The Akron Legal News

9th District: Insanity is valid defense for felony traffic offenses

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: September 5, 2013

A woman sentenced to four years in prison for several traffic violations and endangering her child had her conviction reversed last week due to the trial court’s failure to instruct a jury on an insanity defense.

The Summit County Court of Common Pleas found Melissa Swiger guilty of hit and skip, child endangering, OVI and aggravated vehicular assault after an incident that took place on the morning of Aug. 23, 2011.

According to case summary, Swiger stopped her minivan in the middle of the street, exited the van, opened the driver’s side rear passenger door and removed her 3-year-old son from the vehicle. She placed him in the middle of the four-lane road, returned to the van and drove off.

A woman saw the child and ran into traffic to rescue him as Swiger proceeded to drive through a busy intersection at an excessive speed and collide with two other vehicles.

The collision seriously injured one of the other drivers involved; Swiger received minor injuries.

After her minivan came to a stop, Swiger got out and began to walk down the middle of the street.

According to police, they arrested her on foot, and she was mumbling and uncooperative. Swiger later became compliant, but the paramedic who treated her described her as disoriented and unable to respond to questions.

She was admitted to Akron General Hospital where she spent nine days in the psychiatric unit.

Following her indictment, Swiger initially pleaded not guilty but later filed a notice that she intended to plead not guilty by reason of insanity on all counts.

Near the conclusion of her trial, the judge informed Swiger that she would not give the jury an insanity instruction on either the vehicular assault or the OVI counts, because the former was a strict liability offense and the latter was both a strict liability and traffic offense.

After she was found guilty, Swiger appealed to the 9th District, arguing that the trial court’s refusal to instruct the jury on a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, or NGRI, violated her due process rights.

“We agree,” wrote Judge Beth Whitmore on behalf of the Ninth District. “While the precise language of a given jury instruction is a matter of discretion for the trial court, a trial court must charge a jury with instructions that are a correct and complete statement of the law.”

In previous cases, the 9th District has held that traffic violations are not entitled to NGRI instruction. Whitmore cited a specific case which arose from a citation and proceeded as a traffic case.

In that instance, the appellate court held that traffic offenses only permit pleas of guilty, not guilty or no contest.

However, Swiger’s charges arose from a felony indictment and Traf.R.2(A) provides that a traffic case “does not include any proceeding that results in a felony indictment.”

“By definition, therefore, Swiger’s case was not a traffic case and the Ohio Traffic Rules did not apply to her,” wrote Judge Whitmore. “Instead, the Ohio Rules of Criminal Procedure applied ... Crim.R. 11(A) specifically allows for NGRI pleas.”

The trial court also reasoned that the insanity defense was inapplicable because neither the OVI or vehicular assault offenses contained a mens rea element.

However, Judge Whitmore held that the 9th District had previously addressed the critical difference between the concepts of mens rea and insanity: “The former refers to the existence in fact of a ‘guilty mind’ while insanity connotes a presumption that a particular individual lacks the capacity to possess such a state of mind.”

The appellate panel deferred to the General Assembly’s narrow definition of insanity which states that “one who does not know his action is wrong is not a proper subject for punishment.

“To punish such an individual would be like inflicting punishment upon an inanimate object, such as a machine, because it had, without any intelligent human intervention, caused some damage,” the General Assembly stated in promulgating its view on the defense of insanity.

In addition, Judge Whitmore wrote that insanity may be a defense to any crime, “regardless of whether the particular offense requires that the defendant’s conduct be purposeful, knowing, reckless or negligent;” the absence of mens rea does not negate an insanity defense.

“To hold that the absence of a mens rea element eliminates the insanity defense is to create a correlative relationship between the two where none exists.”

The appellate panel concluded that, regardless of the nature of an offense, criminal responsibility cannot be imposed upon a person who is legally insane at the time they commit an offense.

“Therefore, the trial court here erred by refusing to give NGRI instructions on Swiger’s aggravated vehicular assault and OVI counts solely because they were strict liability offenses,” Judge Whitmore wrote.

After reviewing the trial record, the appeals court also determined that Swiger premised her entire defense upon the theory that she was legally insane when she committed her crimes.

The trial court informed Swiger that it would not be issuing an NGRI instruction directly before closing arguments, which gave Swiger no opportunity to pursue an alternative defense.

“We conclude that, by refusing to issue an NGRI instruction on all of Swiger’s counts, the court committed reversible error,” stated Judge Whitmore.

The judgment of the Summit County court was reversed and the cause was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the appellate court’s opinion.

Judges Eve Belfance and Donna Carr concurred.

The case is cited State v. Swiger, 2013-Ohio-3519.

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