State v. Oakes, 8-68

• Decision Date: 18 February 1971
• Docket Number: No. 8-68,8-68
• Citation: 129 Vt. 241,276 A.2d 18
• Parties: STATE of Vermont v. Maurice W. OAKES.
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

Page 18

276 A.2d 18

129 Vt. 241

STATE of Vermont v. Maurice W. OAKES.

No. 8-68.

Supreme Court of Vermont.

Feb. 18, 1971.

Motion for Reargument Denied April 7, 1971.

James M. Jeffords, Atty. Gen., and Martin K. Miller, Asst. Atty. Gen., for plaintiff.

John Parker, Springfield, Vt., for defendant.

Before HOLDEN, C. J., BARNEY, SMITH and KEYSER, JJ., and BILLINGS, Superior Judge.

BARNEY, Justice.

The jury found the respondent's shooting of his wife to be murder in the first degree. Review, absent a written waiver, follows such a conviction as a matter of course. 12 V.S.A. § 2383. The respondent has, in his brief, cataloged errors beginning with pre-trial proceedings and going on through the trial to issues raised by motions to set aside or reduce the degree of the verdict. The state has replied and the matter is for disposition.

The testimony, concerning the events at the Oakes home on the evening of May 26, 1967 and subsequently, came in without contradiction. There was a phone call that came into the Windsor Police Department at almost exactly eleven o'clock in the evening. A male voice asked for help, saying something to the effect that, 'She's here on the floor, dying.' The voice was identified by the dispatcher on duty at the time as the respondent's, after hearing him speak when he was later brought into the police station.

When the call was received a cruiser was sent to the scene, a single family dwelling off North Main Street. The officers in the police car received the call as at 11:03 and arrived at the scene at 11:10. As they came up to the kitchen entrance the respondent was visible through the glass in the upper part of the door. He was kneeling over a woman on the kitchen floor. Two small girls were standing in the kitchen. The door was unlocked and the officers entered, opening the door only partially, to avoid disturbing the woman's head close to the door.

Officer Leonard helped the respondent, who was distraught and sobbing, to a nearby chair and asked him who the woman was and what happened. The respondent answered, 'This is my wife Rosalie.' The officer assked, 'Rosalie who?' The respondent replied, 'Rosalie Oakes.' In answer to the question what happened, the respondent said, 'I shot her with a 22-410 over and under.' This exchange took place while the officer was assisting the respondent to a chair in the kitchen. The officer immediately told the respondent that he had a right to remain silent and that he was entitled to an attorney.

Officer Robinson, his compainion, meanwhile was checking the woman's wrist for signs of a pulse, without success. He asked the respondent for his wife's full name and date and place of birth, which the respondent gave. He returned to the cruiser and called for a doctor and for the chief of police. When he reentered the house he sent one of the two little girls, children of the couple, upstairs for a blanket to cover the body. He then went into the adjoining room, which was lighted, to look for something to cover the glass in the kitchen door. An ironing board was set up there and on it was a 22-410 over and under rifle.

As he was covering the window in the door a neighbor came on the porch. After a brief exchange with him, the officer sent the two girls upstairs to get dressed. The respondent was insisting he saw signs of breathing in his wife's body and Officer Leonard was trying to calm him and persuade him to stay seated. Officer Leonard then also checked unsuccessfully for a pulse, and for the first time detected some blood near the head area. The respondent volunteered that he got out the rifle to show his wife what he would do if deer bothered the garden at the new house they were building in Reading. He said he didn't know the gun was loaded, because he never brought a loaded gun into the house. He repeated his statement about deer in the garden several times.

Meanwhile Officer Robinson had helped the little girls on with their shoes and sent them next door with the neighbor. All this had transpired in about nine minutes, and at 11:19 the chief of police arrived. Officer Robinson met him outside and brought him in past the body of Mrs. Oakes. Mr. Oakes had been given a cup of coffee that was already poured when the officers arrived, and was chain-smoking cigarettes. There was a pot of hot coffee on the stove, and more coffee was later given to the respondent.

The chief of police began to take pictures in connection with the investigation and the respondent objected to this. A short time later, a physician arrived. He determined that Mrs. Oakes was dead after a brief examination. To make that examination he turned the body over on its back and the respondent took violent exception to the examination. When the doctor told him Mrs. Oakes was dead he carried on violently, shouting that she couldn't be dead, he didn't believe she was dead, that it was an accident and if she was dead he might as well be dead too. He then began to flail around with his hands and started to move in the direction of the den where the gun was. The officers present, with the help of the doctor, subdued him and handcuffed him. He was then taken into the adjoining living room and seated on a couch with Officer Leonard.

At this point he seemed to calm down. He volunteered the information that he recalled occasions when he had met each of the officers in the past. After about an hour in the living room he was taken to the Windsor police station. Both officers testified that, in their opinion, the respondent was under the influence of alcohol at the time they went to the Oakes residence.

At about six o'clock the following morning the chief of police and Officer Robinson returned to the Oakes house to continue the investigation. The police returned again at eleven o'clock in the morning of the 27th accompanied by a state police investigator. This time they had with them a search warrant. Certain questions in connection with these visits are raised by the respondent and the necessary facts pertaining to these questions will be detailed at the time they are dealt with.

The defense raised by the respondent had two aspects. The first was that the shooting was accidental, and that therefore the ingredients necessary for a first degree murder conviction were lacking. The second was the defense of insanity, a claim that respondent lacked the capacity to comprehend the criminality of his act. Witnesses testified in support of these defenses, but the respondent did not take the stand.

The first issue raised by the respondent relates to the denial of his motion for access to the testimony given before the grand jury. Unless otherwise ordered by the supreme or county court, the minutes of such testimony must remain in the possession of the prosecuting officers. 13 V.S.A. § 5605. The courts concerned have a discretionary power to grant disclosure under our law. State v. Goyet, 119 Vt. 167 171, 122 A.2d 862. The justification for the request in the Goyet case, was grounded on a reference in State v. Brewster, 70 Vt. 341, 348, 40 A. 1037, to the justness of granting the accused an opportunity to know and to prepare to meet, contradict and explain the testimony brought against him. The Court in Goyet sustained the denial of access in the face of the Brewster dicta. With the present rights of an accused to achieve the Brewster objectives through his rights of discovery and deposition, 13 V.S.A. § 6721 et seq., the necessity of resort to grand jury minutes for that purpose has been all but dissipated. The justification for overruling a refusal of access to grand jury minutes must now rest on other or stronger policy demands than even Goyet required. None have been advanced here, and the ruling below is sustained. State v. Miner, Vt., 258 A.2d 815, 820.

Under the provisions of 13 V.S.A. § 4803 the respondent was committed to the Vermont State Hospital for observation to determine whether or not he was legally sane. His actual examination was conducted by a private psychiatrist hired by the hospital on a contract basis. The respondent complains that since the statute reads that the person be ordered 'into the care of the superintendent of the Vermont State Hospital, to be detained and observed by the superintendent * * *' his examination was unlawful and in violation of his constitutional rights and the testimony of the psychiatrist should have been suppressed.

The issue is not the professional qualification of the examining psychiatrist but the propriety of the delegation of this duty by the superintendent to another. Presumably the same question would arise if the examination had been carried out by any doctor on the hospital's professional staff other than the superintendent. This is an unduly restrictive view of the statute, since nothing by way of a policy consideration demanding that the superintendent give such examinations his undivided personal and individual attention. Delegation of duties, in whole or in part, is a characteristic of governing offices of institutions such as mental hospitals. To say that this normal and expected operation disqualifies the testimony of the examiner reads a particularization into the statute that its purpose does not require.

A related complaint of the respondent concerns the later examination by this smae psychiatrist of the respondent with respect to his competency to stand trial. In essence, the respondent says that he does not challenge the right to have him examined for competency, but his objection was that using the same psychiatrist enabled that doctor to extend his examination relative to respondent's sanity as well. Assuming all this to be true, there is nothing improper about his further examination even in connection with his sanity. The issue is important to both the State and the respondent, and the use of every appropriate opportunity to shed full light on the question is not to be made into error. Full opportunity...