674 P.2d 650 (Wash. 1983)
Michele Cameron, age 22 at the time of trial, was indicted for second degree aggravated assault, possession of a weapon with a purpose to use it unlawfully, and fourth degree resisting arrest.1 A jury convicted defendant of all charges. After merging the possession count into the assault charge, the trial court imposed sentences aggregating seven years in the custody of the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections, with a three year period of parole ineligibility and monetary penalties.2
The charges arose out of an incident of June 6, 1981, on a vacant lot in Trenton.3 The victim, Joseph McKinney, was playing cards with four other men. Defendant approached and disrupted the game with her conduct. The participants moved their card table to a new location within the lot. Defendant followed them, however, and overturned the table. The table was righted and the game resumed. Shortly thereafter, defendant attacked McKinney with a broken bottle. As a result of that attack he sustained an injury to his hand, which necessitated 36 stitches and caused permanent injury.4 Defendant reacted with violence to the arrival of the police. She threw a bottle at their vehicle, shouted obscenities, and tried to fight them off. She had to be restrained and handcuffed in the police wagon.5
The Appellate Division reversed defendant’s convictions, holding that it was error not to have given an intoxication charge. We granted the State’s petition for certification, 99 N.J. 200 (1984), and defendant’s cross-petition, 101 N.J. 243 (1985).6
Every witness who testified gave some appraisal of defendant’s condition. The victim thought she was intoxicated and two police officers thought she was under the influence of something. Not one witness who testified thought that her conduct was normal.7 Defendant carried a quart of wine, that she was drinking with other people on the vacant lot, that about a pint of the wine was consumed, and that defendant did not drink this alone but rather gave most of it out.8 Defendant’s own testimony, if believed, would furnish a basis for her actions. She said she acted in self-defense, to ward off a sexual attack by McKinney and others. She recited the details of that attack and of her reaction to it with full recall and in explicit detail.9
Defendant’s cross-petition for certification raised issues of lesser-included offense, prosecutorial comment infringing on defendant’s right to remain silent, and excessiveness of sentence. Because the Appellate Division reversed defendant’s conviction on the intoxication issue, that court did not reach those other questions.10
Whether the evidence was sufficient to require the trial court to charge the jury on defendant’s intoxication, as defendant requested?11
Under N.J.S.A. 2C:2-8(a), intoxication is not a defense unless it negatives an element of the offense, and for purposeful conduct this requires a showing of such a great prostration of the faculties that the requisite mental state was totally lacking.12
No. In the established facts defendant consumed about a pint of wine shared with others on the vacant lot, the victim and officers thought she was intoxicated, and she described herself as very intoxicated, yet she retained full recall and gave explicit detailed testimony about acting in self-defense to ward off a sexual attack, demonstrating she was capable of purposeful conduct.13
The evidence was insufficient to require an intoxication charge to the jury.14
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by Utter, J.
Justice Dore concurred in the judgment.15 He observed that both Crenshaw and this case involved similar brutal murders.16 In each the defendant believed he was acting under a divine command.17
Justice Dore noted that the majority's decision falls within the narrow exception recognized in Crenshaw for deific decrees.18 He concluded that in all future insanity cases the standard WPIC 20.01 instruction should be given without change or modification.19 This approach permits defendants' defense counsel to argue legal and moral right and wrong as an affirmative defense.
Joined by Rosellini And Brachtenbach, Jj.
Justice Dimmick dissented in part.20 She would have affirmed the Court of Appeals and trial court's holdings that the insanity instruction was proper.21 She warned that the deific decree exception is inconsistent with a legal definition of wrong.22
Justice Dimmick predicted that the exception would force the court to review every proffered insanity defense on a case-by-case basis.23 She suggested that the preferable approach is that the definition of wrong should not be included in an instruction in the future.24