State v. Dorsey
| Decision Date | 04 December 1979 |
| Docket Number | No. 12094,12094 |
| Citation | 603 P.2d 717,1979 NMSC 97,93 N.M. 607 |
| Parties | STATE of New Mexico, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. John David DORSEY, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | New Mexico Supreme Court |
Defendant was convicted of first-degree murder. He appeals, alleging two grounds for reversal: (1) the trial court failed to direct a verdict of not-guilty by reason of insanity, and (2) the trial court failed to direct a verdict of not-guilty because there was insufficient evidence of a deliberate intention to kill. Each allegation turns on whether there was sufficient evidence to go to the jury. We affirm the trial court.
Defendant and a passenger were driving on a highway in San Juan County. They had consumed a few beers and had smoked some marijuana. The defendant began driving at a very high rate of speed in order to catch some companions in another car. When the passenger asked defendant to slow down, defendant hit him with a beer bottle and tried to push him out of the moving vehicle. The passenger turned off the ignition to stop the car. When the car came to a stop, defendant jumped out, ran across the highway median, and flagged down a truck driven by Billy Craven. Craven did not know defendant, but gave him a ride. After several miles, defendant seized a large knife in the cab of the truck and began plunging it into Craven. The truck careened off the highway onto the shoulder. Craven staggered from the truck with defendant in pursuit. Defendant chased Craven some 100 yards or more, knocked him down in the middle of the highway, straddled him, and again stabbed him repeatedly. Several passersby subdued defendant, but not before Craven had been mortally wounded.
At trial, defendant pled not-guilty by reason of insanity. To rebut the evidentiary presumption of sanity, defendant presented the expert testimony of two psychologists and one psychiatrist. Each stated that defendant suffered from latent schizophrenia, a long-standing disease of the mind, which prevented defendant from knowing the nature of his deadly act, or from forming the requisite deliberate intent to kill.
The State did not present any psychiatrists or psychologists to counter defendant's expert witnesses. The State did present lay witnesses who observed defendant at the time of the offense. They testified that the defendant acted cooly and deliberately before and during the commission of the homicide. Two medical witnesses for the State testified that if defendant was insane, the insanity resulted from a functional and not a structural abnormality.
Defendant argues that because there was no expert psychiatric or psychological evidence as to defendant's sanity at the time of the crime, the trial court erred in refusing to direct a verdict of not-guilty by reason of insanity. We disagree.
The trial court found the evidence sufficient to justify submitting the issue of insanity to the jury. The court instructed the jury on the effect which mental disease has upon a defendant's ability to form a "deliberate intention to kill." Crim. 2.00, N.M.S.A.1978 (Supp.1978). The jury found defendant guilty of first-degree murder. In New Mexico, the standards governing the defense of insanity are well established. This Court said in State v. White, 58 N.M. 324, 330, 270 P.2d 727, 731 (1954), that in order for a jury to find an accused blameworthy for his acts, it must be satisfied that:
the accused, as a result of disease of the mind ... (a) did not know the nature and quality of the act or (b) did not know that it was wrong or (c) was incapable of preventing himself from committing it.
State v. White, supra, attempts to draw a clear dichotomy between those defendants who are sane and those who are insane. Requiring such an all or nothing decision often makes it difficult to apply sophisticated psychiatric evaluations and theories to legal formulations.
The conflict between legal and psychiatric principles is made more understandable when the premises and purposes of each is realized. The purpose of psychiatry is to diagnose and cure mental illnesses, but not to assess blame for acts resulting from those illnesses. The law seeks to find facts and assess accountability. One author has stated the problem thusly:
Psychiatry evaluates individual behavior with the aid of standards of the most general and flexible nature such that each individual may receive special consideration for his unique characteristics. (Footnote omitted.) The inherent vagueness and lack of predictability in such a method of evaluation is foreign to the necessity, in making legal judgments about individual behavior, that a standard of evaluation be uncomplicated and uniform.
Comment, A Punishment Rationale for Diminished Capacity, 18 U.C.L.A.L.Rev. 561, 571 (1971). Although it may be difficult to apply, we do not hold that psychiatric testimony may not be used in determining accountability. Conversely, we cannot accept the premise that it outweighs all other evidence that bears upon a person's sanity.
We express no opinion as to the relative weight to be accorded to lay or expert testimony. This is a matter for the jury to decide.
The doctrine of criminal responsibility is such that there can be no doubt "of the complicated nature of the decision to be...
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