Grace v. Hopper

• Citation: 217 S.E.2d 267,234 Ga. 669
• Decision Date: 27 June 1975
• Docket Number: No. 29924,29924
• Parties: Hamp GRACE v. Joe S. HOPPER, Warden.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

Page 267

217 S.E.2d 267

234 Ga. 669

Hamp GRACE v. Joe S. HOPPER, Warden.

No. 29924.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

June 27, 1975.

James C. Bonner, Jr., Jackson, for appellant.

UNDERCOFLER, Presiding Justice.

Appellant was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. On appeal this court affirmed with two Justices dissenting. Grace v. State, 231 Ga. 113, 200 S.E.2d 248. The evidence presented at the trial is set out in that opinion. Appellant's sole defense was insanity at the time of the offense.

Appellant then filed this habeas corpus on the grounds that the trial judge's instructions on insanity violated his constitutional rights by shifting to him the burden of proof on an essential element of the offense and by relieving the prosecution of its burden of proving every essential element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt. The judge of the habeas corpus court remanded the appellant to custody and this appeal followed.

The pertinent instructions to the jury were as follows:

'The defendant also sets up as a defense the plea that he was of unsound mind and irresponsible at the time of the alleged crime. I charge you that under the law of this State every person is presumed to be of sound mind and discretion but the presumption may be rebutted. I charge you further that the acts of a person of sound mind and discretion are presumed to be the product of that person's will, but this presumption may be rebutted. And when in a criminal trial the defendant sets up as a defense that he was insane or of unsound mind at the time of the alleged crime, the burden is upon him to establish this defense, not beyond a reasonable doubt, but to the reasonable satisfaction of the jury. If he carries this burden, the defendant is entitled to an acquittal.

'I charge you that although the burden of establishing the insanity or unsoundness of mind at the time of the alleged offense be not successfully carried by the defendant, so as to authorize his acquittal on this ground, it is nevertheless the duty of the jury to consider the evidence touching the alleged insanity in connection with the other evidence in the case; and if, in view of all the evidence, the jury entertains a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the defendant, he should be given the benefit of that doubt and acquitted.'

Specifically appellant complaints, '(1) that the charge violated his due process right to have the State bear the full burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt every element of the charge against him, (2) that it offended his due process right to be tried clothed in the presumption of innocence and unencumbered by any burden of disproving an element of the offense, and (3) that it deprived him of his due process right to be judged by a jury free of confusing, contradictory, and inconsistent instructions.' HELD:

In recent years the traditional rules of criminal procedure of various states which shift burdens of proof to the defendant have been challenged as fundamentally unfair and violative of due process. That is primarily the basis of the attack here upon Georgia's typical procedure requiring the defendant to produce evidence in support of an insanity defense and to establish it to 'the reasonable satisfaction of the jury.' It is argued that the defendant is clothed throughout his trial with a presumption of innocence and to support a conviction the prosecution must prove every element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt; that the prosecution must bear the burden of producing such evidence and the burden of persuading the court and jury of the defendant's guilt; and that any shifting of these burdens to the defendant is fundamentally unfair. This argument is supported by In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 1073, 25 L.Ed.2d 368, where it is stated: 'Lest there remain any doubt about the constitutional statute of the reasonable-doubt standard, we explicitly hold that the Due Process Clause protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged.' This reasoning has been applied to alibi defenses and shifting the burden of proving such defense to the defendant has been held to be violative of due process. Patterson v. State, 233 Ga. 724(7), 213 S.E.2d 612; Smith v. Smith, 454 F.2d 572 (5th Cir., 1971), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 885, 93 S.Ct. 99, 34 L.Ed.2d 141; Stump v. Bennett, 398 F.2d 111 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 393 U.S. 1001, 89 S.Ct. 483, 21 L.Ed.2d 466. Also in Mullaney v. Wilbur, -- U.S. --, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (decided June 9, 1975), Maine's rule requiring the defendant to prove by a fair preponderance of the evidence that he acted in the heat of passion on sudden provocation in order to reduce murder to manslaughter was held violative of due process. It was stated, '. . . Maine denigrates the interests found critical in Winship.' It was also stated, 'Nor is the requirement of proving a negative unique in our system of criminal jurisprudence. Maine itself requires the prosecution to prove the absence of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt . . . Satisfying this burden imposes an obligation that, in all practical effect, is identical to the burden involved in negating the heat of passion on sudden provocation. Thus, we discern no unique hardship on the prosecution that would justify requiring the defendant to carry the burden of proving a fact so critical to criminal culpability.'

These United States Supreme Court cases persuade us that in order to comport with due process the prosecution must carry the burden of proving all critical essential elements of the crime charged against a defendant. However, sanity has not been treated as a critical essential element of the offense which the prosecution is required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. To the contrary, Leland v. Oregon, 343 U.S. 790, 798, 72 S.Ct. 1002, 1007, 96 L.Ed. 1302 states: 'Today, Oregon is the only state that requires the accused, on a plea of insanity, to establish that defense beyond a reasonable doubt. Some twenty states, however, place the burden on the accused to establish his insanity by a preponderance of the evidence or some similar measure of persuasion. While there is an evident distinction between these two rules as to the quantum of proof required, we see no practical difference of such magnitude as to be significant in determining the constitutional question we face here. Oregon merely requires a heavier burden of proof. In each instance, in order to establish insanity as a complete defense to the charges preferred, the accused must prove that insanity. The fact that a practice is followed by a large number of states is not conclusive in a decision as to whether that practice accords with due process, but it is plainly worth considering in determining whether the practice 'offends some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.' Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 105 (1934), (54 S.Ct. 330, 332, 78 L.Ed. 674).

'Nor is this a case in which it is sought to enforce against the states a right which we have held to be secured to defendants in federal courts by the Bill of Rights. In Davis v. United States (160 U.S. 469, 16 S.Ct. 353, 40 L.Ed. 499), we adopted a rule of procedure for the federal courts which is contrary to that of Oregon. But '(i)ts procedure does not run afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment because another method may seem to our thinking to be fairer or wiser or to give a surer promise of protection to the prisoner at the bar.' Snyder v. Massachusetts, supra, (291 U.S.) at page 105, 54 S.Ct. (330) at page 332, 78 L.Ed. 674. 'The judicial judgment in applying the Due Process Clause must move within the limits of accepted notions of justice and is not to be based upon the idiosyncrasies of a merely personal judgment . . . An important safeguard against such merely individual judgment is an alert deference to the judgment of the state court under review.' Mr. Justice Frankfurter, concurring in Malinski v. New York, 324 U.S. 401, 417 (1945) ( 65 S.Ct. 781, 789, 89 L.Ed. 1029). We are therefore reluctant to interfere with Oregon's determination of its policy with respect to the burden of proof on the issue of sanity since we cannot say that policy violates generally accepted concepts of basic standards of justice.'

Likewise the dissenting opinion, although decrying Oregon's rule requiring the defendant to prove his insanity beyond a reasonable doubt, stated 343 U.S. at page 804, 72 S.Ct. at page 1010: 'This does not preclude States from utilizing common sense regarding mental irresponsibility for acts resulting in homicide-from taking for granted that most men are sane and responsible for their acts. That a man's act is not his, because he is devoid of that mental state which begets culpability, is so exceptional a situation that the law has a right to devise an exceptional procedure regarding it. Accordingly, States may provide various ways for dealing with this exceptional situation by requiring, for instance, that the defense of 'insanity' be specially pleaded, or that he on whose behalf the claim of insanity is made should have the burden of showing enough to overcome the assumption and presumption that normally a man knows what he is about and is therefore responsible for what he does, or that the issue be separately tried, or that a standing disinterested expert agency advise court and jury, or that these and other devices be used in combination. The laws of the forty-eight States present the greatest diversity in relieving the prosecution from proving affirmatively that a man is sane in the way it must prove affirmatively that the defendant is the man who pulled the trigger or struck the blow. Such legislation makes no inroad upon the basic principle that the State must prove guilt, not the defendant innocence, and prove...