State v. Guido

OPINIONBY: WEINTRAUB

Adele Guido was convicted of murder in the second degree and sentenced to imprisonment for a minimum of 24 years and a maximum of 27 years. She appeals directly to this Court.

The victim was defendant's husband. When they first met, she was a young girl and he a professional fighter of some success.

All the details of the marital discord need not be stated. It is enough to say it could be found that deceased failed to support defendant or their child; that she sought unsuccessfully to obtain support by judicial proceedings; that she wanted a divorce, while decedent insisted upon holding on to her notwithstanding he would not or could not end his extramarital romance and assume the role of a responsible husband and parent.

The final episode occurred in April 1961. Defendant had moved from their bungalow in New Jersey to a hotel in New York and was actively dealing with an attorney for the purpose of divorce. Lois was living with her, and the infant Ava was with defendant's friends. Guido, returning from Florida and finding defendant had left the New Jersey home, went to her place of employment in New York where, according to defendant and her employer, Guido set upon her forcefully, attempting to choke her and brandishing a pocket knife. He was placated by the employer. Guido insisted defendant return to the New Jersey bungalow and she did.

Back at the bungalow, decedent pressed defendant to move with him to Florida, the infant Ava to remain in New York with defendant's friends. He urged defendant and Lois to raise the necessary funds. Defendant would not agree to his plans. According to her, deceased took a weapon from his traveling bag and threatened to use it, on their child if need be, if she thwarted him. In the early morning of April 17, 1961, after deceased fell asleep on a couch in the living room while watching television, defendant, according to her testimony, took the gun and went into her room, intending to end her life. Deciding that suicide would be no solution, she returned to the living room to put the weapon back in the suitcase, but when her eyes fell upon Guido, she raised the weapon and fired until it was empty.

With respect to physical abuse, the jury could find that although there were only a few incidents of actual injury, there was the constant threat of it from a man who had to have his way and who would not let go of a woman who had had her fill. It appears that on several occasions shortly before the homicide defendant called the local police to express her fear of harm.

Defendant claimed "temporary" insanity. She was examined by two court-appointed psychiatrists who jointly reported in writing to her then attorney, Mr. Teich. Later the court relieved Mr. Teich and assigned Mr. Saltzman to whom Mr. Teich delivered the psychiatric report. The report contained sundry medical findings and ultimately the opinion that defendant was "legally" sane at the time of the shooting. Mr. Saltzman met with the psychiatrists, and after some three hours of debate the psychiatrists changed their opinion as to "legal" insanity although their underlying medical findings remained the same. They then retyped the last page of their report.

On cross-examination of the first defense psychiatrist, it was developed that the original report had been revised. We do not know how the prosecutor learned of the change. The record shows that on its own initiative the court immediately directed that "Counsel shall produce the original report to the prosecutor." Mr. Saltzman said he did not have it with him, to which the court responded, "We will take an adjournment until it's produced." The record reveals a short recess and then further proceedings out of the presence of the jury. What followed was some high drama that the occasion did not warrant.

Mr. Saltzman had returned from his office with the original report. The court undertook to interrogate him with respect to the receipt of the changed last page, at which juncture Mr. Teich appeared in response to an earlier telephone call from the court. The court directed Mr. Teich to step forward and to produce a photostatic copy of the report he had given to Mr. Saltzman, announcing "It shall be marked for identification at the direction of the Court." With much formality the trial court examined Mr. Teich "as an officer of the Court," elicited step by step the receipt and transmittal of the papers, and directed that the receipt given by Mr. Saltzman to Mr. Teich be marked as an exhibit. The trial then resumed before the jury. Later the court on its own motion ordered the original report and the substituted last page to be marked in evidence "at the direction of the Court."

Defense counsel and defense psychiatrists were thus subjected to a humiliating experience. Later the prosecutor berated them in his summation. He said "the defense in this case -- I am sorry to say this -- has been concocted"; "I have been practicing at the bar of this State for a good many years, ladies and gentlemen, and this was the first time in my experience that I came across doctors who changed their opinion just to suit the defense that Mr. Saltzman wanted to make in this case"; that Mr. Saltzman was "in cahoots with Doctors Galen and Chodosh and perpetrated a fraud on this Court"; and "how, how can you believe a woman who lends herself to the deception that was practiced on the Court, on this Court by the doctors and her attorney? Certainly she knew about it."

The trial judge did not stop this unjustifiable attack. On the contrary he intervened in a way that tended to sustain it.

When the basis of the change in the experts' opinion was explored, it quickly appeared that the change was thoroughly consistent with honesty however mistaken it might be. In the minds of the witnesses the change involved no alteration whatever in their medical findings. Rather it stemmed from an altered understanding of the law's concept of insanity. Specifically, the doctors originally understood that the "disease of the mind" required by the M'Naghten concept of legal insanity to which we adhere, means a psychosis and not some lesser illness or functional aberration. As the result of their pretrial debate with Mr. Saltzman, the doctors concluded they had had too narrow a view of M'Naghten and that the "anxiety neurosis" they had found did qualify as a "disease" within the legal rule, and hence when the anxiety reached a "panic" state, "meaning simply a severe disorganizing degree of anxiety," defendant did not know right from wrong and she did not know what she was doing was wrong because of that "disease."

The change in the opinions of the defense psychiatrists simply focuses attention upon an area of undeniable obscurity. As we have said, the M'Naghten rule requires a "disease of the mind." The competing concepts of legal insanity also require a disease (or defect) of the mind. But the hard question under any concept of legal insanity is, What constitutes a "disease"? The frame of reference is criminal responsibility, and the issue is whether a given wrongdoer should be stamped a criminal because of his act. The postulate is that some wrongdoers are sick while others are bad, and that it is against good morals to stigmatize the sick. Who then are the sick whose illness shows they are free of moral blame? We cannot turn to the psychiatrist for a list of illnesses which have that quality because, for all his insight into the dynamics of behavior, he has not solved the riddle of blame. The question remains an ethical one, the answer to which lies beyond scientific truth.

The M'Naghten rule does not identify the disease which will excuse, but rather stresses a specific effect of disease, i.e., that at the time of the committing of the act the accused was laboring under a defect of reason such as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing was wrong. But although emphasis is thus upon a state of mind, it is nonetheless required that that state be due to "disease" and not something else. So our cases contrast that concept of insanity with "emotional insanity" or "moral insanity" which, upon the dichotomy mentioned above, is attributed to moral depravity or weakness and hence will not excuse the offender even if his rage was so blinding that he did not really appreciate what he was doing or that it was wrong.

We have described the problem, not to resolve it, but simply to reveal the room for disputation, to the end of demonstrating the unfairness of charging defendant, her attorney, and her witnesses with a fraud when the change in the experts' opinion, however frivolous it may be in law, involved no departure from prior medical findings but rather a change in the witnesses' understanding of what the law means by "disease."

The judgment is reversed and the matter remanded for retrial.