People v. Nash

• Citation: 52 Cal.2d 36,338 P.2d 416
• Decision Date: 24 April 1959
• Docket Number: Cr. 6133
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: PEOPLE of the State of California, Respondent, v. Stephen A. NASH, Appellant.

Page 416

338 P.2d 416

52 Cal.2d 36

PEOPLE of the State of California, Respondent, v. Stephen A. NASH, Appellant.

Cr. 6133.

Supreme Court of California, In Bank.

April 24, 1959.

Richard S. Buckley, Deputy Public Defender, Los Angeles, and George T. Davis, San Francisco, for appellant.

Maxwell E. Greenberg, Los Angeles, as amicus curiae on behalf of appellant.

Stanley Mosk and Edmund G. Brown, Attys. Gen., and Norman H. Sokolow, Deputy Atty. Gen., for respondent.

SCHAUER, Justice.

A jury found defendant guilty of first degree murder of Lawrence Rice (count 1), first degree murder of John Berg (count 2), assault with a deadly weapon upon Dennis Butler (count 3), and assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury upon Dennis Butler (count 4). They fixed the penalty on each murder count at death and found that defendant was sane at the time of every offense. On this appeal from the ensuing judgment and an order denying a new trial, defendant attacks the M'Naughton rule by which California measures the insanity which renders a person incapable of crime ¹ and urges this court 'to re-examine the existing test in California for determining criminal responsibility and to up-date its thinking and rulings on said subject.' We are not convinced that it is necessary or proper for us to undertake this task.

At the trial on the pleas of not guilty defendant introduced no evidence. The prosecution evidence, which includes extrajudicial declarations of defendant, is as follows:

Defendant, 33 years old and of no particular occupation or fixed abode, met Butler (victim of counts 3 and 4, the felonious assaults) for the first time on Los Angeles' 'skid row' on November 16, 1957. At defendant's suggestion they visited bars and drank beer, for which defendant paid. According to Butler, in one of the bars defendant handed Butler $5 as a loan offered by defendant when he learned that Butler was without funds; according to defendant, he produced the $5 when Butler agreed to defendant's request that they indulge in a homosexual relationship. They walked to defendant's hotel room and there drank whiskey. According to Butler, he then for the first time realized that defendant was interested in a homosexual relationship; according to defendant, Butler refused to perform his agreement. Butler ran from the room. Defendant chased him for two or three blocks and demanded and received the $5. When Butler refused to return to the hotel room defendant stabbed him once in the abdomen with a hunting knife. Defendant assisted Butler to the lobby of defendant's hotel. Butler testified that 'It was just getting dark' and, in explanation of his failure to call for help when he was attacked on the street, that it 'seems there was nobody around or nobody that would have done any good at all until I got in the lobby.' There Butler shouted for help. While the hotel clerk was calling the police defendant knocked Butler to the floor and kicked him twice, breaking his collarbone. Defendant fled from the hotel and did not return.

Much of the hereinafter recounted detail as to defendant's conduct is taken from recordings of his extrajudicial statements. For ten days after the assaults on Butler, defendant wandered about Los Angeles and nearby cities. On November 26, 1956, on a street in Long Beach, defendant for the first time met John Berg (victim of count 2, murder). Defendant was annoyed by Berg's homosexual approach, but went with Berg to his apartment in order to obtain a place to sleep. During the night Berg 'kept pestering' defendant with homosexual attentions. In the morning defendant was awakened by Berg 'still fooling around' and stabbed him once in the abdomen and six times in the throat with a knife which defendant described as 'Hunting knife. Ninety-eight cents. Favorite knife. Very cheap and very good. * * * I've gone through about three of them knives.' Defendant washed, searched the apartment for money without success, dressed in a suit of Berg, and departed.

Defendant went to San Diego, then returned to the Los Angeles area. On November 29, 1956, defendant saw ten-year-old Lawrence Rice (victim of count 1, murder) playing on the Ocean Park beach. Defendant bought the boy soft drinks and hamburgers and walked with him along the beach and under the Santa Monica pier. There defendant stabbed the boy several times in the abdomen and about 18 times in the back. Some of the wounds were inflicted before and some after defendant pulled down the child's trousers and underclothes and pulled up his shirt. Defendant slashed the boy's left buttock and departed. He took a bus to Los Angeles and returned to 'skid row.' There, on the afternoon of November 29, 1956, he came to the attention of the police because he happened to be present when they made an arrest unconnected with defendant. When defendant so came to their attention, the officers detained him, checked their records, and found that there was a warrant for his arrest for the Butler assaults.

On the trial of the general issue three court-appointed physicians who were experienced in psychiatry and who had examined defendant (Dr. Marcus Crahan, Dr. Karl Von Hagen, Dr. Robert Wyers) testified to opinions as follows: Defendant's intent when he fatally stabbed Berg and the Rice boy was to obtain sexual sadistic gratification, to torture, and to kill. The intent to torture and kill was deliberately formed and premeditated before defendant inflicted any wound. Before he met Berg or Rice defendant had planned that when he found a suitable victim under circumstances in which he believed he could escape detection he would kill.

At the trial on the sanity issue defendant, the three previously mentioned court-appointed physicians, and Dr. Frederick Hacker, another court-appointed psychiatrist who had examined defendant, were called by the defense and testified to their opinions that defendant was legally sane. Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, a psychiatrist who became interested in defendant and was afforded opportunity to talk with him without defendant's knowing that Kelley was a physician and psychiatrist, testified for the People to the same opinion. The doctors explained that they used the M'Naughton test. Defendant explained that he knew, and 'Any seven year old child knows,' that 'according to your laws' defendant's homicides were wrong and subject to the death penalty, but that in defendant's opinion his slayings were not wrong 'because I am perfectly justified in every carcass I got. * * * I figured that all out. * * * If you want some carcasses you have to pay with your own. That is quite all right as long as you get enough of them.' Asked by the prosecutor whether it was 'a fair statement' that 'You can't and will not conform' to the laws and the rules of society, defendant replied, 'That is correct! Exactly it! I don't have to, with a knife in my hand.'

Defendant, according to his testimony and repeated extrajudicial admissions, had committed eleven homicides including the two for which he was on trial. Five of these he described and police investigation confirmed their commission; others could not be confirmed, for defendant refused to disclose the identity of the victims and the place of the killings because no one would pay him for the information. Defendant, although voluble, also refused to answer some inquiries as to his reactions because, as he testified, they were 'money questions.' Throughout defendant's testimony and extrajudicial declarations runs the theme that law-enforcement officials, psychiatrists, representatives of media of public conmmunication, and even the trial judge and jury should pay defendant for disclosing his actions, thoughts, and feelings. Defendant gave elaborate pseudo-scientific explanations of the reasons for his killings and his asserted belief that they were justified. ²

The instruction ³ on the issue of insanity are based upon the M'Naughton rule. Defendant did not request instructions presenting any other rule, but from the proceedings during the taking of testimony and from the hereinafter described state of the California law it is obvious that any such request would have been useless and we do not at all base our decision upon defendant's failure to request different or additional instructions. A history of M'Naughton in this state is as follows:

The basic M'Naughton rule (stated ante, footnote 1) was approved in People v. Coffman (1864), 24 Cal. 230, 235. In 1872 when the Legislature enacted the Penal Code (including the provision of section 21 that 'All persons are of sound mind who are neither idiots nor lunatics, nor affected with insanity' and the provision of section 26 that 'All persons are capable of committing crimes, except * * * 3. Lunatics and insane persons') it presumably had the Coffman decision in mind and intended to leave its definition of insanity in effect (see Cole v. Rush (1955), 45 Cal.2d 345, 355(8-9), 289 P.2d 450, 54 A.L.R.2d 1137). Also the Political Code, to be construed as passed at the same moment and part of the same statute as the Penal Code (Pol.Code, § 4480), provided (§ 4468) that 'The common law of England, so far as it is not repugnant to or inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, or the Constitution or laws of this State, is the rule of decision in all the courts of this State.' And the code commissioners cited the Coffman case in their note to subdivision 3 (supra) of Penal Code section 26 (hereinafter quoted in full) and, quoting from that case in their note to section 1016 of the Penal Code (under which the issue of insanity was formerly raised by the plea of not guilty; as hereinafter stated, our code has since been amended to provide for specific plea of, and separate trial of the issue of, not guilty by reason of insanity), stated that 'The unsoundness of mind, or insanity, ⁴ that will constitute a defense in criminal actions is well described by Tindal, C....