Lipscomb v. State, 97
| Decision Date | 13 December 1960 |
| Docket Number | No. 97,97 |
| Citation | 165 A.2d 918,223 Md. 599 |
| Parties | Nathaniel LIPSCOMB v. STATE of Maryland. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Robert B. Watts, Baltimore (Benjamin L. Brown and Brown, Allen & Watts, Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.
Robert C. Murphy, Asst. Atty. Gen. (C. Ferdinand Sybert, Atty. Gen., Saul A. Harris, Joseph G. Koutz and Charles E. Moylan, Jr., State's Atty., Deputy State's Atty., and Asst. State's Atty., respectively, of Baltimore City, Baltimore, on the brief), for appellee.
Before BRUNE, C. J., and HENDERSON, HAMMOND, PRESCOTT and HORNEY, JJ.
Nathaniel Lipscomb, the appellant, was arrested in Baltimore City on April 18, 1959, and was subsequently indicted for the rape and murder of Lottie Kight (indictments Nos. 1603 and 1600 respectively), the rape and murder of Pearl Weiss (indictments Nos. 1602 and 1599 respectively) and the rape and murder of Mae Hall (indictments Nos. 1601 and 1598 respectively). He was arraigned on May 12, 1959, at which time he pleaded not guilty to each of the charges. On the day following his arraignment Lipscomb added pleas in each case of not guilty by reason of insanity, one (the second plea) on the ground that he was insane at the time of the alleged commission of the offenses charged and the other (the third plea) on the ground that he was 'insane now', to his original plea of not guilty. Thereafter, in accordance with an order of the Criminal Court of Baltimore, appellant was sent to the Patuxent Institution for electroen-cephalographic studies, and on December 14, 1959, an order was issued by that court directing his examination by the Psychiatric Staff of the Maximum Security Hospital at Jessups, Maryland.
Three separate trials were subsequently held before Judges Cullen and Carter sitting without a jury, each of which included the indictments for the rape and murder of one of the women. At each of these trials appellant stood on his pleas of not guilty, and of not guilty by reason of insanity at the time of the alleged offense, but abandoned his third plea of not guilty by reason of insanity at the time of trial. In each of the cases appellant was found guilty, as charged, of the rape and first degree murder of one of the women and on February 26, 1960, he was sentenced to death for the first degree murder of Lottie Kight. Sentence on each of the other five convictions was suspended pending execution of the sentence imposed for the first degree murder of Lottie Kight. All are appealable. See Code (1957), Art. 5, Sec. 13.
The appellant first claims that the trial court erred in finding him to have been sane at the time of the commission of each of the crimes for which he was convicted. He contends that sufficient evidence of insanity on his part was introduced to shift the burden to the State to prove him to have been sane at the time these offenses were committed, that the State failed to prove that he was sane at these times, and hence that the trial court was in error in finding him sane at such times. Second, the appellant claims that the evidence of rape and murder in each of the cases was insufficient to warrant the trial court's finding him guilty of those offenses.
We shall first review the evidence bearing on the question of the appellant's alleged insanity. Lipscomb was examined by Dr. Morganstern, of the State Department of Psychiatry, who is the Superintendent of the Maximum Security Hospital at Jessups. Dr. Morganstern had before him a copy of a statement made to the police by Lipscomb with regard to the Pearl Weiss case. He also had a copy of a report concerning Lipscomb made by Dr. Guttmacher, the Medical Director of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City and a very well known psychiatrist, and a copy of the report of Dr. Ainsworth, a psychologist for the Supreme Bench. 1 Dr. Morganstern was assisted by Dr. Oropollo, a psychologist who works with him frequently. He (Dr. Morganstern) obtained information showing that a mental hospital where Lipscomb had been a patient some years before had found him to be a defective with an I.Q. of 51. Dr. Morganstern and Dr. Oropollo rated him somewhat higher as a result of their tests, finding that his I.Q. performance was 57 and his full scale I.Q. was 57. They classified him as a 'moderate defective' from the point of view of intelligence.
Dr. Morganstern was the only psychiatrist who testified in the case. He testified at length with regard to his examination of Lipscomb, which was made in December, 1959. In short, he found Lipscomb sane at the time of the examination within the rule adopted by this Court in Spencer v. State, 69 Md. 28, 37, 13 A. 809, 2 but he could not determine whether or not the defendant was insane eight months or a year prior to the time of his examination, which were the dates when the offenses here charged had been committed.
There was some testimony by Lipscomb to the effect that a number of years previously he had been charged with the murder of a woman in Charlotte, North Carolina, that he was not guilty of the charge, but that he had confessed to it, that he was sent (at the instance of his sister) to a mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, where he had stayed about six months, and that he had then been released and was never tried for that offense. Some information regarding this matter (including the report of his I.Q. test above mentioned) was before Dr. Morganstern at the time of his examination. Lipscomb's testimony about his stay and examination at Goldsboro was very vague, apparently because it had been so long ago that he had forgotten the details relating to it. How long ago it actually was does not appear, but Lipscomb's testimony indicates that he had been living in Baltimore for six years and that it had been prior to his coming there. So far as the record before us shows, this hospital reported that Lipscomb was of low intellectual capacity, but there is nothing to show any report of insanity. The fact that he was released implies that he was not regarded as insane.
Dr. Morganstern considered it possible that at some time in the future Lipscomb might 'break with reality and go into an actual psychotic condition,' but his testimony indicates that he was speaking only of a future possibility, not of something which had previously happened. He also noted the possibility that the use of alcohol might lower Lipscomb's inhibitory forces, and he found the thing which bothered him most about Lipscomb was the defendant's apparent indifference to the seriousness of his predicament. That, however, would seem to relate to his present, rather than his past, mental condition; and Dr. Morganstern definitely considered Lipscomb sane at the time when he displayed this indifference.
Lipscomb claimed to have been under the influence of alcohol at the time of each of the acts of sexual intercourse, which he admitted in...
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