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People v. Yanikian5/22/1974
eover, the consequences of defendant sustaining his position are entirely different. If he is found to be legally insane, he has no criminal responsibility whatever but he may be restrained indefinitely in an institution for the criminally insane. (Pen. Code, ยง 1026a.) If he is found to have diminished capacity, the seriousness of his offense may be diminished but he is not so institutionalized. In a case of this character, it would be virtually impossible meaningfully to instruct a jury on both of these confusingly similar defenses in respect of which not only the burden but the degree of proof is different and the consequences are widely divergent. The wisdom of the legislation which forecloses placing the jury in this untenable posture can scarcely be questioned.
The Propriety of the Instructions
Substantially all of the court's instructions (a) defining the crimes of murder in the first and second degree, voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter, (b) defining the elements of "malice aforethought," "deliberate" and "premeditated," and (c) explaining diminished capacity in relation thereto were given as requested by both parties, and no question is raised as to their propriety. Defendant urges, however, that the special instruction, to the effect that defendant was conclusively presumed to have been "sane," nullified the instructions on diminished capacity and confused the jury, in the absence of any explanation reconciling defendant's presumed sanity with the possible "mental illness" or "mental defect" referred to in the diminished capacity instructions.
Neither party has cited any authority bearing on this question. The only case which has come to the attention of this court is People v. Williams, 22 Cal. App. 3d 34 [99 Cal. Rptr. 103]. In that case the defense of diminished capacity was based upon the claim that the defendant was undergoing a psychomotor epileptic attack which, as the court explained it, "would have made him legally insane as well as unconscious of his actions and diminished in capacity for the requisite specific intents." (P. 53.) Under these circumstances the giving of an instruction in substantially identical language as that given in this case, presuming the defendant to be "sane," was held erroneous. The trial court had also given CALJIC instruction No. 3.34 (not given in the case at bar) which was held to constitute "an affirmation by the trial court to be heeded by the jury that the defendant is of sound mind," (p. 51) thus greatly increasing the hazard that the jury would construe the word "sane" in the questioned special instruction as meaning "of sound mind," and have difficulty finding that he suffered from a "mental illness" or a "mental defect." In holding the instruction prejudicially
erroneous, the court said at pages 53-54: "The trial court after having given its instruction explaining the two phases of the trial and advising that defendant was to be conclusively presumed sane in the first, then should have defined insanity and clarified the duty and task of the jurors as to their dealings with the concepts of diminished capacity for specific intent and unconsciousness of actions. It is vital that a jury be instructed in clear and unambiguous terms. (People v. Baker, supra, at p. 570.) Absent such an instruction, the danger of equation of soundness or normality of mind with the sanity, which the jurors were told defendant was presumed to have, was present; we cannot be satisfied that such equation was not carried out. [Fn. omitted.]"
Though there was not nearly so much danger of equating soundness of mind with sanity under the instructions given by the trial court
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