State v. Kenyon.

• Decision Date: 09 July 1947
• Citation: State v. Kenyon., 134 Conn. 43, 54 A.2d 585 (Conn. 1947)
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. KENYON.

134 Conn. 43

54 A.2d 585

STATE

v.KENYON.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

July 9, 1947.

Appeal from Superior Court, New London County; Wynne, McLaughlin and Shea, Judges.

Hugh B. Kenyon was convicted of murder in the second degree after trial to a statutory court of three judges on an indictment charging murder in the first degree, and he appeals.

No error.

David Goldstein, of Bridgeport, and Allyn L. Brown, Jr., of Norwich, for appellant.

Arthur M. Brown, State's Atty., of Norwich, for appellee.

Before MALTBIE, C. J., JENNINGS, ELLS, and DICKENSON, JJ., and O'SULLIVAN, Superior Court Judge.

ELLS, Judge.

The defendant was tried before a court consisting of three judges of the Superior Court on an indictment charging murder in the first degree. He was convicted of murder in the second degree and has appealed to this court. The sole defense was that he was insane at the time he committed the homicide. The only assignment of error is that the court erred in adjudging the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The specific claim is that, as the state offered no medical evidence that the defendant was sane, it could not be found proven beyond reasonable doubt that he was sane, in view of expert evidence offered by him that he was insane.

The defendant was indicted by a grand jury in September, 1940, for murder in the first degree for the killing of Rita Wheaton in Groton on July 17, 1940. His mother filed a written motion in which she represented that the defendant was insane or so mentally defective that he was unable to understand the proceedings against him; the provisions outlined in General Statutes, Cum.Sup. 1935, § 1722c, were followed; and on November 8, 1940, the physicians filed their report. On the same day a hearing was held by the court, the defendant was in effect found to be then unable to understand the proceedings because he was insane or mentally defective, and it was ordered that he be committed to the Norwich State Hospital for the Insane for confinement, support and treatment until the time of his trial. A mittimus was issued accordingly. On June 18, 1946, the superintendent of the hospital filed in court a written report stating that the defendant was then neither insane nor so mentally incapable as to be unable to understand the nature of the proceedings against him. On June 20, 1946, the court ordered that he be discharged from the state hospital and remanded to the custody of the sheriff of the county, without bail, for confinement in jail until the time of his trial. On September 16, the defendant was presented before the Superior Court and pleaded not guilty to the indictment for murder in the first degree and elected trial by the court.

Upon the trial of the case, the state, though calling no medical experts, offered the evidence of witnesses as to the conduct and behavior of the defendant before and immediately after the commission of the crime. Significant evidence as to his mental condition at the time he killed his victim, as well as before and after, was afforded by the defendant himself in a voluntary statement made to the coroner a few hours after the killing. In it the defendant described how he struck the deceased several times with a blackjack, and he said that when she asked him to stop he ‘couldn't turn back,’ he ‘was scared.’ Later, when she asked him to take her home or to a hospital, he said, ‘Rita, I can't, your face is awful, I wouldn't dare,’ and, ‘It's too late, Rita, I can't now, because they would put me in prison.’ He also asked her ‘if she forgave’ him. He stated that, after she had died and he had placed her body in a nearby brook, he knelt down and asked God to forgive him, and ‘if there was any chance of meeting on the other side that I could ask her to forgive me.’ From all this evidence the court could reasonably decide that the defendant at the time of the commission of the homicide had mind and capacity, reason and understanding enough to enable him to judge of the nature, character and consequences of the act charged against him, that the act was wrong and criminal, and that the commission of it would properly and justly expose him to penalties. This is the legal test of responsibility in this state. State v. Johnson, 40 Conn. 136, 139; State v. Saxon, 87 Conn. 5, 11, 86 A. 590.

The defendant offered no evidence other than the testimony of four physicians skilled in the diagnosis and treatment of mental diseases, and the hospital records pertaining to him, covering the time he was confined at the Norwich State Hospital. Three of the witnesses had been on the staff of the hospital all or a part of that period. They diagnosed his condition as schizophrenia. The remaining witness was not connected with the hospital while the defendant was there, and he would not go so far as to diagnose the condition as schizophrenia. He saw the defendant only when he examined him with a view to his commitment before trial, and at that time he gave an opinion that ‘the prisoner is a psychopathic personality with definite mental symptoms.’ When the experts were asked to give their opinion as to the condition of the defendant at the time he committed the homicide, and particularly to apply the legal test of responsibility hereinbefore stated, two of them testified that in their opinion the defendant did not have sufficient mental capacity at the time of the crime to know the nature and quality of his act and that he did not have sufficient capacity to distinguish right from wrong. One of the two admitted, however, that a person might have schizophrenia and still be able to distinguish between right and wrong. Another doctor testified that the defendant's mental condition was such that his ability to make a good critical judgment which would include in some instances capacity to differentiate between right and wrong was very much distorted. It was his opinion that ‘the act and its various peculiarities indicated a distorted motivation, which disturbed [the defendant's] ability to distinguish right from wrong, or to appreciate fully the consequences of the act.’ When asked directly whether the defendant could tell the nature of his act in view of his mental condition, he answered: ‘I rather think he could’; and he also admitted that the defendant might be suffering from the disease and still tell right from wrong. The opinion of the remaining doctor...