Quesnell v. State

• Citation: 517 P.2d 568,83 Wn.2d 224
• Decision Date: 28 December 1973
• Docket Number: No. 42587,42587
• Parties: In the Matter of Joyce Quesnell, a/k/a Joyce Priestman, a mentally ill person. Joyce QUESNELL, Appellant, v. STATE of Washington, Respondent.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Washington

Page 224

83 Wn.2d 224

517 P.2d 568

In the Matter of Joyce Quesnell, a/k/a Joyce Priestman, a

mentally ill person.

Joyce QUESNELL, Appellant, v. STATE of Washington, Respondent.

No. 42587.

Supreme Court of Washington, En Banc.

Dec. 28, 1973.

As Corrected March 4, 1974.

Lundin, Estep, Sindell & Haley, Inc., P. Landon R. Estep, Abraham A. Arditi, Legal Services Center, Seattle, for appellant.

Christopher T. Bayley, King County Pros. Atty., Michael L. Cohen, Carolyn P. Garbutt, Deputy Pros. Attys., Seattle, for respondent.

FINLEY, Associate Justice.

This appeal concerns a mental illness civil commitment proceeding brought against the appellant, Joyce Quesnell, pursuant to RCW 71.02.120. The appeal is taken from a lower court order denying a motion by the appellant to vacate an earlier order of hospitalization committing her to Western State Hospital. The appellant charges that the commitment proceeding below was conducted in violation of her constitutional guarantees to due process of law and trial by jury.

The facts underlying this appeal are as follows: On January 13, 1971, the parents of Joyce Quesnell executed and filed with the King County Clerk an application seeking to have Joyce civilly committed as an insane person. An order for the appellant's immediate apprehension and detention pending hearing and examination, and an order fixing the time of hearing were entered the same day. On January 17, 1971, the appellant was apprehended, served with a copy of the application and notice of hearing, and detained at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle until January 19, 1971, when a hearing was held on this application. Jerry Spoonemore, an attorney, was appointed guardian ad litem for the appellant as well as for all other persons on the January 19, 1971, mental illness calendar. Mr. Spoonemore did not provide the appellant with an attorney other than himself although he later stated that he was uncertain of the degree of advocacy contemplated by his role as guardian ad litem. Ms. Quesnell was not made aware of the specific allegations pertaining to mental illness until after the hearing commenced. At the hearing, Mr. Spoonemore called no witnesses on behalf of the appellant. The record further indicates that the appellant was absent throughout the hearing except for a few minutes when she was questioned; she was then removed from the hearing room before the recommendations for commitment or release were made by the psychiatrists on the case, and was not apprised of the nature of these recommendations until after the hospitalization order was entered. Mr. Spoonemore had no opportunity to discuss the proceedings with the appellant during the hearing. No record of the hearing was made by court reporter. At the conclusion of the hearing, the appellant was committed to Western State Hospital. On January 27, 1971, the appellant filed a Motion for Order Reviewing Act of Court Commissioner which was ultimately heard by Judge Horton Smith of the King County Superior Court. On March 23, 1971, Judge Smith entered an order vacating the commitment. He supported the vacation order with findings of fact and conclusions of law. The application came before Commissioner Niles on remand for a new hearing on March 30, 1971. Even though the appellant was represented by private counsel, the King County Superior Court (Mental Illness Division) appointed Peter Lind, an attorney, as guardian ad litem for the appellant at this hearing, as well as for all others appearing on the commitment calendar that day. With the assistance of her private counsel, the appellant timely filed a demand for a jury trial pursuant to RCW 71.02.210. Per Lind, guardian ad litem, wrote upon the jury demand: 'In the best interest of the patient and in her behalf, I do not request or permit a jury demand.' Commissioner Niles rejected the demand for a jury trial and proceeded with the hearing. An adjournment was then obtained by appellant's private counsel to allow him an opportunity to employ a court reporter for the purpose of documenting the reasons for the court's refusal to grant the demand for jury trial. On April 1, 1971, the hearing reconvened and a record of the proceedings was taken. Present were the appellant's private attorney and also Edward Langenbach, Jr., an attorney who had been appointed by the superior court to act as guardian ad litem for the appellant and all others appearing on the commitment calendar that day. In response to a reassertion by appellant's private counsel of the demand for trial by jury, Commissioner Niles rules that such procedural right had been effectively waived by the appellant's former guardian ad litem. Subsequently, an Order of Hospitalization was entered. On April 9, 1971, the appellant filed a Motion for Revising Act of Court Commissioner. Judge Horton Smith heard the motion and entered an Order Denying Motion to Vacate.

On appeal, we are asked to determine whether the appellant's second court-appointed guardian ad litem had sufficient authority to refuse and effectively override a timely demand made by the appellant and her private counsel pursuant to RCW 71.02.210 for a trial by jury. Initially, however, we shall consider and review the subject proceedings in terms of due process of law as guaranteed the appellant by U.S. Const. Amend. 14, and Wash.Const. art. 1, § 3.

With the advent of state-supported asylums in the middle of the eighteenth century, and for some time thereafter, the procedure for involuntary commitment of an alleged mentally ill person amounted to an informal request made by the subject's friend, relative, or even enemy, for an order of admission, and the immediate response of some member of the hospital staff in issuing the requested order as a matter of course. ¹ With the advance of psychiatry, the involuntary patient began to receive treatment; ² with the measured progression of the law, and a growing awareness that such patients were often wrongfully incarcerated, the 'railroading' techniques characteristic of earlier commitment proceedings came under legislative scrutiny and judicial review. Today the astounding rate of involuntary admissions to the nation's mental hospitals poses for our courts the difficult task of establishing a process of evaluation and administration that is not merely efficient, but fair to the individuals involved. ³ These ends of fairness and efficiency can be antagonistic or complementary depending upon the nature of this judicial process. In this regard, the recent development of certain constitutional guarantees in the protection of those of our citizens alleged to be mentally ill are significant and encouraging.

In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court undertook a difficult and major review of the extent to which civil proceedings which could result in some form of incarceration were subject to judicial scrutiny and testing on constitutional grounds. Addressing itself to the procedural consequences of an alleged distinction between civil and criminal actions, the Court, In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1428, 18 L.Ed.2d 527 (1967), observed the following characteristics of juvenile court proceedings:

The rules of criminal procedure were therefore altogether inapplicable. The apparent rigidities, technicalities, and harshness which they observed in both substantive and procedural criminal law were therefore to be discarded. The idea of crime and punishment was to be abandoned. The child was to be 'treated' and 'rehabiliated' and the procedures, from apprehension through institutionalization, were to be 'clinical' rather than punitive.

These results were to be achieved, without coming to conceptual and constitutional grief, by insisting that the proceedings were not adversary, but that the state was proceeding as Parens patriae. The Latin phrase proved to be a great help to those who sought to rationalize the exclusion of juveniles from the constitutional scheme; but its meaning is murky and its historic credentials are of dubious relevance.

In re Gault, Supra, 387 U.S. at 15--16, 87 S.Ct. at 1437. In piercing the civil veil of the juvenile commitment proceeding, the Court closely examined the consequences of involuntary incarceration:

The boy is committed to an institution where he may be restrained of liberty for years. It is of no constitutional consequence--and of limited practical meaning--that the institution to which he is committed is called an Industrial School. The fact of the matter is that, however, euphemistic the title, a 'receiving home' or an 'industrial school' for juveniles is an institution of confinement in which the child is incarcerated for a greater or lesser time. His world becomes 'a building with whitewashed walls, regimented routine and institutional hours. . . .' Instead of mother and father and sisters and brothers and friends and classmates, his world is peopled by guards, custodians, state employees. . . .

In re Gault, Supra, 387 U.S. at 27, 87 S.Ct. at 1443. Because of this confinement, the Supreme Court rejected the characterization of the proceedings as 'civil' in nature, and concluded that the juvenile defendant was entitled to the guarantees of due process of law, stating:

To hold otherwise would be to disregard substance because of the feeble enticement of the 'civil' label-of-convenience which has been attached to juvenile proceedings. . . . For this purpose, at least, commitment is a deprivation of liberty. It is incarceration against one's will, whether it is called 'criminal' or 'civil.'

In re Gault, Supra, 387 U.S. at 49--50, 87 S.Ct. at 1455. Consistent with Gault, the Supreme Court has held that the mental illness commitment proceeding, 'whether denominated civil or criminal,' is subject to the constitutional grarantee of due process of law. Specht v. Patterson, 386 U.S. 605, 608, 87 S.Ct. 1209, 18 L.Ed.2d 326 (1967). ⁴ Upon this basis, and in the same manner of judicial scrutiny utilized in Gault, the...