Comer Blocker v. United States

Comer Blocker was indicted, tried and convicted for murder in the first degree. His defense was insanity. Three psychiatrists testified at his trial, two called by the defense and one by the prosecutor. All three were on the staff at St. Elizabeths Hospital, an institution owned by the Federal Government and operated by it for the mentally ill. Blocker had undergone observation there for some sixty days or more. The testimony of the doctors called by him was based upon that observation. The testimony of the-other doctor, for the Government, was based upon a three-hour examination at the District Jail. The latter found nothing wrong with Blocker. The other two doctors concluded that he suffered from a sociopathic personality disturbance and chronic alcoholism and that his intelligence was about midway between defective and “dull normal”. All three doctors testified that a sociopathic personality disturbance was not considered to be a mental disease or defect. The verdict of guilty-as-indicted was returned October 22, 1957.

On November 18, 1957, less than a month after this verdict was returned, the Assistant Superintendent of St. Elizabeths Hospital testified in another case1 that he and the Superintendent of the Hospital were then agreed that people suffering from sociopathic personality disturbance should be “labelled” as diseased, as mentally ill, mentally sick, suffering from mental disease. Counsel for Blocker promptly moved for a new trial on the basis of this new medical evidence. The motion was denied. We think it should have been granted. Blocker, his life at stake, was entitled to a verdict based upon the most mature expert opinion available on an issue vital to his defense.

With respect to the testimony of the experts which may occur upon a retrial, we direct attention to those portions of our opinion in Carter v. United States2 which dealt with this matter. We also call attention to our admonitions in Durham v. United States 3 that “We do not, and indeed could not, formulate an instruction which would be either appropriate or binding in all cases”; we included discussion and material from which proper instructions could be fashioned for a particular case. In that connection we quoted from the Royal Commission Report as follows:

“There is no a priori reason why every person suffering from any form of mental abnormality or disease, or from any particular kind of mental disease, should be treated by the law as not answerable for any criminal offence which he may commit, and be exempted from conviction and punishment. Mental abnormalities vary infinitely in their nature and intensity and in their effects on the character and conduct of those who suffer from them. Where a person suffering from a mental abnormality commits a crime, there must always be some likelihood that the abnormality has played some part in the causation of the crime; and, generally speaking, the graver the abnormality, * * * the more probable it must be that there is a causal connection between them. But the closeness of this connection will be shown by the facts brought in evidence in individual cases and cannot be decided on the basis of any general medical principle.” 4

For the foregoing reasons and purposes the judgment of the District Court has been reversed and the case remanded for a new trial.