Matter of Samuels, 85-405.

• Decision Date: 02 April 1986
• Docket Number: No. 85-405.,85-405.
• Parties: In the Matter of Russell SAMUELS.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

507 A.2d 150

In the Matter of Russell SAMUELS.

No. 85-405.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued January 23, 1986.

Decided April 2, 1986.

Maureen T. Cannon, Public Defender Service, with whom James Klein and Mark S. Carlin were on brief, for appellant.

Ilene G. Rosenthal, Asst. U.S. Atty., with whom Joseph E. diGenova, U.S. Atty., and Michael W. Farrell, Thomas J. Tourish, Jr. and Diane G. Clark, Asst. U.S. Attys., were on brief, for appellee.

Before PRYOR, Chief Judge, FERREN, Associate Judge, and SALZMAN, Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.¹

SALZMAN, Associate Judge:

Russell Samuels appeals his civil commitment to Saint Elizabeths Hospital for mental illness. That commitment stems from October 8, 1984, when Metropolitan Police Officer George P. Dodson found Mr. Samuels speaking incoherently and wandering aimlessly amidst moving automobile traffic on the freeway ramp leading to Maine Avenue. Officer Dodson brought Mr. Samuels to Saint Elizabeths Hospital where he was admitted on an emergency basis. The Hospital superintendent thereafter petitioned for Mr. Samuels' hospitalization under court order pursuant to D.C. Code §§ 21-541 et seq. (1981). After the Mental Health Commission recommended that Mr. Samuels be committed to Saint Elizabeths he demanded a jury trial. On February 5, 1985 a jury found Mr. Samuels mentally ill and as a result likely to injure himself or others if allowed to remain at liberty. On March 6, 1985 the Court ordered Mr. Samuels committed indefinitely to Saint Elizabeths Hospital.

Mr. Samuels asserts on appeal that: (1) the jury was improperly told of his previous commitments to mental hospitals; (2) Hospital counsel improperly argued the truth of hearsay evidence to the jury; (3) the evidence of his dangerous behavior was insufficient to support commitment; and (4) the jury was improperly permitted to consider his penchant for disrobing in front of women as an act likely to injure others. None of those assertions is well-founded and we affirm the commitment order.

I

A civil commitment proceeding focuses on the respondent's mental condition at the time of the hearing. The jury must determine whether clear and convincing evidence shows the person before it currently mentally ill and likely to be dangerous to self or others because of that illness if allowed to remain at liberty. D.C. Code § 21-545(b) (1981); In re Morrow, 463 A.2d 689, 692 (D.C. 1983); In re Mendoza, 433 A.2d 1069, 1070-71 (D.C. 1981). An earlier jury's determination of an individual's mental state at some past time is not proof of his or her current condition. Accordingly, the prior determination is inadmissible at a later commitment hearing and counsel may not mention it to the jury. In re Lomax, 367 A.2d 1272, 1281-82 (D.C. 1976), reversed on other grounds and vacated en banc, 386 A.2d 1185 (D.C. 1978).

In this case Dr. Virginia Ladendorf, the Saint Elizabeths staff psychiatrist treating Mr. Samuels, and Mrs. Vera Samuels, respondent's mother, testified for the Hospital. In explaining why she believed Mr. Samuels currently mentally ill and dangerous, Dr. Ladendorf told the jury about information she said came from records of respondent's prior hospitalizations for mental illness. And Mr. Samuels' mother mentioned in her testimony that her son had been hospitalized previously and that she had sought his commitment in the past. Mr. Samuels now urges that the testimony of these two witnesses, taken together, improperly alerted the jury to an earlier jury's determination of his mental state. This, he contends, violates the ruling in Lomax, supra, and warrants setting aside his present commitment.

Mr. Samuels misreads the Lomax opinion. The vice discerned there was defense counsel deliberately calling the jury's attention to an earlier jury's finding that Mr. Lomax was not dangerous. The opinion condemned counsel's intentional disclosure of that irrelevant and unprobative evidence.² In contrast, in the case now before us Hospital counsel made no mention of prior judicial determinations of Mr. Samuels' mental state. The remarks by Mr. Samuels' mother that she would "go to court and get a commitment" when her son's behavior deteriorated were no more than passing comments in her testimony, neither deliberately elicited nor improperly emphasized by Hospital counsel. See id., 367 A.2d at 1282. Mr. Samuels' trial counsel apparently did not deem the matter prejudicial, for she made no objections and requested no cautionary instructions on this issue.

Similarly, Dr. Ladendorf's references to Mr. Samuels' prior hospitalizations were permissible. The psychiatrist was entitled to review and rely on information in the records of Mr. Samuels' previous stays in mental hospitals in diagnosing his present condition.³ Given her diagnosis that Mr. Samuels' mental condition was a chronic one, the psychiatrist's mention of his earlier hospitalizations and incidents occurring during them was appropriate and could have been anticipated.⁴ The jury was entitled to learn the factors underlying the doctor's diagnosis in order to weigh it in their deliberations. L.C.D. v. District of Columbia, 488 A.2d 918, 921 n. 8 (D.C. 1985); Brown v. United States, 126 U.S. App.D.C. 134, 142, 375 F.2d 310, 318 (1966), cert. denied, 388 U.S. 915, 87 S.Ct. 2133, 19 L.Ed.2d 1359 (1967). Moreover, Mr. Samuels is not in a position to complain about the jury's awareness of his prior hospitalizations. His own trial counsel effectively brought that information to the jury's attention by questions at the voir dire.

Whether considered singly or in combination, the testimony of the psychiatrist and respondent's mother violated no principle enunciated in Lomax. Admission of their testimony was therefore not "plain error" that the trial court was obliged to notice sua sponte to protect the respondent's rights. We accordingly find no merit to Mr. Samuels' arguments that his commitment must be set aside on this ground.

II

In explaining the basis for her opinion that Mr. Samuels was mentally ill and dangerous, Dr. Ladendorf testified about a number of incidents of his aberrant behavior. Some of these the doctor observed herself (e.g., his running his head into a wall), but others (such as his striking staff members and other patients and his breaking furniture) she learned from notations in Mr. Samuels' medical records. Mr. Samuels contended below that those notations were hearsay and admissible only to permit the jury to weigh the psychiatrist's opinion but not for the truthfulness of the incidents reported. He therefore requested the jury to be instructed accordingly. The

Hospital did not object and the trial court did instruct the jury twice to that effect, once immediately before Dr. Ladendorf testified and again in closing instructions.⁵

Mr. Samuels now complains that, despite those instructions, Hospital counsel improperly argued the truth of those hearsay statements in closing argument to the jury. The Hospital denies this allegation. The Hospital also points out that Mr. Samuels' trial counsel raised no objections to its arguments, although the trial judge expressly invited counsel to do so if any error in the closing remarks was perceived.

Given this posture of the case, we may set aside the commitment only if Hospital counsel's argument was so egregious that the trial court committed "plain error" in not giving further cautionary instructions or otherwise remedying the error; that is to say "the error complained of must be so clearly prejudicial to substantial rights as to jeopardize the very fairness and integrity of the trial." Chavarria v. United States, 505 A.2d 59, 63 (D.C. 1986) (quoting Watts v. United States, 362 A.2d 706, 709 (D.C. 1976) (en banc)).

We have reviewed the transcript of Hospital counsel's closing arguments with those considerations in mind. Without rehearsing everything counsel said, we note that her comments to the jury included explicit references to the trial court's instructions about the correct use of the psychiatrist's testimony; clearly counsel sought to conform her argument to those guidelines. Even if we accept for purposes of argument that Hospital counsel was not entirely successful in her endeavor to do so, the hearsay Mr. Samuels complains about was the kind psychiatrists customarily rely upon in formulating an opinion of a patient's mental condition. It was therefore properly brought to the jury's attention.⁶ Mr. Samuels concedes, moreover, that the medical records containing the information were not inherently inadmissible but could...