Milford L. WILLIAMSON
v.
STATE of Mississippi.
Supreme Court of Mississippi.
*273 E. Howard Eaton, Taylorsville, for appellant.
A.F. Summer, Atty. Gen., by Billy Gore, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.
*274 Before INZER, SUGG and WALKER, JJ.
WALKER, Justice, for the court:
The appellant appeals from the imposition of a life sentence by the Circuit Court of Smith County, Mississippi, after having been convicted of the murder of his wife.
The appellant gave a statement to investigating officers the day after the fatal shooting that he and his wife had been arguing during which she told him she was pregnant by another man; and, that he followed her to her home and shot her from his pickup truck with a .20 gauge shotgun.
The defense was grounded on the theory of insanity.
I.
The appellant first contends that when a defendant files a suggestion of insanity and has been sent to the State Hospital for a mental evaluation, a grand jury should not be permitted to hear evidence with respect to the charge against him until the mental examination has been completed. This contention is wholly without merit. A grand jury is not charged with the responsibility of inquiring into the mental condition of a person accused of a crime and whose case is presented to the grand jury. However, if it should come to the attention of the grand jury, during the course of its investigation, that an accused is insane or so feebleminded that he or she was not responsible for his acts or omissions at the time when the act or omission charged was committed or made, the grand jury should certify the fact to the circuit court as provided under Mississippi Code Annotated section 99-13-5 (1972). This does not mean, however, that a grand jury must delay acting on any case to await the outcome of the mental examination of an accused. The jurisprudence of this State includes adequate safeguards to protect all of the statutory and constitutional rights of incompetents who are indicted for the commission of crimes.
II.
The appellant contends that the entire testimony of Dr. Guild, a psychiatrist, who examined appellant over a period of two and one-half months on an average of three times per week at the Mississippi State Mental Hospital, should have been stricken on the grounds that it was partly based on information from psychological, neurological, medical and laboratory examinations conducted by other hospital personnel. However, an examination of the record reveals that, although Dr. Guild testified he used such reports in arriving at his ultimate opinion that the appellant was sane, there was no contemporaneous objection interposed by appellant specifying this ground as a basis for his objection. To the contrary, appellant's counsel extensively cross-examined Dr. Guild and introduced into evidence some of the reports to which Dr. Guild referred and which contained information favorable to appellant. The appellant did not move to exclude Dr. Guild's testimony until after several intervening witnesses had testified and the state had rested its case. We have held in numerous cases that a contemporaneous objection is necessary stating the specific reasons for the objection in order to preserve the point as error on appeal. Baker v. State,
III.
The appellant next assigns that the court erred in allowing the state's psychiatrist, *275 Dr. Guild, to testify with reference to statements concerning the events surrounding the death of appellant's wife made by the appellant to the doctor during a mental examination conducted pursuant to a court order. The appellant contends that admitting into evidence his statements to the psychiatrist violated his constitutional privilege against self-incrimination where his guilt or innocence as well as the question of insanity was at issue.
We held in Rogers v. State,
In determining the issue of sanity, the privilege arising out of the relationship of physician and patient does not exist in the case of a court-ordered examination. Hopkins v. State,
We are of the opinion that no reversible error was committed under the facts presented in this case. The statements made to Dr. Guild during the course of the court-ordered mental examination were contrary to the account of the shooting that appellant gave in his confession which was admitted into evidence by the court after finding it was freely and voluntarily given. The appellant's statements to Dr. Guild were exculpatory in nature as he told the doctor, in effect, that some third person fired the shots; and, that some of the shots struck his pickup truck in which he was sitting as well as hitting the deceased. Therefore, the admission of the statements through Dr. Guild was harmless error.
IV.
The next assignment is in relation to the testimony of Dr. Stary, head of the psychology department at the State Hospital, who was allowed to testify as to the appellant's mental capability to knowingly and voluntarily waive his right to counsel and to remain silent. Appellant contends that the admission of the doctor's testimony constituted reversible error because it was based upon the report of two clinical technicians who administered certain psychological tests[1] to the appellant. The basis of appellant's objection in the lower court was that the state had not shown that the persons who gave the tests were "licensed clinical psychologists, licensed by the State of Mississippi, to read and interpret psychological testing." The appellent cites no authority to support this contention and we find it to be without merit. It is not necessary *276 that the education of a technician whose duty it is to administer routine tests should reach such a high degree.
We do not reach the question of whether Dr. Stary's testimony was based on hearsay. That proposition is raised for the first time on appeal and was not presented to the trial court for a ruling thereon. We have held in many cases that matters other than jurisdiction not raised in the trial court may not be raised for the first time on appeal. Seaney v. Seaney,
V.
The appellant next urges that at the time he gave his statement to the investigating officers he was incapable of knowingly and intelligently waiving his right to remain silent and his right to an attorney. The thrust of this assignment of error is that the mental examination by the staff at the Mississippi State Hospital showed appellant to have an I.Q. of 76 which placed him in the category of "borderline retardation."
The appellant relies heavily on Harvey v. State,
We would point out again as we did in Ratliff v. State,
Having carefully considered the assignments of error urged by the appelant and finding no reversible error, we are of the opinion that the judgment of the lower court should be and is affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
GILLESPIE, C.J., PATTERSON and INZER, P. JJ., and SMITH, ROBERTSON, SUGG, BROOM and LEE, JJ., concur.
NOTES
Notes
[1] Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale; Rorschach Ink Blot Test; Human Figure Drawings Test.
