ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, June 14, 1996 TAG: 9606140049
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
NOTE: Above
Criminal defendants may be barred from using drunkenness as evidence that they did not act deliberately, the Supreme Court declared Thursday in a 5-4 victory for prosecutors and police.
The ruling upheld a Montana law that requires jurors to be instructed that they cannot weigh an accused person's drunkenness in deciding whether the defendant had the required intent to commit a crime.
Montana is one of 10 states that bar such evidence of intoxication. More states are likely to follow suit, legal experts said.
The other nine states with similar laws are Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina and Texas.
Large numbers of crimes, especially violent ones, are committed by drunken offenders, Justice Antonin Scalia observed. Some studies, he said, showed that intoxicated assailants accounted for half of all homicides.
Barring juries from considering intoxication, he said, increases the punishment for crimes and ``thereby deters drunkenness or irresponsible behavior while drunk,'' he said.
But Scalia, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, relied largely on history to arrive at a conclusion that evidence of voluntary intoxication is not a ``fundamental principle of justice'' deserving constitutional protection.
Rehnquist, Kennedy and Thomas signed Scalia's opinion. The fifth vote was furnished by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote separately that Montana's law had redefined criminal offenses to exclude evidence of intoxication. States are free to define their own crimes.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, joined by John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer, attacked both Ginsburg's interpretation and Scalia's rationale.
``It seems to me,'' O'Connor said, ``that a state may not first determine the elements of the crime it wishes to punish, and then thwart the accused's defense by categorically disallowing the very evidence that would prove him innocent.''
The sole purpose of Montana's law, she said, was ``the state's desire to increase the likelihood of conviction.'' That reason, she said, was insufficient to overcome the constitutional requirement that accused persons get a fair chance to defend themselves.
The decision restored the conviction and 40-year prison term of James Egelhoff, a drifter who was accused of fatally shooting a couple in July 1992. Tests showed Egelhoff had gunpowder residue on his hands and was drunk at the time of the killings. The jury was instructed to disregard evidence of intoxication, but the Montana Supreme Court overturned the conviction, saying his right to due process of law had been violated.
LENGTH: Medium: 57 linesby CNB