State v. Crayton, 48744

• Decision Date: 12 February 1962
• Docket Number: No. 2,No. 48744,48744,2
• Citation: 354 S.W.2d 834
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. John Ivory CRAYTON, Appellant
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 834

354 S.W.2d 834

STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. John Ivory CRAYTON, Appellant.

No. 48744.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

Feb. 12, 1962.

Motion for Rehearing or to Transfer to Court en Banc Denied

March 12, 1962.

Luke, Cunliff & Wilson and Robert R. Schwarz., St. Louis, for appellant.

Thomas F. Eagleton, Atty. Gen., O. Hampton Stevens, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, for respondent.

EAGER, Presiding Judge.

Defendant was convicted of second degree burglary and stealing, with five prior felony convictions. He was sentenced by the court to terms of three and two years respectively, or a total of five years' imprisonment. Essentially, the sole defense was insanity, supplemented to some extent by a theory of 'involuntary' drug intoxication. Defendant was 25 years old at the time of the offense and the evidence indicated that he had used narcotic drugs in some form since he was 14 or 15 years old. Two of his prior convictions were for illegal possession of narcotics.

The facts of the offense may be stated very briefly. Persons in a second floor apartment heard noises coming from a vacant apartment above them and called the police, after first calling up the steps to the person there. Defendant came down the stairs, knocked on their door and was refused admittance; he then went on down to the front of the building where he was arrested. At that time he was wearing a sport coat, trousers and shoes which the complaining witness had placed in the vacant apartment a few hours earlier. That witness testified that he held a lease on the whole building. Defendant made no effort to escape. A third floor window opening on a fire escape was found open when the police went there after the arrest. At the time of the arrest defendant told the police (about 12:30 a. m.) that he was looking for a 'married woman,' but was not sure where she lived. The police found defendant's abandoned clothes in the third floor apartment from which the others were taken.

Defendant offered in evidence excerpts from the records of several admissions to the Malcolm Bliss Psychopathic Hospital, a branch of the St. Louis City Hospital. These covered a period from December 1956 to June 1960. In some instances defendant had been sent there by the police, in others he had signed voluntary applications for admission. He was shown in these records to have had hallucinations and delusions at times, and to have given histories of bizarre actions; at times he acted irrationally in the hospital as, for instance, crouching in a corner and asking for protection from the rats. The predominant diagnosis made was 'Acute Brain Syndrome with drug intoxication.' Another phase of the diagnosis will be referred to later.

A resident physician specializing in psychiatry, who had served for two periods of six months each at Bliss and had thus known defendant for approximately a year and a half, testified fully. He considered and stated the probable existence of 'chronic brain syndrome with schizophrenic reactionH upon a hypothetical question assuming and relating various bizarre actions and hallucinations; he explained schizophrenia as an illness characterized by disorder of thought and mood, with hallucinations as secondary symptoms, and a poor prognosis; on further hypothesized assumptions, however, he stated that the schizophrenic reaction would probably be ruled out. This physician had also examined defendant at the hospital during the month before the trial upon order of the court. He testified that if the history given to him by defendant of a mental condition and delusionary ideas supposedly present at the time of the offense on October 14, 1960, were true, defendant was then psychotic and did not know the difference between right and wrong. In that history defendant had stated that he was walking past a tavern, that he went in and thought the people there were having a farewell party for him, that someone was going to kill him, and that he was not properly dressed, so he went outside and entered the place where the burglary was committed and took and put on the clothes. On cross-examination this doctor testified that in view of the various hospitalizations and defendant's whole history, his psychosis was self-induced, from drugs. Defendant gave a present history of taking amphetamine in quantities which, the doctor testified, tended to produce hallucinations and ideas of persecution; he further testified that without the drug the hallucinations of defendant would disappear; that defendant had a 'personality disorder' as his basic problem, independent of drugs, but that defendant 'does known the difference between right and wrong today.' The necessary inference from his testimony is that defendant did know the difference between right and wrong when not taking drugs. The doctor also testified that one addicted to a drug does not have the 'normal ability' to resist it, and needs help. Two of defendant's relatives testified to peculiar actions on his part, but that testimony would add little to our consideration here.

Defendant's counsel complains first of the court's instruction on insanity, and particularly to a preliminary paragraph which defined insanity as a 'physical disease located in the brain, which disease so perverts and deranges one or more of the mental and moral faculties as to render the person suffering from this affliction incapable of distinguishing right from wrong, * * *.' Counsel insists that the instruction unduly increased defendant's burden which should merely require that he was so 'mentally deranged as not to know right from wrong.' Appellant cites no case holding this erroneous. The instruction is long told: '* * * if you find * * * the defendant paragraph, the jury was further told: '* * * if you find * * * the defendant was so perverted and deranged, in one or more of his mental and moral faculties, as to be incapable of understanding at the moment he broke and entered * * * that such conduct was wrong, and further find that he, the defendant, at that time, was incapable of understanding that this act was a violation of the law, and if the jury find that he was then insane, they should find him not guilty. * * * The law does not excuse unless the derangement is so great that it actually renders the person incapable, at the time of its commission, of distinguishing between right and wrong in respect to the particular act that may be charged and proved against him. * * * if, from the evidence, you further find that, at the time he did it, he was in such an insane condition of mind that he did not know he was doing wrong, and did not comprehend the nature and character of the act, then such act was not in law malicious or felonious, and you ought to acquit him on the ground of insanity, and by your verdict, so say.' This definition of insanity, including the phrase 'physical disease,' has often been used in Missouri, and so far as we can find it has never been held erroneous; it has usually been properly coupled with further explanations, as here. State, v. Duestrow, 137 Mo. 44, 38 S.W. 554, 39 S.W. 266; State v. Barbata, 336 Mo. 362, 80 S.W.2d 865. In State v. Goza. Mo., 317 S.W.2d 609, a most recent insanity case, the instruction approved was substantially identical with the one questioned here (as shown by our files) although this particular attack was not made there. The reference to 'physical disease' is somewhat out of line with modern thought on the subject and could well be omitted, but in the instruction given here the whole issue was so clearly and completely covered that the jury could not have been misled; the controlling emphasis was upon a derangement in defendant's mental and moral faculties such as to render him incapable of understanding that his conduct was wrong. There was no error in giving the instruction.

Defendant next complains of Instruction No. 8, which was, in so far as material, as follows: '* * * if you further find and believe from the evidence that the defendant was intoxicated by drugs at the time, such intoxication is in law no excuse for or defense to such offense as you find to have been committed. Voluntary intoxication by drugs is never a defense to a criminal charge. The fact of such intoxication, if you find it to be a fact, is only to be considered by the jury in connection with all other facts, in determining the guilt or innocence of the defendant, and the degree of guilt, if you find he is guilty.' Counsel asserts that this instruction eliminated the defense of involuntary drug intoxication, and that defendant's history and the evidence justified such a defense, particularly in view of defendant's 'personality defect' and long addiction. Counsel cites: State v. Riley, 100 Mo. 493, 13 S.W. 1063; Prather v. Commonwealth, 215 Ky. 714, 287 S.W. 559; Johnson v. State, 32 Ala.App. 217, 24 So.2d 228, and 22 C.J.S. Criminal Law Sec. 72, p. 223. In Riley, a submitted instruction hypothesizing that continued, excessive drinking had impaired the mind of the defendant, was refused as not supported by the evidence. The court held that drunkenness was no defense and that 'temporary insanity' resulting from voluntary intoxication did not constitute a defense; it did recognize that 'long-continued habits of intemperance, producing permanent mental disease amounting to insanity, * * *' might relieve one of criminal responsibility; and the court further said that insanity of that sort is the 'same in law as insanity arising from other causes.' We have no such case here. In Prather, supra, the Kentucky Court seems to have recognized a form of insanity arising from the use of drugs, and that the use was involuntary because of the defendant's addiction; there was specific evidence, however, that the defendant was insane. In Joh...