James v. State
| Decision Date | 12 February 1974 |
| Docket Number | No. 171S9,171S9 |
| Citation | 261 Ind. 495,307 N.E.2d 59,40 Ind.Dec. 584 |
| Parties | Leonard B. JAMES, Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee. |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
Harriette Bailey Conn, Public Defender of Indiana, Malcolm K. McClintick, Deputy Public Defender, for appellant.
Theodore L. Sendak, Atty. Gen., Robert E. Dwyer, Deputy Atty. Gen., for appellee.
This is a belated appeal under Post-Conviction Remedy Rule 2, § 2(b).
Defendant (Appellant), an indigent, was charged with first degree murder, convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to imprisonment for life. The victim was his former wife, she having obtained a divorce from him shortly prior to the murder. Pleas of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity were entered, and the court appointed two physicians to examine the defendant as to his sanity as of the date of the homicide. The appeal presents three issues considered in the following order:
I. The verdict was not sustained by the evidence, in that the State failed to carry its burden of proving the defendant's sanity at the time of the homicide, and specifically that it failed to prove that he had the power of will to resist an impulse to commit the homicide.
II. The judgment was contrary to law, in that the statute under which he was examined for a determination of his sanity is unconstitutional in that it permits physicians having no specialized training and experience in psychiatry or psychology to express to the jury their opinion upon the issue of the defendant's sanity. Alternatively, that the judgment was contrary to law in that the case law of Indiana required the examining physicians to have special qualifications in the area of psychiatry or psychology.
III. The aforesaid statute was unconstitutionally applied to the defendant, because as an indigent he was unable to rebut the evidence presented by the court appointed physician by other expert testimony.
ISSUE I. The evidence produced at the trial, viewed most favorably to the State, disclosed that on two occasions several months prior to the homicide, the defendant expressed a design to kill the decedent. On the morning of the homicide, the decedent drove her automobile into a mid-city parking lot in the city of Indianapolis, and the defendant drove his automobile into the lot along side her. The parking lot attendant advised the decedent that the lot was full, but when she attempted to leave, the defendant maneuvered his automobile into such a position as to block her exit. Decedent locked the doors of her automobile, as the defendant attempted to enter it. He returned to his automobile, got a hammer and began breaking the windows of the locked vehicle, first on the passenger side and then on the driver's side. Thereupon, the decedent got out of her automobile and ran down the street; but the defendant dropped the hammer and ran after her, pulling a gun from his pocket as he ran. As they ran, the defendant caught the decedent by the arm and she fell to the pavement. The defendant then fired three shots, reloaded his gun and fired five more shots. He was apprehended by a police officer while attempting to reload his gun a second time. The deceased was struck by four of the bullets from the defendant's gun and died as a result.
The defendant was arrested at the scene immediately following the above related encounter. He appeared calm. He followed the arresting officer's instructions. He made various statements acknowledging that he had shot his wife and said that he did so because she had gotten everything in the divorce action, that he just got mad, and that he shot her to get rid of her and to make sure that she did not do to anyone else what she had done to him. At the hospital, while the police interrogated both the decedent and the defendant, he said to the decedent that he shot her and that he would no longer have to support her family.
Upon the foregoing evidence, the jury was warranted in finding that the defendant was not acting under an irresistible impulse at the time he killed the decedent. Although the medical experts failed to testify with specificity concerning the defendant's power of will to resist an impulse to commit the homicide, they both concluded their testimony with their opinion that he was legally sane at the time of the offense. Even without this testimony, however, or even if the medical testimony had supported the defendant's contention that he acted under an irresistible impulse, the jury was justified, from the other evidence, in concluding that such was not the fact. The ultimate determination of legal sanity was to be made by the jury from all of the evidence of probative value. Doubtlessly, the evidence of declarations made several months earlier to the affect that he would kill the decedent, together with his actions immediately prior to the killing, those occurring during the actual assault and his statements made shortly thereafter weighed heavily upon the jury's determination. They indicated a purposeful killing and not a yielding to an irresistible impulse.
The following language from United States v. Freeman (2d Cir. 1966), 357 F.2d 606, 619, quoted by this Court in Hill v. State (1969), 252 Ind. 601, 617, 251 N.E.2d 429, 438 explains the responsibility of the jury in such matters.
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