Tom C. Clark

“ Juries have for centuries made the basic decisions between guilt and innocence and between criminal responsibility and legal insanity upon the basis of the facts, as revealed by all the evidence, and the law, as explained by instructions detailing the legal distinctions, the placement and weight of the burden of proof, the effect of presumptions, the meaning of intent, etc. ”

“ Like every other State, Oregon presupposes that an insane person cannot be made to pay with his life for a homicide, though for the public good he may of course be put beyond doing further harm. Unlike every other State, however, Oregon says that the accused person must satisfy a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that, being incapable of committing murder, he has not committed murder. ”

“ It is apparent that the jury might have found appellant to have been mentally incapable of the premeditation and deliberation required to support a first degree murder verdict or of the intent necessary to find him guilty of either first or second degree murder, and yet not have found him to have been legally insane. Although a plea of insanity was made, the prosecution was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt every element of the crime charged, including, in the case of first degree murder, premeditation, deliberation, malice and intent. ”

“ At this stage of scientific knowledge it would be indefensible to impose upon the States, through the due process of law which they must accord before depriving a person of life or liberty, one test rather than another for determining criminal culpability, and thereby to displace a State's own choice of such a test, no matter how backward it may be in the light of the best scientific canons. Inevitably, the legal tests for determining the mental state on which criminal culpability is to be based are in strong conflict in our fortyeight States. ”

“ Oregon merely requires a heavier burden of proof. In each instance, in order to establish insanity as a complete defense to the charges preferred, the accused must prove that insanity. The fact that a practice is followed by a large number of states is not conclusive in a decision as to whether that practice accords with due process, but it is plainly worth considering in determining whether the practice 'offends some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.' Snyder v. ”

“ This does not preclude State from utilizing common sense regarding mental irresponsibility for acts resulting in homicide from taking for granted that most men are sane and responsible for their acts. That a man's act is not his, because he is devoid of that mental state which begets culpability, is so exceptional a situation that the law has a right to devise an exceptional procedure regarding it. ”

“ Behind a muscular contraction resulting in another's death there must be culpability to turn homicide into murder.
The tests by which such culpability may be determined are varying and conflicting. One does not have to echo the scepticism uttered by Brian, C.J., in the fifteenth century, that 'the devil himself knoweth not the mind of men' to appreciate how vast a darkness still envelops man's understanding of man's mind. Sanity and insanity are concepts of incertitude. ”

“ Knowledge of right and wrong is the exclusive test of criminal responsibility in a majority of American jurisdictions. [22] The science of pschiatry has made tremendous strides since that test was laid down in M'Naghten's Case, [23] but the progress of science has not reached a point where its learning would compel us to require the states to eliminate the right and wrong test from their criminal law. ”

“ Accordingly, States may provide various ways for dealing with this exceptional situation by requiring, for instance, that the defense of 'insanity' be specially pleaded, or that he on whose behalf the claim of insanity is made should have the burden of showing enough to overcome the assumption and presumption that normally a man knows what he is about and is therefore responsible for what he does, or that the issue be separately tried, or that a standing disinterested expert agency advise court and jury, or that these and other devices be used in combination. ”

“ Whatever tentative and intermediate steps experience makes permissible for aiding the State in establishing the ultimate issues in a prosecution for crime, the State cannot be relieved, on a final show-down, from proving its accusation. ”

“ On this issue appellant had the burden of proof under the statute in question here.
By this statute, originally enacted in 1864, [11] Oregon adopted the prevailing doctrine of the time-that, since most men are sane, a defendant must prove his insanity to avoid responsibility for his acts. That was the rule announced in 1843 in the leading English decision in M'Naghten's Case:
' (T) he jurors ought to be told in all cases that every man is to be presumed to be sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes, until the contrary be proved to their satisfaction ”