Ryan v. People

• Decision Date: 01 November 1915
• Docket Number: 8536.
• Citation: 153 P. 756,60 Colo. 425
• Parties: RYAN v. PEOPLE.
• Court: Colorado Supreme Court

153 P. 756

60 Colo. 425

RYAN v. PEOPLE.

No. 8536.

Supreme Court of Colorado, En Banc.

November 1, 1915

Rehearing Denied Jan. 3, 1916.

Gabbert C.J., and White and Garrigues, JJ., dissenting.

Error to District Court, Larimer County; Neil F. Graham, Judge.

W. L Ryan was convicted of murder, and he brings error. Reversed and remanded.

L. R. Rhodes, of Ft. Collins, for plaintiff in error.

Fred Farrar, Atty. Gen., and Norton Montgomery, Asst. Atty. Gen for the People.

BAILEY J.

The defendant, William L. Ryan, was convicted in the District Court of Larimer County, of murder in the first degree, with penalty fixed at death. The victim, Newton Crose, was an attorney, with offices in the Avery Building in Fort Collins, where the tragedy occurred on the 14th day of August, 1914, and as such had for several years acted for the mother of the defendant and also for the defendant himself. The defense was insanity.

That part of Instruction No. 16, to the giving of which objection was made and exception reserved, reads as follows:

'An insane delusion which will alone suffice to establish the defense of insanity must be of such a character that, if things were as the person possessed of such delusion imagined them to be, it would justify the act springing from such delusion.'

No objections are urged to the other instructions. They therefore need be neither considered nor discussed, and we express no opinion upon their sufficiency and correctness.

The rule embodied in the matter complained of was formulated in England in 1843, upon questions propounded to the Judges by the House of Lords, in consequence of the acquittal of one McNaghten of murder on the ground of insanity, and has since been approved in some jurisdictions in this country and disapproved in others.

Delusion is defined as 'a false conception and persistent belief, unconquerable by reason, of what has no existence in fact.' Webster's New International Dictionary,--Delusion, 3. All delusions which show or tend to show insanity are insane delusions. Insanity is a disease of the mind, and delusion a symptom of the disease. It would be as incorrect in law to say that all delusions are insanity as that all insanity is delusion.

The mind may be so impaired by disease as to lose all appreciation of duty to society in one or many particulars, or realizing the duty, be incapable of performing it. Where the evidence of delusions shows that a person is so insane at the time of the commission of the act as to be incapable of entertaining criminal intent, it is in point of law insanity as to all acts resulting from such delusion, and in such circumstances the act is no more a crime than a like act would be in a person totally mad. In the trial of the present case the theory of the defense was that the deceased was killed by the defendant acting under delusions showing an insane condition of the mind compelling the act, and all the testimony introduced for the purpose of making out his defense was directed to the support of that contention.

The substance of the testimony adduced to show that the defendant was at the time of the act laboring under insane delusion was that he believed the deceased, while acting as his attorney, had betrayed him in a suit in which his wife procured a divorce and the custody of their two children; also in another suit brought by one Dr. Norton against him; and that the deceased had ruined him financially by forcing him to transfer his interest in a farm at a sacrifice, to pay debts, had induced the mother of defendant to withhold further assistance from him when in financial straits, and had denounced him to the world as a leper and drunkard.

The instruction could scarcely have failed to mislead the jury, as its practical effect was to nullify the testimony adduced as to delusions, since such testimony did not relate to the kind of delusions which, if based on true or actual facts, as stated in the instruction, would have justified the killing, and therefore the giving of it, under the facts of this case, because of the character of the testimony introduced, being only of delusions, was clearly prejudicial. We do not say that the giving of this instruction would necessarily be prejudicial error in all cases where insanity is the defense, but do say that in such cases it has no application, states a wrong principle of law, and should not be given.

By this instruction the jury were told that in order to acquit the defendant on the ground of insane delusion, they must consider and determine whether the supposed state of facts with respect to which the delusion existed would, if real, have justified the commission of the act. This put the inquiry upon a basis of the criminality of a like act in a sane person, rather than upon the question of the sanity or insanity of the accused. The defense of insanity raises the question of mental accountability, and is purely a trial of the condition of the mind, whether it is so diseased as to render the accused incapable of crime, and has to do with the nature or character of the particular delusions which are relied upon to establish insanity only as they may, under some circumstances, in their very nature throw light upon the mental condition. To apply the same test for the determination of the question of insanity as is applied to determine what is criminal in a sane person, is obviously wrong. The effect of the instruction is to declare a person who may be insane because of delusions accountable to the law for all acts which would be criminal if he were sane. This manifestly cannot be a correct rule. A simple illustration discloses its vice. Suppose a man labors under a delusion that a countryman is involved in a traitorous scheme in the capacity of a foreign spy, such delusion so completely possessing his mind that it becomes a foremost and constant thought and actually renders him insane, and under it he kills that other in the belief that it was an act of civil duty. This instruction, if given in such a case, would preclude an acquittal on the ground of insanity, no matter how firmly satisfied of the existence of that fact the jury might be, simply because the supposed facts of the delusion would not, if founded upon fact, justify the commission of the act. Thus punishment might be imposed upon the most unfortunate sufferer from mental disease, should his act chance to be the same or similar to acts that would be criminal in a sane person. The question involved in one of first impression in this jurisdiction, and notwithstanding the approval of the rule elsewhere, we deem it unsound.

In criminal trials, where proof of delusions has been offered in defense, some courts, in instructing the jury, have employed the term partial insanity, as interchangeable with insane delusion, and have undertaken to lay down rules of law governing accountability under such circumstances differing from those applicable where the proof is of general insanity. In all such cases the controlling question is the sanity or insanity of the accused with respect to the act, and upon trial of this issue there is, in legal contemplation, no middle ground, the defendant is either sane or insane, and therefore culpable or inclupable, according as that question may be determined by the jury from the evidence.

In Parsons v. State, 81 Ala. 577, 2 So. 854, 60 Am.Rep. 193, the court, discussing the propriety of an instruction like that under consideration, said:

'The rule in McNaghten's case, as decided by the English judges, and supposed to have been adopted by the court, is that the defense of insane delusion can be allowed to prevail in a criminal case only when the imaginary state of facts would, if real, justify or excuse the act; or, in the language of the English judges themselves, the defendant 'must be considered in the same situation as to responsibility, as if the facts with respect to which the delusion exists were real.' Boswell's Case, 63 Ala. 307 . It is apparent from what we have said, that this rule cannot be correct as applied to all cases of this nature, even limiting it as done by the English judges to cases where one 'labors under partial delusion, and is not in other respects insane.' McNaghten's Case, 10 Cl. & Fin. 200; 2 Lawson's Cr. Def. 150. It

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