United States v. Bennett

• Decision Date: 19 January 1972
• Docket Number: No. 24387.,24387.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. William BENNETT, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

148 US App. DC 364, 460 F.2d 872 (1972)

UNITED STATES of America v. William BENNETT, Appellant.

No. 24387.

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued May 28, 1971.

Decided January 19, 1972.

Mr. Joseph G. Dail, Jr., Washington, D. C. (appointed by this court) for appellant.

Mr. Charles H. Roistacher, Asst. U. S. Atty., with whom Messrs. Thomas A. Flannery, U. S. Atty., at the time the brief was filed, and John A. Terry, Asst. U. S. Atty., were on the brief, for appellee.

Before BAZELON, Chief Judge, and McGOWAN and TAMM, Circuit Judges.

BAZELON, Chief Judge:

Convicted of a sexual assault on a thirteen-year-old boy, appellant raises important questions concerning the insanity defense he asserted at his trial. While our test of criminal responsibility is currently under reconsideration en banc,¹ we can resolve appellant's contentions without awaiting a decision on the substantive definition of the test. His arguments are not directed at the definition of responsibility, but rather at the procedures through which the defense—whatever its precise definition—must be channeled.² We hold that appellant was denied a full and fair hearing on his insanity claim and therefore that he should have a second opportunity to persuade a jury that they should not hold him criminally responsible for his action.

Appellant was charged on July 10, 1968, with taking indecent liberties with a minor child in violation of D.C.Code § 22-3501(a), and with committing sodomy on a male person under the age of sixteen in violation of D.C.Code § 22-3502. On August 23, 1968, he was committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital for a sixty-day examination into his competency to stand trial and his mental condition at the time of the alleged offense. On the basis of the hospital's report, the trial court found Bennett competent and he was brought to trial before a jury on March 4, 1969. At trial, Bennett denied that he had committed the acts charged, but relied primarily on a responsibility defense. The jury rejected that defense and returned a verdict of guilty on the sodomy count. Bennett received a sentence of four to fifteen years, and he brought this appeal. He argues that the conviction must be reversed because (1) government psychiatrists failed to disclose information which might have supported his insanity defense, (2) the trial court erred in denying him a bifurcated trial, and (3) the trial court erred in admitting over objection his confidential communications with a government psychiatrist.

I.

Two psychiatrists testified for the defense that Bennett was suffering from a mental disease at the time of the alleged offense.³ In rebuttal, the government offered the testimony of two psychiatrists who had examined appellant at St. Elizabeths and who maintained that Bennett was a malingerer without any mental disease or defect. The government psychiatrists pointed out that they had observed appellant continually for a substantial period of time, and they disparaged the testimony of defense psychiatrists by alluding to the defense psychiatrists' limited opportunity for observation of appellant.⁴ What the government witnesses failed to disclose, however, was that at St. Elizabeths appellant was receiving daily doses of major tranquilizers which could be expected to abate many of the symptoms of acute mental disturbance, and appellant insists that the failure to disclose this fact was reversible error. He points out that the medication could have had a significant impact on his behavior, and hence on the psychiatrists' description of his behavior, and that the jury should therefore have been advised of the impact the drugs may have had.

Records at St. Elizabeths Hospital indicate that at the time of his commitment for observation in connection with the trial that led to this appeal, appellant was administered substantial doses of Thorazine and Stelazine, both antipsychotic agents, for more than a month.⁵ The drug treatment was discontinued on October 15, 1968, just one day before the staff conference at which Bennett was found to be without mental disease or defect and competent to stand trial.

Without referring to the drug therapy, Dr. Nicola Kunev of St. Elizabeths defended his conclusion that Bennett lacked mental disease by describing the absence of any symptoms of mental illness. He explained to the jury that at the hospital Bennett was "in very good contact with us, he was orientated as to why we were with him, what the problems are, what the difficulty that he is facing. He has good recollection of his latest day in St. Elizabeths Hospital. What happened in the hospital for the two months that he was there * * * *"⁶ In the same vein, the other government psychiatrist, Dr. Mauris Platkin, told the jury that Bennett was without mental disease or defect because he lacked "any symptomology which in my opinion would indicate he was suffering from a mental illness."⁷ Both psychiatrists contrasted Bennett's behavior at the time of their examination with the behavior of a person they would consider mentally ill.

Yet at no point did the government psychiatrists make clear to the jury that major tranquilizers administered to Bennett could have obliterated the "symptomology of mental illness," and that they were administered for precisely that purpose. Hostility and uncooperativeness are thought to be especially amenable to drug therapy.⁸ Within two weeks major tranquilizers may end hallucinations and delusional ideas,⁹ and under medication "the sullen, sarcastic and antagonistic patient is less irritable and frequently becomes quiet, cooperative, and accessible."¹⁰ There is thus a striking similarity between Bennett's behavior as described by the government psychiatrists and the behavior which the drugs could be expected to induce.¹¹ Accordingly, the conviction must be reversed because the government's experts withheld information that calls into question the validity of their entire testimony, and that might—if disclosed—have led the jury to disregard their stated conclusions.¹² Since their testimony was the only evidence offered by the government in opposition to Bennett's insanity defense, it can hardly be disputed that the jury might have reached a different result if the crucial information had been properly presented.

In reversing appellant's conviction, we recognize that trial counsel made no effort to explore the issue below even though he arguably knew of the medication.¹³ But we find it impossible to ascribe fault to appellant or trial counsel, who may have been unaware of the significance of the major tranquilizer medication. Lawyers are not expected to be informed about the effects of anti-psychotic drugs, but we can hardly assume that the government psychiatrists failed to understand their potential impact. On remand, the government's experts must disclose all of the factual information which underlies their conclusions.

The defect in the expert testimony at issue here is especially disquieting not only because of the importance of the information withheld, but also because of the special nature of the insanity defense. It should be obvious that a jury cannot make the "intertwining moral, legal, and medical judgments"¹⁴ on which the resolution of an insanity defense depends if it has been deprived of a piece of information that might substantially alter its evaluation of expert testimony. Without this information, which may be crucial to an understanding of appellant's behavior and behavioral controls, the jury can do little more than choose between the competing labels proffered by the prosecution and the defense. Yet we have repeatedly emphasized that "neither the court nor the jury is bound by ad hoc definitions or conclusions as to what the experts state is a disease or defect."¹⁵ Where psychiatrists offer testimony in conclusory terms and fail to reveal all of the crucial underlying facts, the jury's dependence on the experts is substantially increased and the underlying purposes of the insanity defense are correspondingly jeopardized.¹⁶ For the almost inevitable result will be a hopeless jumbling of the uniquely psychiatric elements of the determination of responsibility with the legal and moral elements of that determination, leading the jury to the mistaken conclusion that a defendant's responsibility turns on whether or not the experts have given his condition a name and the status of disease. We have repeatedly emphasized, however, that

there is more to a determination of responsibility than psychiatric conclusions, unanimous or not. The gravity of an impairment and its relevance to the acts charged are both questions of degree, which can only be resolved with reference to the community\'s sense of when it is just to hold a man responsible for his act.¹⁷

If the evidence presents an incomplete or misleading representation of a defendant's behavior, the jury will almost invariably abdicate its responsibility and acquiesce in the conclusions of the most persuasive experts. And the process suffers no less than the defendant when crucial information is withheld and the jury's function is disrupted. Accordingly, we reverse and remand for a new trial so that all of the available information relevant to the responsibility defense can be presented to the jury.

II.

If appellant raised no further claim of error, it would not be necessary on remand to redetermine whether or not he committed the acts in question. Only his insanity defense would be at issue. But appellant does argue that his entire defense was prejudiced by the intermingling at trial of his insanity defense and his defense on the merits. The prejudice, he asserts, was of two types. First, he argues that the introduction of evidence on the merits prejudiced his insanity defense because the jury was exposed to the "unpleasant details" of the "shocking sexual assault on a 13-year-old boy" with which appellant was charged.¹⁸ Second,...