State v. Crenshaw

• Decision Date: 17 February 1983
• Docket Number: No. 47498-2,47498-2
• Citation: 98 Wn.2d 789,659 P.2d 488
• Parties: STATE of Washington, Respondent, v. Rodney K. CRENSHAW, Petitioner.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

Page 789

98 Wn.2d 789

659 P.2d 488

STATE of Washington, Respondent, v. Rodney K. CRENSHAW, Petitioner.

No. 47498-2.

Supreme Court of Washington,

En Banc.

Feb. 17, 1983.

Richard Platte, Rusing & Platte, Bellingham, for petitioner.

David McEachran, Pros. Atty., Bellingham, for respondent.

BRACHTENBACH, Justice.

Rodney Crenshaw was convicted by a jury of first degree murder. Finding that the trial court committed no reversible error, we affirm the conviction.

Petitioner Rodney Crenshaw pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity to the charge of first degree murder of his wife, Karen Crenshaw. A jury found him guilty. Petitioner appealed his conviction, assigning error to a number of the trial court's rulings. After the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court in all respects ( State v. Crenshaw, 27 Wash.App. 326, 617 P.2d 1041 (1980)), petitioner raised the same issues before this court.

We first heard the case on June 8, 1981, and it was reheared on September 8, 1982. Having considered petitioner's arguments in depth, we affirm the Court of Appeals. As the Court of Appeals opinion adequately addresses most of the issues, its reasoning need not be reproduced here. See State v. Crenshaw, supra. Two issues deserve further elaboration, however: first, that of the propriety of the insanity defense instruction which explained the right-wrong standard in the M'Naghten test in terms of "legal" right and wrong, and second, that of the admissibility of the five photographs of the decapitated victim.

Before turning to the legal issues, the facts of the case must be recounted. While defendant and his wife were on their honeymoon in Canada, petitioner was deported as a result of his participation in a brawl. He secured a motel room in Blaine, Washington and waited for his wife to join him. When she arrived 2 days later, he immediately thought she had been unfaithful--he sensed "it wasn't the same Karen ... she'd been with someone else."

Petitioner did not mention his suspicions to his wife instead he took her to the motel room and beat her unconscious. He then went to a nearby store, stole a knife, and returned to stab his wife 24 times, inflicting a fatal wound. He left again, drove to a nearby farm where he had been employed and borrowed an ax. Upon returning to the motel room, he decapitated his wife with such force that the ax marks cut into the concrete floor under the carpet and splattered blood throughout the room.

Petitioner then proceeded to conceal his actions. He placed the body in a blanket, the head in a pillowcase, and put both in his wife's car. Next, he went to a service station, borrowed a bucket and sponge, and cleaned the room of blood and fingerprints. Before leaving, petitioner also spoke with the motel manager about a phone bill, then chatted with him for awhile over a beer.

When Crenshaw left the motel he drove to a remote area 25 miles away where he hid the two parts of the body in thick brush. He then fled, driving to the Hoquiam area, about 200 miles from the scene of the crime. There he picked up two hitchhikers, told them of his crime, and enlisted their aid in disposing of his wife's car in a river. The hitchhikers contacted the police and Crenshaw was apprehended shortly thereafter. He voluntarily confessed to the crime.

The defense of not guilty by reason of insanity was a major issue at trial. Crenshaw testified that he followed the Moscovite religious faith, and that it would be improper for a Moscovite not to kill his wife if she committed adultery. Crenshaw also has a history of mental problems, for which he has been hospitalized in the past. The jury, however, rejected petitioner's insanity defense, and found him guilty of murder in the first degree.

A. Insanity Defense Instruction

Insanity is an affirmative defense the defendant must establish by a preponderance of the evidence. RCW 9A.12.010. Sanity is presumed, even with a history of prior institutional commitments from which the individual was released upon sufficient recovery. State v. McDonald, 89 Wash.2d 256, 571 P.2d 930 (1977).

The insanity defense is not available to all who are mentally deficient or deranged; legal insanity has a different meaning and a different purpose than the concept of medical insanity. State v. White, 60 Wash.2d 551, 589, 374 P.2d 942 (1962). A verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity completely absolves a defendant of any criminal responsibility. Therefore, "the defense is available only to those persons who have lost contact with reality so completely that they are beyond any of the influences of the criminal law." White, at 590, 374 P.2d 942.

Petitioner assigned error to insanity defense instruction 10 which reads:

In addition to the plea of not guilty, the defendant has entered a plea of insanity existing at the time of the act charged.

Insanity existing at the time of the commission of the act charged is a defense.

For a defendant to be found not guilty by reason of insanity you must find that, as a result of mental disease or defect, the defendant's mind was affected to such an extent that the defendant was unable to perceive the nature and quality of the acts with which the defendant is charged or was unable to tell right from wrong with reference to the particular acts with which defendant is charged.

What is meant by the terms "right and wrong" refers to knowledge of a person at the time of committing an act that he was acting contrary to the law.

Clerk's Papers, at 27. But for the last paragraph, this instruction tracks the language of WPIC 20.01, which is the M'Naghten test as codified in RCW 9A.12.010. See 11 Wash.Prac. 137 (1977). Petitioner contends, however, that the trial court erred in defining "right and wrong" as legal right and wrong rather than in the moral sense.

We find this instruction was not reversible error on three, alternative grounds: (1) The M'Naghten opinion amply supports the "legal" wrong definition as used in this case (2) under these facts, "moral" wrong and "legal" wrong are synonymous, therefore the "legal" wrong definition did not alter the meaning of the test, and (3) because Crenshaw failed to prove other elements of the insanity defense, any error in the definition of wrong was harmless.

I

The definition of the term "wrong" in the M'Naghten test has been considered and disputed by many legal scholars. See, e.g., A. Goldstein, The Insanity Defense 51-53 (1967); H. Fingarette, The Meaning of Criminal Insanity 153-157 (1972); S. Glueck, Mental Disorder and the Criminal Law 184-85 (1925); H. Weihofen, Mental Disorder as a Criminal Defense 77 (1954); Cohen, Criminal Responsibility and the Knowledge of Right and Wrong, 14 U.Miami L.Rev. 30, 49-50 (1959); Morris, Criminal Insanity, 43 Wash.L.Rev. 583 (1968). Courts from other jurisdictions are divided on the issue. Cf. People v. Perez, 9 Cal.3d 651, 510 P.2d 1026, 108 Cal.Rptr. 474 (1973) ("wrong" restricted to mean legally wrong); State v. Corley, 108 Ariz. 240, 495 P.2d 470 (1972) ("wrong" restricted to mean "morally" wrong); People v. Wood, 12 N.Y.2d 69, 187 N.E.2d 116, 236 N.Y.S.2d 44 (1962) ("wrong" means legally and morally wrong); State v. Thorne, 239 S.C. 164, 121 S.E.2d 623 (1961), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 979, 82 S.Ct. 485, 7 L.Ed.2d 440 (1962) ("wrong" means either legally or morally wrong). In Washington, we have not addressed this issue previously. ¹

The confusion arises from apparent inconsistencies in the original M'Naghten case. In response to the House of Lords' first question, the justices replied that if an accused knew he was acting contrary to law but acted under a partial insane delusion that he was redressing or revenging some supposed grievance or injury, or producing some supposed public benefit, "he is nevertheless punishable ... if he knew at the time of committing such crime that he was acting contrary to law; ... the law of the land." (Italics ours.) M'Naghten's Case, 8 Eng.Rep. 718, 722 (1843). In this answer, the justices appear to approve the legal standard of wrong when there is evidence that the accused knew he was acting contrary to the law.

This has been characterized as inconsistent with the justices' response to the second and third questions, regarding how a jury should be instructed on the insanity defense:

If the question were to be put [to a jury] as to the knowledge of the accused solely and exclusively with reference to the law of the land, it might tend to confound the jury, by inducing them to believe that an actual knowledge of the law of the land was essential in order to lead to a conviction; whereas the law is administered upon the principle that every one must be taken conclusively to know it, without proof that he does know it. If the accused was conscious that the act was one which he ought not to do, and if that act was at the same time contrary to the law of the land, he is punishable; and the usual course therefore has been to leave the question to the jury, whether the party accused had a sufficient degree of reason to know that he was doing an act that was wrong: and this course we think is correct, accompanied with such observations and explanations as the circumstances of each particular case may require.

M'Naghten, at 723. This response appears to require both that the accused be "conscious that the act was one which he ought not to do" and that the act be "contrary to the law."

A close examination of these answers, however, shows they are reconcilable in the context of this case. First, the similarities between the hypothetical in the first question and Crenshaw's situation should afford that answer great weight. If, arguendo, Crenshaw was delusional, his delusion was only partial, for it related only to his perceptions of his wife's infidelity. His behavior towards others i.e., the motel manager and the woman who loaned him the ax, at the time of the killing was normal. Crenshaw also "knew he was...