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My AccountChapter 8
- 8.1 Categorizing Defenses
- 8.2 Burdens of Proof and Production under Texas Penal Code Chapter 2
- 8.3 Explaining to Jury State’s Burden of Proof on Defenses
- 8.4 Nonstatutory Defensive Positions and Jury Instructions
- 8.5 Instructions on Inconsistent Defenses
- 8.6 “Confession and Avoidance”: Need to Admit Offense
- 8.7 Failure to Instruct on Defense Cannot Be “Fundamental” Error
- 8.8 Defendant’s Right to Have No Instruction on Defense
- 8.9 Relationship of Necessity to Other Defensive Positions
- 8.10 Insanity Generally
- 8.11 Consequences of Insanity Acquittal
- 8.12 Defining “Wrong”
- 8.13 Defining “Severe Mental Disease or Defect”
- 8.14 Instruction—Insanity
- 8.15 Diminished Capacity Generally
- 8.16 Basic Framework for Mistake of Fact under Texas Law
- 8.17 Pre-1974 Texas Mistake-of-Fact Law
- 8.18 Other Jurisdictions and Potential Constitutional Problem
- 8.19 Possible Alternative Approach—Two Mistake-of-Fact Defenses
- 8.20 Reasonableness of Mistake as Matter for Court Rather Than Jury
- 8.21 Committee’s Approach
- 8.22 Instruction—Mistake of Fact
- 8.23 Texas Penal Code Distinction between Mistakes of “Fact” and Mistakes of “Law”
- 8.24 Instruction—Mistake of Law
- 8.25 Voluntary Intoxication Generally
- 8.26 Instruction—Voluntary Intoxication
- 8.27 Involuntary Intoxication Generally
- 8.28 The Committee’s Approach to Involuntary Intoxication
- 8.29 Instruction—Involuntary Intoxication
- 8.30 General Law of Duress
- 8.31 Instruction—Duress (Felony)
- 8.32 Instruction—Duress (Misdemeanor)
- 8.33 Entrapment Generally
- 8.34 Status of “Informers”
- 8.35 Instruction—Entrapment
Comment
Texas Penal Code section 8.01 provides for a defense of insanity to those persons who, at the time of the offense’s commission, did not know their conduct was wrong because of a mental disease or defect. Tex. Penal Code § 8.01(a). “Mental disease or defect” does not include abnormalities manifested only by repeated criminal conduct. Tex. Penal Code § 8.01(b). The defense is an affirmative one, placing the burden of persuasion on the defendant to prove the defense by a preponderance of the evidence. Van Guilder v. State, 709 S.W.2d 178, 180 (Tex. Crim. App. 1978), overruled on other grounds by Meraz v. State, 785 S.W.2d 146, 155 (Tex. Crim. App. 1990). Any “presumption of sanity” is “merely a rule fixing the burden of persuasion and is a correlative of the affirmative defense of insanity.” Madrid v. State, 595 S.W.2d 106, 110 (Tex. Crim. App. 1979). The presumption of sanity “is not a true presumption at all; rather, it is a substantive rule of law.” Madrid, 595 S.W.2d at 110.
The statute requires proof that the severe disease or defect existed at the very time of the alleged commission of the offense. The general rule in Texas is that the prosecution does not have to prove the defendant was sane at the time the defendant committed a criminal offense. Riley v. State, 830 S.W.2d 584, 585 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992).
The burden of proving sanity, however, shifts or belongs to the state if there is a prior adjudication of insanity by a court of competent jurisdiction. Arnold v. State, 873 S.W.2d 27, 30 (Tex. Crim. App. 1993) (citing Manning v. State, 730 S.W.2d 744, 748–50 (Tex. Crim. App. 1987)). Thus, evidence of a prior judgment of insanity may provide “presumptive or prima facie evidence of insanity as to the time covered by the finding of the mental status of the party prior to the adjudication.” Witty v. State, 153 S.W. 1146, 1146 (Tex. Crim. App. 1913). The state may nonetheless rebut this presumption by proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused was sane at the time of the charged offense. Witty, 153 S.W. at 1146–47.
As proposed in 1970 and adopted in 1974, section 8.01 also permitted the defense of insanity if the actor, because of mental disease or defect, was unable to conform his or her conduct to the law. As originally enacted, the statute defined insanity to exonerate a broader range of mental disease than the rule derived from M’Naghten’s Case, 8 Eng. Rep. 718, 10 Cl. & Fin. 200, 211 (1843), currently embodied in section 8.01. As a result of the outrage surrounding the exoneration of John Hinckley, the failed assassin of President Reagan, the legislature restricted the defense to the M’Naghten definition.
Judge Cochran has explained the Texas insanity defense as putting into contention matters other than those necessarily raised by criminal law’s requirement of culpable mental states:
Texas law, like that of all American jurisdictions, presumes that a criminal defendant is sane and that he intends the natural consequences of his acts. Texas law, like that of many American jurisdictions, excuses a defendant from criminal responsibility if he proves, by a preponderance of the evidence, the affirmative defense of insanity. This defense excuses the person from criminal responsibility even though the State has proven every element of the offense, including the mens rea, beyond a reasonable doubt. The test for determining insanity is whether, at the time of the conduct charged, the defendant—as a result of a severe mental disease or defect—did not know that his conduct was “wrong.”
Ruffin v. State, 270 S.W.3d 586, 591–92 (Tex. Crim. App. 2008) (footnotes omitted).