Johnson v. State

• Decision Date: 21 October 1975
• Docket Number: No. 30223,30223
• Citation: 235 Ga. 486,220 S.E.2d 448
• Parties: Walter Henry JOHNSON v. The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

Page 448

220 S.E.2d 448

235 Ga. 486

Walter Henry JOHNSON v. The STATE.

No. 30223.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Oct. 21, 1975.

Rehearing Denied Nov. 4, 1975.

Grace W. Thomas, Atlanta, for appellant.

John T. Strauss, Dist. Atty., Covington, Arthur K. Bolton, Atty. Gen., G. Stephen Parker, Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta, for appellee.

HALL, Justice.

Defendant Dr. Walter Henry Johnson appeals from a jury verdict finding him guilty of the murder of his wife. His main defense at trial was temporary insanity caused by withdrawal from the use of Ritalin, a drug taken by the doctor for treatment of narcolepsy. He enumerates fourteen points as error. We, however, affirm.

Dr. Johnson had been licensed to practice medicine in Virginia, but had not practiced since 1970 when he had been disabled by the onset of narcolepsy, uncontrollable sleep, after an automobile accident. Thereafter, Dr. Johnson and his wife, a former nurse, had retired to a lakeside cabin on Lake Jackson in Newton County. In order to control his sleeping, he had been taking, with some success, the drug Ritalin in an injectable form, since the tablet form had undersirable side effects. There is evidence that he had tried other medications, but that none worked as desirably as the injectable Ritalin. Dr. Johnson visited and was prescribed for by a local doctor, who took little initiative in treating his patient, but left him to dictate his own treatment. In addition to the Ritalin, Dr. Johnson drank large amounts of wine and took Darvon, a common pain killer.

In February of 1974, the only drug company that made injectable Ritalin stopped producing it. As a result of its loss, Dr. Johnson was no longer able to function and became bed-ridden. He and his wife with the local doctor's knowledge, thus began to experiment with grinding up Ritalin tablets in a blender and administering the resulting suspension rectally by enema. This avoided the undesirable side effect of orally taking the tablets, but by the doctor's own testimony was uncertain as to dosage. However, by May of 1974, the doctor was using a suspension containing about half of the maximum recommended oral dosage and was able to get out of bed for periods of 30 to 40 minutes and talk with John Johnson, his son by a previous marriage who came to visit after an absence of over four years. During this visit, father and son embarked on long philosophical discussions before John left to go home to Tampa, Florida.

On Saturday of that week, June 8, 1974, John received an early morning phone call from his father who appeared nervous and agitated, and asked John to return to Lake Jackson so that he could tell John something which he could not say over the phone. Mrs. Johnson also encouraged him to come. John arrived in Atlanta after four that afternoon and called his father. They made arrangements for John to take a cab to the Covington Post Office where Mrs. Johnson would pick him up by car. Though he did not speak to his step-mother over the phone, he could hear her talking in the background. He described his father as 'very excited' and 'tense,' and 'much more excited, elevated'; 'he was either on (drugs) or very worried.' He arrived at the designated spot at about 6:30 and waited until 10:00, when he again called his father who said his wife was dead but he did not know how it happened. At that time his father appeared 'still excited, but a little more calm than the last time I had talked to him.' John managed to get a ride home and found his step-mother dead from shotgun wounds and his father 'in shock or near hysteria and incomprehensible.'

The ambulance driver, two sheriffs and the county coroner all testified to the strange and confused behavior of the doctor and likened him to a person intoxicated or on drugs, although none of them suspected or tested for alcoholic intoxication. An inmate in the county jail who shared the cell with the doctor after his arrest also attested to the confused rambling and delusional character of the doctor's behavior and to the fact that the doctor appeared to be on drugs. He testified that the doctor claimed he was Jesus Christ and that he would get them all out of jail, and admitted killing his wife by shooting her with a shotgun. The doctor also tried to drown himself by putting his head down a commode.

In view of the doctor's state, he was sent by court order to Milledgeville where he was examined by Dr. Carl Smith on Monday, June 10, only two days after the shooting. He said that Dr. Johnson was suffering from toxic psychosis and was out of his mind, that he could not care for himself, and that he was confused, disoriented, hallucinating and his judgment was impaired. He stated that Dr. Johnson did not know right from wrong when he was admitted to the Binion Center at Milledgeville, and also testified that the cause of the toxic psychosis could have been either an overdose or withdrawal from Ritalin, or a combination of excessive use of Ritalin and excessive use of Darvon and alcohol.

Dr. Johnson testified that that week he told his wife he had decided not to use any more Ritalin and not to give him any more, but that he did not remember from that point until he 'work up in the hole' at Milledgeville anything that happened concerning his wife, his time in jail, or whether or not he was given any more Ritalin doses by her.

1. Dr. Johnson enumerates as error the failure of the trial court to give the charges he requested on intoxication caused by the use of drugs. He wished to have the jury instructed that intoxication caused by drugs taken as directed under a doctor's prescription would be involuntary, that if the use of drugs destroys one's knowledge of right and wrong he cannot be held responsible for the crime, and that withdrawal of Ritalin as well as overdose may cause psychosis.

The relevant code section dealing with intoxication is Code Ann. § 26-704. 'A person shall not be found guilty of a crime when at the time of the act, omission, or negligence constituting the crime, such person, because of involuntary intoxication, did not have sufficient mental capacity to distinguish between right and wrong in relation to such act. Involuntary intoxication means intoxication caused (a) by consumption of a substance through excusable ignorance and (b) by the coercion, fraud, artifice, or contrivance of another person. Voluntary intoxication shall not be an excuse for any criminal act or omission.' The state's theory of the case was that Dr. Johnson's condition was caused by voluntary intoxication due to his experimentation with the rectal suspension of Ritalin. The defense claimed the toxic psychosis caused by withdrawal of the Ritalin taken under a doctor's prescription was 'excusable ignorance' under the statute and thus involuntary.

There are no cases in Georgia dealing directly with this point. However, the doctor urges in support of his contentions, the comments to the code which offer the explanation that involuntary intoxication may be 'due to excusable ignorance such as reliance upon a physician's prescription or mistake as to the identity of a substance consumed.' Committee Ntes, Code Ann. Ch. 26-7, § 26-704 (p. 67). However, it was clear from his own statement that the doctor was not taking the drug Ritalin as directed by a doctor's prescription. It thus was not error to refuse to charge the jury as requested by the defendant where the evidence did not support such a charge. Ward v. State, 199 Ga. 203, 33 S.E.2d 689.

Furthermore, the charge did include a verbatim reading of the code section on intoxication, which afforded the jury an opportunity to find him not guilty if the withdrawal was caused by 'excusable ignorance,' which the jury was left free to define. Therefore, the refusal of the request in light of the entire charge and the evidence in the case was, if anything, beneficial to the defendant.

It also was not error to refuse to charge that where a drug destroys one's knowledge of right and wrong one cannot be held responsible for the crime. The trial court did charge that '. . . if because of alcohol, drugs or narcotics, one's mind becomes so emptied as to render him incapable of forming an intent to do the act charged or to understand that a certain consequence will likely result from it, he would not be criminally liable for his act.' See Code Ann. § 26-601. 'The court thus substantially covered the principles embodied in the requested charges and it was not error to refuse to give the requested instructions in the exact language requested.' Jackson v. State, 225 Ga. 553, 561, 170 S.E.2d 281, 287.

The requested charge on intoxication by withdrawal of Ritalin was a question of expert textimony to be determined as a fact question by the jury, not by the court as a matter of law. The court adequately charged the jury on expert testimony. It is not error to refuse to charge where the request is argumentative, summing up facts favorable to the defendant's theory of innocence. Miles v. State, 93 Ga. 117, 19 S.E. 805.

We therefore hold that the trial court properly and adequately instructed the jury on the issue of voluntary and involuntary intoxication.

2. Dr. Johnson also argues that the evidence presented by the defense had destroyed the presumption of sanity and that it was, therefore, error to charge the jury on the presumption. This contention is without merit for 'the jury is free to reject the testimony of expert (and lay) witnesses as to the sanity of the accused and rely on the presumption of sanity.' Carter v. State, 225 Ga. 310, 311, 168 S.E.2d 158, 159. Accord, Boyd v. State, 207 Ga. 567, 63 S.E.2d 394.

Defendant's reliance on Handspike v. State, 203 Ga. 115, 45 S.E.2d 662 is misplaced. In that case a jury at a special hearing on insanity had previously found the defendant insane and incompetent to stand trial. Thus a presumption of continued insanity had arisen which the state had the burden of overcoming at the...