be held to have joined in and perpetrating the murder charged — if the jury, upon all the evidence, have a reasonable doubt whether he was legally capable of committing crime, or (which is the same thing) whether he wilfully, deliberately, unlawfully, and of malice aforethought took the life of the deceased. As the crime of murder involves sufficient capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, the legal interpretation of every verdict of guilty as charged is that the jury believed from all the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused was guilty, and was therefore responsible, criminally, for his acts. How then upon principle or consistently with humanity can a verdict of guilty be properly returned, if the jury entertain a reasonable doubt as to the existence of a fact which is essential to guilt, namely, the capacity in law of the accused to commit that crime?

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It seems to us that undue stress is placed in some of the cases upon the fact that, in prosecutions for murder the defence of insanity is frequently resorted to and is sustained by the evidence of ingenious experts whose theories are difficult to be met and overcome. Thus, it is said, crimes of the most atrocious character often go unpunished, and the public safety is endangered. But the possibility of such results must always attend any system devised to ascertain and punish crime, and ought not to induce the courts to depart from principles fundamental in criminal law, and the recognition and enforcement of which are demanded by every consideration of humanity and justice. No man should be deprived of his life under the forms of law unless the jurors who try him are able, upon their

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