Curtis v. State

KARWACKI, Judge. The appellant, Bernard A. Curtis, was convicted on April 9, 1980, by a jury in the Criminal Court of Baltimore, of first degree felony murder, use of a handgun in that crime, and transporting a handgun. After being sentenced for those crimes, he appealed. In a December 1, 1981, unreported opinion, this Court reversed the judgments against the appellant, holding that the trial judge had improvidently permitted the appellant to withdraw his insanity plea prior to trial.

We there held that since the evidence of the mental state of the appellant was sufficient to raise a doubt as to his sanity at the time of the offenses, the trial judge should have ordered his examination pursuant to former Md. Code (1957, 1979 Repl. Vol.), Art. 59, § 25, before permitting the appellant, over the objection of his counsel, to withdraw his plea of insanity. We remanded the case for a new trial with a direction to the trial court to reinstate the appellant’s plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Curtis v. State, No. 480, September Term, 1981, per curiam.

The appellant was retried before a jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City on November 7 and 8, 1984. At _ ⁵¹¹ the close of the evidence, the appellant made a motion for an acquittal by reason of insanity. The appellant based that motion on the uncontradicted expert opinion evidence before the court and jury that at the time of the offense the appellant was suffering from a mental disorder which caused him to lack substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct and to conform that conduct to the requirements of law. The motion was denied.

He was found guilty of felony murder, robbery with a deadly weapon, and use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence. The jury also found that he was sane at the time of the commission of the offenses. On December 12, 1984, the trial court, after merging the robbery and the felony murder convictions, sentenced the appellant to a term of life imprisonment for first degree murder and to a consecutive 15 year term of imprisonment on the handgun conviction. The Facts On November 16, 1979, Allen C. Brooks, proprietor of Brooks Construction Company, located at 4808 Liberty Heights Avenue in Baltimore City, was shot to death at that location.

At 5:38 p.m. that same day, Officer Charles Busse of the Baltimore City Police Department, along with fellow officers, responded to a call of robbery-in-progress at Brooks Construction Company. On his arrival, Officer Busse was told by Howard Bond and Thomas Voss, employees of the victim’s company, that they had earlier heard the appellant threaten the victim. The two men had been waiting for Brooks outside of his Liberty Heights office so that they might be paid when Brooks arrived. As the two waited, the appellant, who also worked for Brooks, arrived to receive his wages.

The appellant displayed a handgun and said something to the effect that he was going to rob the victim. Apparently, Bond and Voss did not take the appellant’s threat seriously. When Brooks arrived, he went into his office while the appellant, Bond, and Voss waited in an outer office. Voss ⁵¹² was the first to go in to see Brooks.

After Voss was paid, it was the appellant’s turn. Bond and Voss could hear the appellant and Brooks arguing before the appellant came out, putting money into his pocket. The appellant again told the men that he was going to rob Brooks, and again the appellant pulled out a handgun. This time Bond and Voss became alarmed, and they decided to get out of the building and call the police.

As they were leaving they saw the appellant go back into Brooks’s office. Bond testified that “Mr. Brooks was still sitting in the chair and [the appellant] said something about giving him money or he was going to blow his head off.” When Voss and Bond returned after calling the police, they found Brooks, who had been shot in the chest, unconscious on the floor of his office. The appellant seeks reversal of his convictions and sentences, contending: I. The evidence was insufficient to sustain the finding of sanity (criminal responsibility); and II. The evidence was insufficient to sustain the conviction.

I. The General Assembly, by Chapter 501 of the Acts of 1984, substantially modified the law governing procedures applicable to the insanity defense in criminal cases. Section 1 of that Act repealed Title 12 of the Health-General Article of the Code (1982) 1 entitled “Incompetency and Insanity in Criminal Cases.” Section 2 of the Act enacted present §§ 12-101—12-121 of the Code, supra, under the title heading “Title 12. Incompetency and Criminal Responsibility in Criminal Cases.” One significant impact upon the insanity defense wrought by Chapter 501 of the Acts of 1984 was to shift the burden of proof of a lack of criminal responsibility by reason of insanity from the prosecution to the defense. ⁵¹³ Md. Code (1982, 1985 Supp.), § 12-109 of the Health-General Article. This important change in procedure, however, was inapplicable to the trial of the case sub judice since Section 4 of Chapter 501 of the Acts of 1984 provides: [T]he provisions of this act shall be applicable to any case filed on or after the effective date of this Act [July 1, 1984] and to any individual found not criminally responsible by reason of insanity or determined to be incompetent to stand trial who is under commitment to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on or after the effective date of this Act [July 1, 1984]; except that the initial commitment of an individual found to have been insane at the time of the commission of the criminal act under the law in effect before the effective date of this Act [July 1, 1984] shall be governed by former §§ 12-110 through and including 12-113 of the Health-General Article as those sections applied on June 30, 1984.

Under the law in effect on the date of the offenses of which the appellant was convicted as well as on the date that he was indicted for those crimes, once a defendant, who had pleaded that he was insane at the time of the commission of an alleged crime, produced sufficient evidence to raise a doubt as to his sanity in the minds of reasonable men, the prosecution then bore the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was sane. Bradford v. State, 234 Md. 505 , 200 A.2d 150 (1964); Bremer v. State, 18 Md.App. 291 , 307 A.2d 503 , cert. denied, 269 Md. 755 (1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 930 , 94 S.Ct. 1440 , 39 L.Ed.2d 488 (1974); Strawderman v. State, 4 Md.App. 689, 244 A.2d 888 (1968), cert. denied, 252 Md. 733 (1969). The test of his sanity was stated in Md. Code (1957, 1979 Repl. Vol.), Art. 59, § 25(a): A defendant is not responsible for criminal conduct and shall be found insane at the time of the commission of the alleged crime if, at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disorder, he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his ⁵¹⁴ conduct to the requirements of law.

As used in this section, the terms “mental disorder” do not include an abnormality manifested only by repeated criminal or otherwise antisocial conduct. 2 Thus, the defense of insanity had to be generated by the appellant by presentation of evidence sufficient to overcome the presumption of sanity during the commission of a crime which automatically attached to every criminal defendant. Lipscomb v. State, 223 Md. 599, 604 , 165 A.2d 918 (1960); Hawkins v. State, 34 Md.App. 82, 90 , 366 A.2d 421 (1976), cert. denied, 279 Md. 683 (1977); Van Meter v. State, 30 Md.App. 406, 412 , 352 A.2d 850 (1976). Once the threshold question of doubt as to the appellant’s responsibility was surmounted, the burden of production and persuasion was then cast upon the State to prove the appellant sane beyond a reasonable doubt as a necessary element of the prosecution’s case. Bradford v. State, supra; Riggleman v. State, 33 Md.App. 344 , 364 A.2d 1159 (1976).

At that point the presumption of sanity of the appellant which had previously existed disappeared, and it no longer had any probative value as evidence. Bradford v. State, 234 Md. at 512 , 200 A.2d 150 ; Evans v. State, 28 Md.App. 640, 727 , 349 A.2d 300 (1975), aff'd, 278 Md. 197 , 362 A.2d 629 (1976). The principal issue in this appeal is whether the State met that burden. The only scientific evidence relating to the appellant’s sanity was the testimony of Dr. Jacques Clermont, the Clinical Director at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital in Jessup, Maryland, and the record from that hospital reflecting the unanimous opinion of three physicians and one psychologist that the appellant suffered, at the time of the offense, from schizophrenia, paranoid type, which prevented him from having “substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct and to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.” This evidence was offered by the appellant. ⁵¹⁵ The sum and substance of the State’s case on the issue of the appellant’s mental condition at the time of the offense consisted of the testimony of two of the victim’s employees that they saw the appellant immediately prior to and after the shooting,