Greenfield v. Com.

• Citation: 214 Va. 710,92 A.L.R.3d 432,204 S.E.2d 414
• Parties: , 92 A.L.R.3d 432 Ronald W. GREENFIELD v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia.
• Decision Date: 22 April 1974
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Page 414

204 S.E.2d 414

214 Va. 710, 92 A.L.R.3d 432

Ronald W. GREENFIELD v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia.

Supreme Court of Virginia.

April 22, 1974.

Stephen A. Saltzburg, Charlottesville (E. Gerald Tremblay, Charlottesville, on brief), for plaintiff in error.

Gilbert W. Haith, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Andrew P. Miller, Atty. Gen., on brief), for defendant in error.

Before SNEAD, C.J., and I'ANSON, CARRICO, HARRISON, COCHRAN, HARMAN and POFF, JJ.

I'ANSON, Justice.

Defendant, Ronald W. Greenfield, was tried by a jury for the murder of Mary Frances Jordan, found guilty of murder of the second degree, and his punishment was fixed at twenty years in the penitentiary. He was sentenced accordingly, and he is here on a writ of error.

Defendant contends that the trial court erred in refusing (1) to allow a psychiatrist to state in detail the basis for his opinion that the defendant was unconscious at the time of the alleged crime; (2) to allow the psychiatrist to hypnotize the defendant during a recess of his trial for the purpose of jogging his memory before testifying; (3) to grant a change of venue because of press coverage of the case; and (4) to suppress the introduction into evidence of some of his clothes, which the police took from him without a search warrant while he was in custody.

The evidence shows that on the night of November 7, 1972, the defendant and Mary Frances Jordan, the deceased, were employees of Poe's, a restaurant and beer parlor near the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The deceased, a 21-year-old college student, was a waitress, and the defendant, 17 years of age, was a doorman at the establishment.

Defendant testified that it was raining quite heavily that night and Mary Frances offered him a ride home. About 12:30 on the morning of November 8, they left Poe's with Mary Frances using the defendant's green 'army-type' jacket to shield herself from the rain while going for her car. Defendant waited for her under an awning in front of Poe's. After Mary Frances picked him up, she drove to a parking lot near his apartment where they sat and talked for about fifteen minutes. She criticized him for his use of drugs, which he resented, but both were on friendly terms before he left the car. He had consumed heroin early in the evening and some psilocybin (a ballucinogenic drug) later that same night before leaving the restaurant. He said that as he was alighting from the car he felt a falling sensation, and the next thing he could remember was awaking and finding himself on the ground about fifteen feet away from the car on the driver's side. When he got up, he saw a person running from the scene, Mary Frances lying motionless in a pool of blood on the driver's side of the car, and his pocket knife on the car floor. He picked up the knife and put it in his pocket. He then noticed that his hand was cut and bleeding. He concluded that he must have 'freaked out' and that he had killed her. He fled from the scene and eventually got a ride to Richmond with a truck driver.

Around 12:25 a.m. a college student, who lived near the parking lot where the deceased and defendant had parked, though he heard a woman screaming. Responding to those screams, he left his apartment, observed a man wearing an olive army coat running from the parking lot, and saw the victim lying beside the open door of her car on the driver's side. He carried her to his apartment, and called the rescue squad and the police. The victim died shortly thereafter at the University of Virginia Hospital. The cause of her death was multiple stab wounds.

During the daylight hours of November 8th, defendant was arrested at a hospital in Richmond where he had sought medical attention for his hand. After receiving his Miranda rights, the defendant freely and voluntarily made a statement to a Richmond detective who took it down in longhand. The statement, in part, contained an admission that he killed the deceased and that the knife taken from him by the police was the murder weapon.

While en route to Charlottesville, the defendant told a Charlottesville detective: 'I don't feel bad about taking her life. . . . I don't feel bad about taking a human being's life.'

After arriving at the Charlottesville jail, the police gave defendant some clean clothes and took from him the clothing he was wearing. An analysis of defendant's clothing revealed bloodstains of deceased's blood type. Bloodstains of the defendant's blood type were also found on some of deceased's clothing.

Dr. Kenneth R. Locke, a psychiatrist, testified that he had made a diagnosis of defendant's mental condition. He had two interviews with the defendant in the Charlottesville jail and put him under hypnosis for the purpose of trying to get him to recall what happened between the time he was leaving the automobile and when he found the victim had been stabbed. He obtained additional information about the defendant from talking with his parents and sister, examination of his school and medical records, and a review of the report of a recent psychiatric evaluation of the defendant by Dr. Showalter, a local psychiatrist. In making a clinical diagnosis of the defendant, he considered 'what is called in psychiatry an adolescent adjustment reaction,' which he explained as covering a broad spectrum of emotional disorders that occur in adolescents. He said that the defendant has indications of depression, as a consequence of which he 'has a great deal of difficulty coming to terms with himself . . .,' but there is nothing however to indicate that he is schizophrenic. Continuing, he said the 'secondary diagnosis is less clear and harder to document but for which there is considerable evidence, and . . . that Mr. Greenfield might very possibly have minimal brain damage from birth trauma.' Minimal brain damage, the doctor said, 'is important from a medical standpoint because it can form a causative relationship' of defendant's adolescent adjustment reactions.

Dr. Locke stated that based on the interviews with the defendant (excluding what defendant had told him while under hypnosis), the information given him by members of defendant's family, a review and analysis of defendant's school and medical records, and after listening to defendant's testimony in his trial, it was his opinion that the defendant was unconscious at the time the homicide was committed. He said, however, that he had insufficient data to express an opinion on the cause of defendant's unconsciousness.

During a court recess, and prior to defendant's taking the stand, Dr. Locke hypnotized the defendant for the purpose of jogging his memory, but this did not help him recall what happened during the interim between his leaving the car and awakening on the ground.

Defendant's argument in support of his first contention is divided into two parts. He first argues that the trial court's refusal to allow Dr. Locke to testify in detail on what the members of defendant's family had told him, and the detailed information in defendant's school and medical records, as the basis of his opinion that defendant was unconscious at the time of the homicide, denied him a fair trial and violated due process and equal protection of the laws. This testimony, he claims, could have exonerated him, or at least would have had an impact on the grade of the homicide.

Unconsciousness is a state of mind of persons of sound mind suffering from some voluntary or involuntary agency rendering them unaware of their acts. See 22 C.J.S. Criminal Law § 55 at 194.

Where not self-induced, unconsciousness is a complete defense to a criminal homicide. But self-induced unconsciousness goes only to the grade of the offense and not to the existence of a complete defense. See, e.g., State, v. Mercer, 275 N.C. 108, 115--120, 165 S.E.2d 328, 334--336 (1969); People v. Newton, 8 Cal.App.3d 359, 376, 87 Cal.Rptr. 394, 404--405 (1970); State v. Utter, 4 Wash.App. 137, 141--143, 479 P.2d 946, 950 (1971); Commonwealth v. Crosby, 444 Pa. 17, 21--23, 279 A.2d 73, 76 (1971). See also, Gills v. Commonwealth, 141 Va. 445, 450, 126 S.E. 51, 53 (1925); and Chittum v. Commonwealth, 211 Va. 12, 17--18, 174 S.E.2d 779, 782--783 (1970) (on the question of drunkenness as a defense).

Despite defendant's argument to the contrary, the record discloses that Dr. Locke was permitted to state, within the proper rules of evidence, the basis of his opinion that defendant was unconscious at the time the homicide was committed. He told the jury the nature of his diagnosis, the nature of the diagnostic tools used, and the extent of his examination of the defendant.

A detailed statement of what the members of defendant's family told Dr. Locke would have been hearsay and could have confused the jury with evidence that had no probative value. The same is true of defendant's school and medical records.

In Rollins v. Commonwealth, 207 Va. 575, 582, 151 S.E.2d 622, 627 (1966), where the defense was insanity, we held that two batches of hospital records containing letters, newspaper articles, photographs and memoranda of various kinds by various people were not admissible for any purpose.

From all the data, Dr. Locke, an expert, had obtained relating to defendant's state of mind, including what was excluded by the trial court, he was unable to determine the cause of the unconsciousness. Hence, a more detailed statement of the data obtained by Dr. Locke would not have aided a jury of laymen in determining whether the unconsciousness was induced voluntarily or involuntarily.

Moreover, there is nothing in the record disclosing what additional admissible data could have been shown as a basis for Dr. Locke's opinion that the defendant was unconscious at the time of the homicide. There was no proffer of such evidence. Thus, the exclusion of the more detailed testimony was not error. At most, under the circumstances here, it was harmless. See Blount v. Commonwealth, 213 Va. 807, 811, 195...