People v. Hill

• Decision Date: 17 March 1997
• Docket Number: No. 96SC170,96SC170
• Citation: 934 P.2d 821
• Parties: 21 Colorado Journal 380 The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Petitioner, v. Edwin D. HILL, Respondent.
• Court: Colorado Supreme Court

Page 821

934 P.2d 821

21 Colorado Journal 380

The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Petitioner, v. Edwin D. HILL, Respondent.

No. 96SC170.

Supreme Court of Colorado En Banc.

March 17, 1997.

Rehearing Denied April 7, 1997.

Gale A. Norton, Attorney General, Martha Phillips Allbright, Chief Deputy Attorney General, Richard A. Westfall, Solicitor General, John Daniel Dailey, Deputy Attorney General, Robert Mark Russel, First Assistant Attorney General, Laurie A. Booras, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Enforcement Section, Denver, for Petitioner.

David F. Vela, Colorado State Public Defender, C. Keith Pope, Deputy State Public Defender, Denver, for Respondent.

Justice MARTINEZ delivered the Opinion of the Court.

We granted certiorari to review the decision of the court of appeals in People v. Hill, 920 P.2d 828 (Colo.App.1995), and decide whether a defendant is entitled to have the question of his sanity determined by a jury where he has presented no evidence of insanity. The trial court instructed the jury that the law presumes everyone to be sane and that the defense had failed to present any evidence of insanity. The jury found the defendant sane at the time of the commission of the charged offenses. The court of appeals held that the jury instruction amounted to a directed verdict against the defendant which violated the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial and that the instruction impermissibly characterized the presumption of sanity as a mandatory presumption. Hill, 920 P.2d at 830, 831. The court of appeals reversed the trial court judgment and ordered a new trial on the issue of sanity. Id. at 831. We reverse.

I.

In 1988, the prosecution charged Edwin D. Hill with six counts of aggravated robbery in violation of section 18-4-302, 8B C.R.S. (1986), after Hill allegedly robbed several individuals at gunpoint on separate occasions. Hill pled not guilty by reason of insanity and a trial was held to determine if Hill was legally insane at the time of the offenses, pursuant to section 16-8-105(2), 8A C.R.S. (1986). Hill presented an expert witness, Dr. Dean Plazak, who testified at Hill's first sanity trial that in his opinion, at the time of the armed robberies, Hill suffered from a condition known as cocaine delusional disorder. According to Dr. Plazak, this disorder is characterized by a psychosis resulting from brain damage caused by long-term cocaine use. Dr. Plazak also testified that this psychosis can remain with a drug user for months after the user has ceased to ingest cocaine, and that its symptoms, which resemble those of paranoid schizophrenia, include delusions, visual hallucinations, and "formication." ¹

The jury returned a verdict finding Hill legally sane at the time of the commission of the armed robberies. Another jury found Hill guilty of five of the six counts of aggravated robbery at the conclusion of a separate trial on the merits. Hill appealed the decision to the court of appeals, asserting that the trial court committed reversible errors during both trials.

The court of appeals affirmed Hill's conviction on the merits, but reversed the judgment of sanity and remanded for a new trial on the sanity issue. People v. Hill, No. 90CA0466, slip op. at 1, 13 (Colo.App. July 23, 1992) (not selected for publication). The court of appeals held that the trial court abused its discretion in denying Hill's challenge for cause as to one of the prospective jurors and that this error was not harmless. Id. at 5.

Before commencement of the defendant's second sanity trial, we issued our decision in Bieber v. People, 856 P.2d 811 (Colo.1993). In Bieber, we declined to recognize "settled insanity" as a valid insanity defense and upheld the trial court's denial of the defendant's request for a jury instruction on that defense. Id. at 818. We defined settled insanity as " 'insanity' arising from the long-term use of intoxicants but separate from immediate intoxication," id. at 815, and stated that, in terms of moral blameworthiness, "[t]here is no principled basis to distinguish between the short-term and long-term effects of voluntary intoxication by punishing the first and excusing the second." Id. at 817. ²

Hill conceded that, after Bieber, Dr. Plazak's testimony was no longer relevant to the issue of Hill's legal insanity at the time of the robberies because it only supported a settled insanity defense. Hill presented no other expert witnesses to testify to his mental condition at his second sanity trial. Instead, Hill relied solely on his own testimony as evidence of insanity and contended that this evidence was sufficient to overcome the statutory presumption of sanity.

Hill testified that his long history of drug use resulted in his becoming involved in various criminal activities and suffering from extensive loss of memory. He also testified that he suffered from a mental disease or defect in that "[his] mental process was that of a drug addict." He stated that "during those years" he was not thinking at all, was "just going through the motions," and that "only sometimes" did he perceive the difference between right and wrong. He explained that "something may be right in the eyes of the social public, but, to me, it wasn't or that it didn't make that much of a difference." Hill further testified that during the three-month period in which he committed the charged offenses he suffered from feelings of isolation and depression.

During extensive and detailed questioning, Hill repeatedly denied having any recollection of the armed robberies for which he was charged. He denied any memory of the people or places involved. As a result of his claim that he suffered nearly total lack of recall as to any of the details of his daily life when the crimes were committed, he did not testify as to his mental condition at the specific times of the commission of the offenses, but only generally during a three month period surrounding the crimes and in the years preceding the crimes.

The trial court found that no evidence had been introduced about Hill's state of mind at the time of the commission of the offenses, and that Hill's state of mind at unspecified times was a result of voluntary intoxication. The trial court concluded that the statutory presumption of sanity had not been overcome and issued the following instruction to the jury:

Instruction No. 4

The law presumes everyone to be sane. The People have rested on the presumption of sanity. No evidence of insanity has been presented by the defense.

The jury returned a verdict finding the defendant sane at the time of the commission of the armed robberies.

On appeal, Hill argued that the trial court erred in submitting this instruction because it effectively directed a verdict against Hill in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Hill did not challenge the trial court's finding that the defense did not present any evidence of insanity, although Hill's trial attorney had disagreed with the trial court's conclusion. Nor did Hill argue on appeal that evidence of the state of mind of the defendant, while probative of settled insanity, was also admissible to show that the defendant was insane at the time of the commission of the offenses pursuant to the statutory definition of insanity. ³ In Bieber we rejected the defense of settled insanity and approved a trial court's denial of an instruction on that defense, 856 P.2d at 818, but we did not address whether evidence probative of settled insanity is admissible to show insanity as defined by the General Assembly. We accept the trial court's finding that no evidence of insanity was presented and confine our analysis to the issue raised before the court of appeals and presented for review by the petition for certiorari. See Cherry Hills Resort Dev. Co. v. City of Cherry Hills Village, 757 P.2d 622, 625 n. 3 (Colo.1988). We do not address whether the trial court's finding of no evidence of insanity was erroneous or whether evidence was improperly excluded because it was probative of settled insanity.

We granted certiorari to determine: "Whether a defendant is entitled to have the question of his sanity determined by a jury where he has presented no evidence of insanity sufficient to overcome the presumption of sanity."

II.

In order to resolve the issue before us, we must first determine whether the statutory procedure in effect in Colorado at the time of Hill's offenses requires the sanity issue to be submitted to the jury where no evidence of insanity has been introduced. We then must determine whether the court of appeals correctly concluded that the Sixth Amendment right to a trial by jury in criminal cases requires the sanity issue to be submitted to the jury in the absence of any evidence of insanity.

A.

The defense of insanity is raised by a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity made at the time of arraignment. People v. Low, 732 P.2d 622, 629 (1987); see § 16-8-103(1), 8A C.R.S. (1996 Supp.); see also § 18-1-802(1), 8B C.R.S. (1996 Supp.). For offenses committed before July 1, 1995, Colorado employs a bifurcated trial procedure if an insanity plea is made, and the sanity issue is resolved first in a separate proceeding. See § 16-8-104, 8A C.R.S. (1996 Supp.). If a defendant is found to have been insane at the time of the commission of the offense, no trial on the merits is held because the defendant is deemed not to be responsible for his acts. See § 16-8-105(4), 8A C.R.S. (1996 Supp.); § 18-1-802(1), 8B C.R.S. (1996 Supp.). ⁴ Conversely, a finding of sanity causes the case to proceed to a separate trial on the merits, ⁵ and puts the case in the same posture as if the defendant had never entered an insanity plea. Although the disposition of the sanity issue is resolved in a separate proceeding from the disposition of the defendant's plea of not guilty, the two proceedings constitute one trial. See Leick v. People, 136 Colo. 535, 543-44, 322 P.2d 674,...