People v. Sigal

¶1— I concur in Justice Regan’s opinion. The reasoning and the result are entirely correct by the standards of criminal justice which control us all. I deem it necessary, however, to express my strenuous protest against enforced participation in the archaic and socially dangerous machinery which California law maintains for handling cases like this. Barry Sigal has been twice tried and his conviction twice reversed. No one can read the record without a strong belief that he murdered Wilma McAfee. There is in the record some intimation that this defendant is emotionally disturbed, seriously so. Lodged with the trial court and attached to the record on appeal is the written statement of a licensed California psychiatrist who has known and treated Barry Sigal since boyhood. (See People v. Sigal, 221 Cal.App.2d 684, 697, fn. 2 [34 Cal.Rptr. 767].) The psychiatrist reported signs of mental deviation when the boy was 12. During Sigal’s service in the Marine Corps, he spent time in a psychiatric ward. On the basis of Sigal’s history and an examination made in May 1962, the psychiatrist states:

“1. Barry Sigal is mentally abnormal, and has been for many years.

“2. He has delusions of grandeur associated with persecutory and paranoid feelings.

‘13. His emotional responses and moods are inappropriate to the subjects and their importance.

“4. His reactions are compulsive in many instances and •situations and are indeterminate and unpremeditated.

“5. His interests and emotional emphasis are upon immediate sensory satisfactions rather than upon realities.

“6. He has only a fleeting concept of the seriousness of his present position, principally because he cannot differentiate between phantasy, imagination, and reality.

“7. If he commited the crime for which he is presently charged he could not have been normal mentally at the time. ’ ’

¶2This second reversal may be a step on Barry Sigal’s road to freedom. No judge would willingly participate in this step without first ascertaining whether he is a compulsive offender *459and a danger to the' community. No judge would participate in such a step without a deep sense of protest. It is this sense of protest which I voice.

¶3The law faces three alternatives here: If Barry Sigal did not Mil Mrs. McAfee, he should go free. If he did kill her and is responsible for his act, he should go to prison. If he killed her and his act was the product of mental illness, he should be confined in a mental institution. Is it not logical, is it not rational, that the machinery of the law should pause to investigate this third alternative ? Will Sigal go free, possibly to deal with others as he apparently dealt with Mrs. McAfee ? Should not the law, in all its majesty and assumed rationality, deal with this possibility before it is too late? Why must we captives of the law go through the motions of trying him as though there were no suspicion of mental illness in his history? We are like sleepwalkers caught up in a meaningless ritual dance.

¶4At one point Sigal’s counsel entered and withdrew a plea of “not guilt by reason of insanity." If the withdrawal occurred because the plea had little hope or meaning, counsel was probably right. The California concept of criminal insanity is an ineffectual tool here. With a slight verbal modification, it stands on the “right from wrong" test pronounced in the M’Naughton case in 1843.1(People v. Wolff, 61 Cal.2d 795, 800-803 [40 Cal.Rptr. 271, 394 P.2d 959].) The M’Naughton rule simply does not answer the problem posed by the mentally ill offender who acts under the compulsion of uncontrollable impulse. One realizes with a sense of shock that California law still holds an offender to full responsibilitiy even though he acted under the compulsion of an irresistible psychotic impulse. (See CALJIC No. 806.)

¶5A world of psychological knowledge has been revealed to us since the turn of the century. Giants such as Freud, Adler and Jung have handed us new insights and new tools. There is no logical reason why, in our treatment of the compulsive offender, we insist on narrowing. our vision to a legal epigram pronounced in 1843. Concededly, this epigram has its supporters and possesses a certain efficacy. The point here is that it is by far too narrow.

¶6In worrying over the safety of the community, we derive scant consolation from the proposition that the M’Naughton rule is not so obsolete as to force judicial abandonment. (See Leland v. Oregon, 343 U.S. 790 ; People v. Wolff, supra,61 *460Cal.2d 795.) It is equally comfortless that arguments are possible and the psychiatric alternatives not utterly certain. (See Diamond, Criminal Responsibility of the Mentally III, 14 Stan.L.Rev. 59; Nutter, A Change in the Rules of Criminal Responsibility ? 39 Cal.St.Bar J. 101; Thomas, The Dangerous Offender, 14 Syracuse L.Rev. 576; Weintraub, Criminal Responsibility. Psychiatry Alone Cannot Determine It, 49 Am. Bar Assn.J. 1075.) To debate in terms of “treatment” versus “sanctions” gets us no closer to morality or social safety. If treatment of a “sick” person were the prime objective, then the District Attorney of Sacramento County could await the weary conclusion of criminal proceedings (which have already occupied three years), then apply for the defendant’s civil commitment under the Welfare and Institutions Code. That kind of commitment falls far short of the community’s needs. The central need here is the community’s protection against the potential of future outbursts of homicidal mania. A civil commitment does not entail obligatory security standards. Such standards are available in a state prison. On the other hand, a prison sentence without a prior determination of the defendant’s moral responsibility engenders considerable moral discomfort. Guilt and responsibility being facets of the same question, the law is ill conceived when it forces the courts to adjudicate guilt without inquiry into responsibility. (See Louisell and Hazard, Insanity as a Defense: The Bifurcated Trial, 49 Cal.L.Rev. 805.)

¶7With all deference to better qualified advocates, I think we should replace or supply alternatives to the M’Naught on rule and abandon the bifurcated trial system, which only chops an indivisible human problem into separate procedural pieces. I question also whether inquiry into mental illness should be barred simply because the defendant chooses to avoid it. The problem has been placed squarely in the lap of the Legislature. (See People v. Wolff, supra,61 Cal.2d 795; Special Commissions on Insanity and Criminal Offenders First Report, July 7, 1962, and Second Report, November 15,1962.) Cases such as this demonstrate that the need for solution is too acute to permit protracted debate.