Hashfield v. State

• Citation: 210 N.E.2d 429,247 Ind. 95
• Decision Date: 06 October 1965
• Docket Number: No. 30360,30360
• Parties: Emmett O. HASHFIELD, Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee.
• Court: Supreme Court of Indiana

Page 429

210 N.E.2d 429

247 Ind. 95

Emmett O. HASHFIELD, Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee.

No. 30360.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

Oct. 6, 1965.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 8, 1965.

Ferdinand Samper, Jack W. Broadfield, Indianapolis, for appellant.

John J. Dillon, Atty. Gen., Carl E. Van Dorn, Deputy Atty. Gen., Thomas A. Joadley, Pros. Atty., Bloomington, for appellee.

ACHOR, Judge.

This is an appeal by Emmett O. Hashfield, appellant herein, from the judgment of the Monroe Circuit Court convicting him of murder in the first degree and imposing the death penalty. Appellant, who had three times previously been convicted of sex offenses, raped, killed and dismembered an eleven year old girl, in Warrick County, and cast the remnants of her body into the Ohio River.

Appellant filed a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, and pursuant to said plea the court appointed two psychiatrists who examined the appellant and testified regarding his sanity at the conclusion of the trial, as provided by Acts 1927, ch. 102, Sec. 1, p. 268, being Burns' Ind.Stat.Anno. Sec. 9-1702 (1956 Repl).

At the request of the pauper counsel appointed by the court, the court also authorized the employment of three physicians by the appellant for his use in the preparation of his defense, their expenses to be paid by the state.

In his motion for new trial the appellant asserted one hundred and one grounds in support thereof. However, on appeal he asserts only eight 'points' or propositions of law as the basis of his argument. Some of these propositions combine several grounds asserted in the motion for new trial. Other grounds asserted in said motion are waived by reason of appellant's failure to here present any argument with respect thereto. ¹

Under his first point, appellant asserts that the court committed reversible error in that he overruled defendant's motion for a continuance at the conclusion of the testimony of the court-appointed psychiatrists, for the purpose of obtaining expert medical testimony in rebuttal to their testimony. Appellant asserts that this failure to grant a continuance violated his constitutional rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and Article 1, Secs. 12 and 13 of the Indiana Constitution.

In support of their argument counsel first directs our attention to the fact that prior to the trial they had sought an order from the trial court to permit appellant to examine the report of said court-appointed doctors, or in the alternative, to personally interrogate them. The motion was denied, as was a petition for writ of mandate filed with this court seeking the same relief. State ex rel. Hashfield v. Warrick Cir. Ct. (1961), 242 Ind. 318, 178 N.E.2d 734.

Appellant then proceeds to assert that he was 'surprised' by and therefore unprepared to rebut the testimony of said court-appointed witnesses who testified that in their opinions, although the defendant was at the time of their examinations, and at the time the offense was committed, a sexual deviate of a sociopathic personality group, he was nevertheless mentally capable of knowing right from wrong and of controlling his impulse to commit the crime with which he was charged and found guilty. In other words, in their opinion, he was legally sane. The term 'legally sane' has been firmly established as a criterion to be considered in criminal prosecutions in this state. ²

Specifically, appellant's attorneys assert that they were 'surprised' and 'unprepared' to meet the testimony of the court-appointed doctors for the reason that 'the appellant's best indication of the probable opinion of the medical findings would have been the same as those of appellant's own medical experts whose testimony, appellant asserts, was contrary to that of the court-appointed doctors.'

Because of the severity of the penalty imposed in this case, we have given thorough consideration as to whether there may have been reversible error upon this or any other issue raised by the defense.

Admittedly the granting or denial of a continuance is a discretionary matter to be exercised by the trial court. Liese v. State (1954), 233 Ind. 250, 118 N.E.2d 731. Counsel in oral argument presented a strong and impassioned argument in support of their contention that under the facts of this case there was such an abuse of discretion by the court. However, after an exhaustive examination of the record, we find no foundation for appellant's contention, for several reasons. ³

1. The prosecution, as a part of its case-in-chief, presented Dr. Charles Cruddex, the psychiatrist who stated that, in his opinion, although the defendant was a sociopathic personality with sexual deviations, he was capable of knowing right from wrong with respect to the particular act in question and of controlling his impulse to commit such act. Ferdinand Samper, as counsel for defendant, subjected Dr. Cruddex to a skillful cross-examination and recross examination, which comprises 67 pages in the transcript, without discrediting the doctor or altering his opinion as to the 'legal sanity' of the accused.

2. The defense, in support of appellant's plea of insanity, presented Drs. Dwight Schuster and William DeMeyer as witnesses. Dr. Schuster, after a detailed report regarding his examination which covered a period of several weeks, merely testified: 'I believe that he is not normal when it comes to sex.' Thus his testimony could not be considered as even material as to the question of sanity or insanity of the accused.

Thus, it could only be upon the testimony of Dr. DeMeyer that the defense could base any claim as to surprise, because of the variance in the testimony of the medical experts. We therefore, consider the testimony of Dr. DeMeyer at length.

Dr. DeMeyer, an expert in neurology, testified that after an extensive examination of the accused for a period of several weeks during which X-rays of his brain were taken, he found a structural lesion 'in the spot that [an] experienced experimenter would make lesions in animals in order to produce deviations in sexual behavior.' He testified: '[w]e know this lesion is of sufficient size and nature that it would certainly interfere with his adaptabilities and would tend to magnify or exaggerate any personality deviations that might exist from terms of his life experiences and his emotional experiences.' He would not state that because of the lesion the defendant was not capable of knowing right from wrong, and he further testified that he could not answer the question as to whether at the moment the thought came to the defendant to assault the child that he had sufficient will power to overcome the impulse. He stated: 'To me that is nonsensical.' Upon further interrogation he stated: 'This is in the area of guess work and I can't say either way. If the man committed the act as charged then he didn't have the power to overcome his impulse. That's all I can say. * * *' ⁴ Dr. DeMeyer concluded his testimony by stating that after consultation with the two other doctors employed by appellant at state expense, they came to the conclusion: 'Well, we call him a socipathic [sic] personality disorder with sexual deviation as one of the factors.' This is essentially the exact diagnostic conclusion reached by Dr. Cruddex as a witness for the prosecution. As previously discussed, we find no inconsistency in this testimony and that of the court-appointed doctors, Drs. Reitman and Crevello, who also testified that the accused is a person with a sociopathic personality with sexual deviations as one of the factors, but that the accused was capable of knowing right from wrong and of controlling the impulse to do that which was wrong. We do not understand how counsel for accused can claim that they were 'surprised' by reason of the testimony of the latter doctors.

3. Furthermore, we find little or no merit to counsels' contention that they were 'unprepared' to refute the testimony of the court-appointed doctors. As previously noted, attorney Samper subjected Dr. Cruddex to cross-and re-cross examination which comprises 67 pages in the transcript. Also, we note that Jack Broadfield, also attorney for the accused and, according to his statement in oral argument, a former sociopathic consultant for the armed services, conducted an able and exhaustive cross-examination of Dr. Reitman, one of the court-appointed psychiatrists, which comprises 28 pages of the transcript. (Ferdinand Samper's cross- examination of Dr. Reitman comprises 37 additional pages.) Interestingly, Dr. Reitman at one point commented: 'I feel like I am giving a course in psychiatry.' Mr. Samper undertook to cross-examine Dr. Crevello, another psychiatrist appointed by the court, whose testimony coincided with that of Drs. Cruddex and Reitman and did not conflict with that of Drs. Schuster and DeMeyer. After only a few questions Mr. Samper stated to the court: 'I have no further questions Your Honor. Co-counsel has no way of cross examination of the doctor.'

From this extensive examination of medical experts, both in direct and cross-examination, the court had reason to believe that counsel for the accused had come to to the conclusion that they had not produced medical testimony which would sustain their plea of insanity and that their plea for extension of time was not based upon either 'surprise' or 'unpreparedness,' but on the realization that, under all the testimony, they had failed to sustain their defense of insanity. The appeal has not seen fit to question the sufficiency of the evidence on the issue of insanity.

4. Another reason why we cannot say that the court abused its discretion in denying the motion for continuance is that appellant did not make his request for a specific period of time. In fact his motion almost constituted a refusal to commit himself as to the period of time desired. The jury had been locked up for nearly six weeks. Would it have been...