People v. Riggs

• Decision Date: 08 March 2004
• Docket Number: No. 02SC543.,02SC543.
• Citation: 87 P.3d 109
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Petitioner v. Randy Dean RIGGS, Respondent.
• Court: Colorado Supreme Court

87 P.3d 109

The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Petitioner v. Randy Dean RIGGS, Respondent.

No. 02SC543.

Supreme Court of Colorado, En Banc.

March 8, 2004.

Rehearing Denied April 5, 2004.¹

Ken Salazar, Attorney General, John T. Bryan, Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Justice Section, Appellate Division, Denver, Colorado, Attorney for Petitioner.

David S. Kaplan, State Public Defender, Mark G. Walta, Deputy State Public Defender, Denver, Colorado, Attorney for Respondent.

Justice COATS delivered the Opinion of the Court.

The People sought review of the court of appeals' judgment in People v. Riggs, 68 P.3d 478 (Colo.App.2002), concerning the temporary removal of an insanity acquittee from the state hospital. The court of appeals reversed the district court's order rejecting the hospital staff's recommendation to permit the temporary removal of Randy Riggs from confinement for treatment and rehabilitation. In the absence of any express articulation of standards in the removal statute, the court of appeals held that the district court should have weighed the rehabilitative potential of removal against the potential danger to the community, giving due consideration to the decisions of the health care professionals, and it should have approved the recommendation unless the district attorney proved by a preponderance of the evidence that removal was unwarranted. Because the court of appeals erred in imposing this burden of proof on what is a matter of discretion for the district court, we reverse.

I.

In April 1981, the respondent, Randy D. Riggs strangled a woman and had sexual intercourse with her dead body. The following day he returned to her home and again had relations with her corpse. Riggs, then sixteen years old, was charged with first-degree murder. In 1982, a jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity, and he was committed to the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo (CMHIP), where he has remained ever since.

From 1990 through 1996, CMHIP gave notice on six different occasions that it intended to authorize temporary removal of Riggs for treatment and rehabilitation. On each occasion, the request for the approval of the district court was either denied or withdrawn by CMHIP. In June 1999, CMHIP again gave notice of its intent to authorize temporary physical removal of Riggs from the hospital for treatment and rehabilitative activities. It sought permission for Riggs to leave the premises in a supervised group and later, when Riggs' doctors thought it was appropriate and without further court order, for unsupervised leave.² The ultimate goal of the treatment was the discharge of Riggs from CMHIP.

The district attorney filed an objection, as permitted by statute, and the court heard the objection³. At the hearing, two of Riggs' treating physicians testified and offered supporting documentation for their medical and professional judgments that Riggs had reached a point in his treatment at which his continuing progress hinged on his transition into off-grounds supervised treatment. They testified that while Riggs would likely retain residual aspects of his antisocial personality disorder, they did not believe that he would pose a danger to himself or others.⁴

Apart from the testimony of the physicians, the hearing consisted of cross-examination by the district attorney; production of letters from the victim's family; and an opportunity for Riggs to address the court and offer a report on his family therapy, a GED and various certificates of completion, and letters of recommendation. The district court took the matter under advisement.

In a lengthy written order, the district court denied the request for temporary removal. After recounting the events leading to the defendant's plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and his subsequent automatic commitment, as well as the history of his behavior and evaluations while confined from that time until the hearing, the district court found that the risk was far too great to permit Riggs to be away from the hospital unsupervised. The district court discounted the assurances and predictions of the hospital staff, in part because of their long-time association with Riggs and because of what it considered to be their desire to recognize the success of their treatment programs for him. Instead it chose to emphasize their agreement that he should not be left alone with any young women, despite his great desire to do so; his diagnosis, including sexual disorder with antisocial and narcissistic features; and the doctors' inability to know for sure if he was able to fool them.

Riggs appealed the district court's refusal to give its approval, and with one member of the panel dissenting, the court of appeals reversed. A majority of the court construed the statutory provisions for temporary removal⁵ to impose, implicitly, a burden on any party objecting to authorization for temporary removal to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that such removal was unwarranted. In addition to failing to reflect any recognition of this burden, the district court's order was also held deficient for failing to reflect a proper determination whether public safety could be ensured while achieving the therapeutic purpose of the release, and to weigh the rehabilitative potential of the temporary removal activities against the potential danger to the community based on the defendant's contact with the public, giving due consideration to the decisions of the health care professionals made in the exercise of their professional judgment. The court of appeals ordered the district court to consider on remand only evidence relevant to these considerations.

The district attorney petitioned this court for a writ of certiorari.

II.

A defendant who is acquitted of a crime by successfully asserting the defense of insanity must be committed to the custody of the Department of Human Services until he is found eligible for release. § 16-8-105(4), 6 C.R.S. (2002). The public safety is clearly identified as the governmental interest supporting this automatic commitment of criminal insanity acquittees. People v. Chavez, 629 P.2d 1040, 1052 (Colo.1981). The state has a legitimate interest in protecting the public from those who have previously engaged in overt criminal conduct but have been relieved of criminal responsibility by reason of legal insanity. Id.; see People v. Logan, 196 Colo. 573, 588 P.2d 870 (1979)

; People v. Howell, 196 Colo. 408, 586 P.2d 27 (1978).

The assertion of the insanity defense and the judicial determination implicit in the insanity adjudication—that the accused engaged in criminal conduct as a result of mental disease or a questionable state of legal sanity—place the legally insane defendant in a special class of persons posing an imminent danger to public safety were they to be immediately released from detention. Chavez, 629 P.2d at 1053. An insanity adjudication therefore results in a presumptive continuation of a state of mental incapacity, and corresponding danger to the public, until it is shown that sanity has been restored. Id. at 1048. According to the sanity provisions applicable at the time of Riggs' conduct, an insanity acquittee becomes eligible for release only when he no longer has a mental condition likely to cause him to be dangerous to himself or others, or to the community, in the reasonably foreseeable future. § 16-8-120(1).

Largely because of this presumptive continuation of a state of mental incapacity and danger to the public, imposing a burden on insanity acquittees to prove their eligibility for release has been upheld as justified under certain circumstances. See Chavez, 629 P.2d at 1050

. Currently, the statutory scheme requires the acquittee to prove his restoration to sanity by a preponderance of the evidence, once any evidence of his insanity is introduced. § 16-8-115(2). In contrast to a person who has been civilly committed, a defendant adjudicated criminally insane has demonstrated by his conduct, as in this case, a likely illness and corresponding danger more threatening to the safety of others. Chavez, 629 P.2d at 1054. The more stringent standards of release applicable to the criminally committed defendant reflect the increased risk to the public associated with the release decision and, as in the case of automatic commitment, those release standards are reasonably related to the state's interest in public safety. Id.; e.g., United States v. Ecker, 543 F.2d 178 (D.C.Cir.1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1063, 97 S.Ct. 788, 50 L.Ed.2d 779 (1977); Logan, 196 Colo. 573,

588 P.2d 870 (1979); Howell, 196 Colo. 408,

586 P.2d 27 (1978); State v. Alto, 589 P.2d 402 (Alaska 1979); In re Lewis, 403 A.2d 1115 (Del.1979).

Even after a finding, whether by court or jury, that the acquittee has been restored to sanity (under the appropriate statutory standard) and therefore must be released, the general assembly accounts for the state's continued interest in public safety by granting to the committing court the discretion to impose conditions on the released acquittee. See § 16-8-115(3)(a). The decision whether to impose terms and conditions, and precisely which terms and conditions to impose, is solely for the court. People v. Giles, 192 Colo. 240, 247, 557 P.2d 408, 413 (1976). Without any specific showing or burden of proof, the statutory scheme grants the discretion to impose such terms and conditions as the court determines are in the best interests of the acquittee and the community. § 16-8-115(3)(a). And although those conditions cannot be punitive in nature, like criminal probationary conditions that are unrelated to the individual seeking release, see Campbell v. Dist. Court, 195 Colo. 304, 577 P.2d 1096 (1978),

it is clearly proper to require an insanity acquittee to accept out-patient care or supervision. See Scheidt v. Meredith, 307 F.Supp. 63 (D.Colo.1970). A defendant who has been conditionally released remains,...