Durham

Monte Durham was convicted of housebreaking by the District Court of the District of Columbia sitting without a jury. The prosecution proceeded on a charge arising from an incident on July 13, 1951, in which Durham was found in a house. Durham's history included discharge from the Navy in 1945 at age seventeen following a psychiatric examination revealing a profound personality disorder rendering him unfit for service. In 1947 he pleaded guilty to violating the National Motor Theft Act and was placed on probation for one to three years. In January 1948, as a result of a conviction in the District of Columbia Municipal Court for passing bad checks, the District Court revoked his probation and he commenced service of his Motor Theft sentence. His conduct within the first few days in jail led to a lunacy inquiry in the Municipal Court where a jury found him to be of unsound mind. Upon commitment to St. Elizabeths he was diagnosed as suffering from 'psychosis with psychopathic personality.' He experienced multiple discharges and readmissions to St. Elizabeths between 1949 and 1951, including a conditional release in June 1950 that he violated, and a further lunacy finding in 1951. Following the July 1951 housebreaking, Durham was indicted in October 1951 and adjudged of unsound mind based on psychiatrists' affidavits diagnosing psychosis with psychopathic personality. He underwent subshock insulin therapy during a six-month commitment ending in February 1953, after which Dr. Silk certified him mentally competent to stand trial and able to assist counsel. At the ensuing trial, the prosecutor expressed a plan to allow Durham to raise an insanity defense on this charge. The court accepted waivers of jury trial and additional competency proceedings despite Durham's expressed desire for further hospitalization. Testimony included that of Durham's mother regarding his post-May 1951 behavior and a psychiatrist who examined him in September 1951 and opined on his mental condition around the time of the offense. The trial court found the defense of insanity not established under the prevailing standards. The appeal reached the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Alvin Bernard Ford was convicted of murder in a Florida state court in 1974 and sentenced to death. There was no suggestion at the time that he was incompetent to stand trial or to be sentenced. In early 1982, while on death row, Ford began to exhibit bizarre behavior that grew more serious over time. After reading about a Ku Klux Klan rally, he developed an obsession with the Klan and delusions that he was the target of a conspiracy involving the Klan and prison guards, who he believed were holding 135 of his friends and family hostage in the prison and torturing his women relatives. He began referring to himself as Pope John Paul III and claimed to have fired prison officials and appointed new justices to the Florida Supreme Court. Ford's counsel arranged for examinations by two psychiatrists. Dr. Jamal Amin evaluated Ford over roughly 14 months using taped conversations, letters, interviews, and medical records and concluded that Ford suffered from a severe mental disease resembling paranoid schizophrenia with suicide potential. Dr. Harold Kaufman interviewed Ford in November 1983 and concluded that Ford had no understanding of why he was being executed, sincerely believed he would not be executed because he owned the prisons and could control the Governor through mind waves, and showed no signs of malingering. Pursuant to Florida Statute § 922.07, Ford's counsel invoked the state procedure for determining competency of a condemned inmate. The Governor appointed a panel of three psychiatrists who together interviewed Ford for approximately 30 minutes in the presence of eight other people. Each psychiatrist filed a separate two- or three-page report. Although the diagnoses differed, all three concluded that Ford had the mental capacity to understand the nature of the death penalty and the reasons why it was imposed on him. On April 30, 1984, the Governor signed a death warrant without explanation or statement. Ford's attorneys unsuccessfully sought a hearing in state court. They then filed a petition for habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, proffering the conflicting findings and subsequent challenges by other psychiatrists. The District Court denied the petition without a hearing. The Court of Appeals affirmed, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.

McDonald was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to from five to fifteen years' imprisonment. He had been charged with second degree murder for aiding and abetting his employer, Davis, in the shooting of one Jenkins during an altercation. The District Court allowed this appeal in forma pauperis. This court appointed new counsel. After the case was heard by a division of this court, a rehearing en banc was ordered sua sponte. At trial a psychiatrist and a psychologist testified that the defendant had a mental defect, principally because his I.Q. rating shown by various tests was below the average intelligence range of 90 to 110. His overall I.Q. was 68. Neither witness was able to say whether appellant's mental defect stemmed from organic injury or from some other cause. The psychologist testified that a person suffering from a mental defect would have less ability than normal persons to distinguish between right and wrong in complex situations. The psychologist also testified that such a person would tend to act impulsively under stress and would readily become dependent upon and be strongly influenced by someone who befriended him. The psychiatrist stated that McDonald would lack the ability of normal persons to foresee the consequences of his acts. The psychiatrist offered an opinion that appellant's relationship to Davis was to some extent a product of his mental deficiency. After the charge was concluded, the court called a bench conference at which defense counsel expressed substantial satisfaction with the instructions. Defense counsel made no reference to or request concerning the so-called Lyles instruction on mandatory commitment of persons found not guilty by reason of insanity. Thereupon the court told the jury that it could return any one of five possible verdicts: guilty of second degree murder, guilty of manslaughter, guilty of assault with a dangerous weapon, guilty of assault, or not guilty. Earlier in the charge the court had instructed on criminal responsibility. The court had stated that if the jury was not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the act was not a product of a mental defect, then the verdict must be not guilty because of insanity. The Government urged that defense counsel's failure to object showed it appeared affirmatively that appellant did not want the Lyles instruction. The Government also urged that the omission of an insanity verdict from the court's lists of alternatives must be deemed harmless because of reference to it elsewhere. The Government urged that the evidence was insufficient to require an instruction on responsibility.

In late December 1966, appellant Leroy Powell was arrested and charged with being found in a state of intoxication in a public place in violation of Texas Penal Code, Art. 477 (1952). He was tried in the Corporation Court of Austin, Texas, found guilty, and fined twenty dollars. He appealed to the County Court at Law No. 1 of Travis County, Texas, where a trial de novo was held. At the county court trial without a jury, the defense presented testimony from psychiatrist Dr. David Wade, who had examined Powell and testified that he is a chronic alcoholic with an uncontrollable compulsion to drink and that he loses the power to control his drinking. Powell testified that he works at a tavern shining shoes, makes about twelve dollars a week which he uses to buy wine, drinks wine every day, gets drunk about once a week, and usually goes to sleep in public places such as the sidewalk when drunk. The arresting officer testified that Powell staggered when he walked, that his speech was slurred, and that he smelled strongly of alcohol. The trial court entered findings of fact that chronic alcoholism is a disease which destroys the afflicted person's will power to resist the constant, excessive consumption of alcohol, that a chronic alcoholic does not appear in public by his own volition but under a compulsion symptomatic of the disease of chronic alcoholism, and that Powell is a chronic alcoholic who is afflicted with the disease. The court nevertheless convicted Powell and fined him fifty dollars. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction. Powell appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which noted probable jurisdiction. The record shows Powell had been convicted of public intoxication approximately one hundred times since 1949 and that he works shining shoes, earns about twelve dollars a week, and uses his earnings to buy wine, getting drunk about once a week usually in public places.