People v. Bradshaw

THE COURT.

The defendant was charged by information with the commission of a felony, to wit, that, being a prisoner lawfully committed to the state prison at San Quentin for a term less than life, he escaped therefrom. Upon arraignment he entered a plea of not guilty, and also a plea of “not guilty by reason of insanity”. He subsequently withdrew the first of these pleas and was tried upon the latter before a jury, which returned a verdict that he was sane on the date of the commission of the offense with which he was charged. He was thereupon sentenced to imprisonment in the state prison, and has appealed from the judgment.

As grounds for his appeal he complains of two instructions. The first reads as follows: •

“Although it is true that generally the burden of proof is on the prosecution, yet to this rule there is this exception: where insanity is relied upon as a defense the burden of proving the existence of such insanity is on the defendant. It is not incumbent upon the defendant to prove his insanity to a moral certainty and beyond all reasonable doubt, but it is incumbent upon him to establish by a preponderance of evidence that he was insane at the time of committing the act charged, and the evidence of mental derangement must be such in amount that if the single issue of sanity or insanity of the defendant should be submitted to the jury in a civil ease, they must find that he is insane. In short, insanity must be established by the defendant by a preponderance of the evidence.”

It is claimed that the instruction erroneously states the rule with respect to the burden of proof upon the defense on a plea of insanity.

It has been declared in numerous cases that the burden rests upon the defendant to establish his insanity by a preponderance of the evidence, and that it is not sufficient for him to merely raise a reasonable doubt as to his sanity.

(People

v.

Loomis,

170 Cal. 347 [149 Pac. 581];

People

v.

Miller,

171 Cal. 649 [154 Pac. 468] ;

People

v.

Reid,