Parker v. StateParker v. State
- Reporters:
- , ,
- Before:
- Murphy
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellant was convicted on May 16, 1967 by a jury in the ■Circuit Court for Wicomico County of first degree murder and robbery. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on the murder ■charge and to a twenty-yеar term under the robbery conviction, to run consecutively with the life sentence. His primary ■contention on this appeal is that the court erred in instructing the jury on the issue of burden of prоof as to appellant’s defense of insanity.
There was evidence adduced at the trial tending to show that at approximately 9:00 p.m. on December 30, 1966, appellant ■entеred the grocery store of William Arnie in Cambridge and .asked Arnie, whom he knew, to go to the back of the store with him; that a shot went off and Arnie called to his son, “Run Johnnie, run”; that a second shot wеnt off and Johnnie ran from the store to call the police; that Arnie came out of the store .holding his stomach and stated to a witness, “Oh my God, Wayne, the Parker boy shot me”; that apрellant then ran out ■of the store with a gun in his hand and fled in the direction of his apartment; that shortly thereafter two officers of the Cambridge Police Department went to appellant’s apartment and found him lying across a bed; and that the officers discovered .a gun in a hamper in the apartment. It was further established that the bullets found in the grocery store were fired by the .gun found in appellant’s apartment, that approximately $900.00 was found missing from the store safe, as well as $720.00 which Arnie had been holding for a friend, and that $1,598.00 was found in appellant’s apartmеnt.
There was conflicting evidence as to whether appellant was ■drunk at the time of the crime, the arresting officers testifying that he was not drunk when they arrested him shortly after the ■crime, and appellant, testifying on his own behalf, stating that
Appellant’s principal defense was that he was insane at the time of the commission of the crime. 1 To establish this defense, he produced Dr. Talmage Reeves, a psychiatrist, who testified that he examined appellant on May 1, 1967 for approximately one hour and that on thе basis of this examination, he concluded that at the time of the commission of the crime, appellant had a “character behavior disorder” and, in addition, “an acute brain syndrоme secondary to alcohol ingestion — severe alcohol ingestion”; that the acute brain syndrome was due to ingestion of alcohol; that it was acute and irreversible in aрpellant’s case because of its long existence; that as a result thereof, appellant had impaired comprehension and judgment, including impaired memory; that such impairment was to the extent “that he was unable to comprehend that if he did something which was violent, what the consequences may do-be”; that he could not say specifically “yes or no” whether appellant “was of such mental capacity and reason so as not to be able to properly distinguish between right and wrong and to know the nature and consequenсes of his acts as applied to himself,” but that “because of comprehension and judgment impairment, there was some difficulty”; that “comprehension and judgment were somewhat impаired to the point that he was unable to think clearly and to know the nature of what he was doing and the consequences,” but that he could not say that appellant “absolutely did not knоw right from wrong.”
On the basis of this testimony, the court ruled the defense had sufficiently rebutted the presumption of sanity to permit
The court, after instructing the jury оn the standard to determine whether a person is sane or insane under the M’Naghten test, instructed the jury on the issue of burden of proof as follows :
“* * * the burden of proof is upon the defendant to establish insanity by a preponderance of the evidence ; but then the burden then shifts to the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was sane.”
That this instruction was erroneous is entirely clear. In Bradford v. State, 234 Md. 505, decided May 4, 1964, and in Fowler v. State, 237 Md. 508, decided February 11, 1965, it was held that it was error to charge a jury — in those cases where the presumption of sanity had been overcome by the accused — that the burden was on the defense to prove insanity by a preponderance of the evidence. The court held in such cases that the jury should be instructed that the burden of proof is upon the State to prove the defеndant sane beyond a reasonable doubt. See also Jenkins v. State, 238 Md. 451; White v. State, 3 Md. App. 167; McCracken v. State, 2 Md. App. 716; Bergin v. State, 1 Md. App. 74.
The effect of the court’s instruction was, therefore, to inform the jury that even though appellant had sufficiently rebutted the presumption of sanity to permit the issue to go to the jury, nevertheless, it was incumbent upon him to prove his insanity by a “preponderance of the evidence,” before the burden of рroof shifted to the State to show that he was sane “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Appellant made no objection to the court’s instructions and indeed consented to the сharge being tran
The State contends that even if the court’s instructions on burden of proof were erroneous, nevertheless, there was no> reversible error since there was no sufficient evidence of insanity adduced at the trial by the appellant to require the submission of the issue of insanity to the jury in the first place. While the-
In view of our conclusion, we need not reach other contentions raised by appellant. 2
Judgment reversed; case remanded for a new trial.
Notes
. As the trial was held before June 1, 1967, the test of criminal responsibility then prevailing was the M’Naghten-Spencer test.
. See, however, Crews v. Director, 245 Md. 174, and Avey v. State, 249 Md. 385.