Criminal Law
Cases
Regina v. Oommen
Supreme Court of Canada
June 23, 1994
BACKGROUND
Oommen was convicted at his trial of second degree murder. His subsequent appeal to the
Alberta Court of Appeal was allowed and a new trial ordered. The Crown then appealed to
the Supreme Court of Canada against the judgment of the Court of Appeal.
MAIN ISSUE
Whether the accused had the capacity to know that his act was wrong within the meaning of
the NCRMD test articulated in section 16(1) of the Criminal Code.
JUDGMENTS
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada was delivered by Justice McLachlin (the other
members of the Court were Chief Justice Lamer and Justices La Forest, L'Heureux-Dube,
Sopinka, Gonthier, and Major).
The judgment of the Court was
delivered by
MCLACHLIN J. -- In the early
morning hours of March 24, 1991, Mathew Oommen killed Gina Lynn Beaton as she lay sleeping
on a mattress in his apartment by firing 9 to 13 shots at her from a .22 calibre rimfire
semi-automatic repeating rifle. On February 26, 1992, he was convicted of second degree
murder before a judge alone and sentenced to life imprisonment without eligibility for
parole for ten years. The Alberta Court of Appeal set aside the conviction and ordered a
new trial on the ground that the trial judge had erred in his interpretation of the
insanity provision of s. 16(1) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46. The
Crown appeals to this Court against that order, seeking reinstatement of the conviction
for murder.
The Evidence
The evidence disclosed no
rational motive for the killing. To understand it, we must delve into the disordered
workings of Mr. Oommen's mind.
For a number of years, Mr.
Oommen had been suffering from a mental disorder described as a psychosis of a paranoid
delusional type. As a result, he harboured false and fixed beliefs that he was the butt of
conspiracies and situations that endangered him. Mr. Oommen's disorder had led to
hospitalization in 1984, 1988, and in February of 1991, shortly before he killed Ms.
Beaton.
At the time of the killing,
Mr. Oommen's paranoia was fixed on a belief that the members of a local union were
conspiring to destroy him. In November 1986, he had been struck on the head and robbed
while driving a taxi cab. Mr. Oommen attributed this incident to the fact that he had
transported certain individuals during labour disputes at one of the local plants. His
friends and doctors testified that he became paranoid that there would be further attacks
on his life.
At this point, Gina Lynn
Beaton came into Mr. Oommen's life and tragically became part of his delusion. The two met
prior to Christmas 1990. Ms. Beaton needed a place to stay. Mr. Oommen let her stay in his
apartment for a period of time, in return for some cooking and cleaning. Mr. Oommen sought
the advice of both friends and a local police officer as to the propriety of his
sheltering Ms. Beaton. He seemed to be concerned that the relationship might be
misapprehended as sexual. After a while, Ms. Beaton left the apartment and moved to
Edmonton. Shortly before her death, she returned to Fort McMurray and Mr. Oommen's
apartment.
Mr. Oommen became fixated with
the notion that his assailants and enemies had incorporated Ms. Beaton and commissioned
her to kill him. On the evening of the killing he became convinced that members of the
conspiracy had surrounded his apartment building with the intention of moving in on him
and killing him. This delusion, combined with his belief that Ms. Beaton was one of the
conspirators, convinced him that he was obliged to kill her to prevent her from killing
him. So he shot her while she lay sleeping on the floor.
It was established that about
the time of the killing, Mr. Oommen called a taxi dispatcher several times to request the
police. It was also established that someone had rung the buzzers or doorbells of all the
apartments. Mr. Oommen said that this was the signal from the conspirators outside to Ms.
Beaton to kill him. When the police arrived Mr. Oommen told the officer, "I called
the caretaker. I shot and killed a girl inside. She thought I was sleeping. She came with
a knife. I had no other choice, so I shot her, okay." Mr. Oommen repeated this story
to the lawyer a friend found for him, Mr. George. He explained that he had shot and killed
the girl who had been staying with him. Mr. George asked why. Mr. Oommen replied that she
had tried to come with a knife and kill him. He said he saw something, a shiny object, in
her hand and "[i]nstead [of her] killing me, I went and lowered the gun and killed
her."
Mr. Oommen repeated this story
at 5:27 a.m. in his statement to the police. He explained that he had seen the deceased
pass his bedroom door with a knife in her hand as she went to the washroom on more than
one occasion during the night. He knew that she was going to kill him, he thought on the
instructions of others, and he "opened fire" on her as she lay pretending to be
asleep. He had no choice or he would have been killed. Constable Bazowski gained the
impression that Mr. Oommen believed the constable was investigating or ought to
investigate why the girl was trying to kill him.
There was no question at trial
that Mr. Oommen had killed Ms. Beaton. Nor was there much doubt that Mr. Oommen's insane
delusions provoked the killing. As Dr. Trichard testified:
He, on that very night of the
assault, was convinced that there were people outside the building that had staked out the
building and were coming to attack him. He had, in fact, heard the buzzers being rung
throughout the building and had incorporated this into his idea that he was being pursued.
On the night in question, he
also became convinced that his assailants had incorporated the unfortunate deceased and
had given her the commission that she was to kill him. So that on that night, it was him
alone with her in this apartment, and it was either she was going to kill him, or he had
to stop her. I believe that he was therefore acting under a delusion at the time that he
committed this offence.
The only issue was whether
this delusion exempted Mr. Oommen from criminal responsibility under s. 16(1) of the Criminal
Code on the ground that he lacked the capacity at the relevant time to know the
difference between right and wrong. Dr. Trichard testified that a person suffering from
this mental disorder would not lose the intellectual capacity to understand right from
wrong and would know that to kill a person is wrong. However, the person's delusions would
affect the person's interpretation of events so that the individual would honestly believe
killing to be justified under the circumstances. In the abstract, the person would know
killing was wrong. But his delusion would cause him to believe that killing was justified
under the circumstances as he perceived them.
In other words, Mr. Oommen
possessed the general capacity to distinguish right from wrong. However, on the night of
the killing, his delusions deprived him of the capacity to know that killing Ms. Beaton
was wrong. On the contrary, those delusions led him to believe that killing was necessary
and justified.
Judgments
Trial
The trial judge found that the
accused was acting under the influence of a paranoid delusion at the time of the killing
and that this was the cause of the killing. The trial judge found that on a balance of
probabilities Mr. Oommen "was capable of knowing that what he was doing was wrong
according to moral standards of society.... [H]e was capable of knowing that society in
general would regard it as wrong."
Despite this general capacity
to distinguish right from wrong, the trial judge found as a fact that "subjectively
the accused did not believe his act was wrong." Whether because of this subjective
belief in the rightness of his act or confusion engendered by the delusion, the trial
judge found that Mr. Oommen was unable to apply his general ability to distinguish right
from wrong to the act of killing Ms. Beaton: "I must say that I'm certain that the
fact of that knowledge could not have in any way assisted the accused in refraining from
committing the act because in his own mind he believed he had no choice to do anything but
what he did." The trial judge concluded that in view of the accused's general
capacity to know right from wrong, he was not relieved from criminal responsibility under
s. 16(1), notwithstanding his subjective belief that what he did was right and his
inability to apply his general knowledge of right and wrong.
Court of Appeal (1993),
21 C.R. (4th) 117
A new trial was directed on
the ground that the trial judge had failed to direct his mind to the delusions Mr. Oommen
was under and their effect on whether he was capable, given those delusions, of knowing
that the killing was wrong.
Analysis
The Legal Question
This appeal poses the
following legal issue. What is meant by the phrase "knowing that [the act] was
wrong" in s. 16(1)? Does it refer only to abstract knowledge that the act of killing
would be viewed as wrong by society? Or does it extend to the inability to rationally
apply knowledge of right and wrong and hence to conclude that the act in question is one
which one ought not to do?
A review of the history of our insanity provision and the cases indicates that the inquiry
focuses not on general capacity to know right from wrong, but rather on the ability to
know that a particular act was wrong in the circumstances. The accused must possess the
intellectual ability to know right from wrong in an abstract sense. But he or she must
also possess the ability to apply that knowledge in a rational way to the alleged criminal
act.
The wording of s. 16(1)
suggests this result. It proclaims that the focus is not a general capacity to understand
that the act, say of killing, is wrong, but rather the act "committed" or
omission "made," i.e., the particular act or omission at issue in the criminal
proceedings.
In Chaulk, supra,
this Court affirmed that the focus must be on capacity to know that the act committed was
wrong, and not merely on a general capacity to distinguish right from wrong.
The crux of the inquiry is
whether the accused lacks the capacity to rationally decide whether the act is right or
wrong and hence to make a rational choice about whether to do it or not. The inability to
make a rational choice may result from a variety of mental disfunctions; as the following
passages indicate these include at a minimum the states to which the psychiatrists
testified in this case -- delusions which make the accused perceive an act which is wrong
as right or justifiable, and a disordered condition of the mind which deprives the accused
of the ability to rationally evaluate what he is doing.
In R. v. Porter (1933),
55 C.L.R. 182 (H.C. Aust.), at pp. 189 - 90, Dixon J. charged a jury in the following
oft-cited manner:
The question is whether [the
accused] was able to appreciate the wrongness of the particular act he was doing at the
particular time. Could this man be said to know in this sense whether his act was wrong if
through a disease or defect or disorder of the mind he could not think rationally of the
reasons which to ordinary people make that act right or wrong? If through the
disordered condition of the mind he could not reason about the matter with a moderate
degree of sense and composure it may be said that he could not know that what he was doing
was wrong.... What is meant by wrong is wrong having regard to the everyday standards
of reasonable people.
[Emphasis added.]
It was suggested that Mr.
Oommen could be exempted from criminal responsibility only if he could make out the
defence of self-defence. I do not agree. There is no suggestion in the authorities that
the accused must establish that his delusion permits him to raise a specific defence, such
as self-defence. The issue is whether the accused possessed the capacity present in the
ordinary person to know that the act in question was wrong having regard to the everyday
standards of the ordinary person. It is not necessary additionally to show that the
defence of self-defence would also apply. Indeed, to posit such a requirement is to
require the defence to prove two logically inconsistent propositions: first, that the
accused was by reason of mental disorder unable to make the choice which a reasonable
person would make; and second, that the accused acted reasonably in repelling an imminent
attack. The difficulty is avoided, however, when it is recognized that s. 161 is not
merely a vehicle for bringing particular defences before the court; it is an independent
condition of criminal responsibility, as this Court affirmed in Chaulk and as the
wording of the amended section makes clear. It may be that the nature of the delusion is
to create a subjective impression in the accused's mind that he must defend himself or
himself be killed, akin to that present when the defence of self-defence is raised, but
that is incidental. Thus, the question is not whether, assuming the delusions to be true,
a reasonable person would have seen a threat to life and a need for death-threatening
force. Rather, the real question is whether the accused should be exempted from criminal
responsibility because a mental disorder at the time of the act deprived him of the
capacity for rational perception and hence rational choice about the rightness or
wrongness of the act.
It was also suggested that to
permit an exemption from criminal responsibility in this case would be to open the door to
exemption in cases of failure to exercise the will. The law has long distinguished between
disorders affecting the ability to recognize what is wrong, and the will to act or refrain
from acting (although at the time of M'Naghten's Case the distinction may not have
been as clear as we are wont to think. Moreover, the wording of s. 16(1) suggests a
cognitive test. This said, it must be recognized that impulse may be part of the mental
mix which prevents a person from rationally evaluating the wrongness of his act. As
Tollefson and Starkman state at pp. 40 - 41:
Finally, it should be noted
that we are not here concerned with the psychopath or the person who follows a personal
and deviant code of right and wrong. The accused in the case at bar accepted society's
views on right and wrong. The suggestion is that, accepting those views, he was unable
because of his delusion to perceive that his act of killing was wrong in the particular
circumstances of the case. On the contrary, as the psychiatrists testified, he viewed it
as right. This is different from the psychopath or person following a deviant moral code.
Such a person is capable of knowing that his or her acts are wrong in the eyes of society,
and despite such knowledge, chooses to commit them.
Application of the Law to
this Appeal
The evidence indicated that
the accused was suffering from a mental disorder causing paranoid delusion at the time of
the killing. The trial judge found that this mental disorder "compelled" the
killing.
The evidence was capable of
supporting an affirmative answer to the question of whether the accused was deprived of
the capacity to know his act was wrong. First, there was evidence that the accused
honestly felt that he was under imminent danger of being killed by Ms. Beaton if he did
not kill her first, and that for this reason, believed that the act of killing her was
justified. This delusion would have deprived the accused of the ability to know that his
act was wrong; in his eyes, it was right. Second (and this may be to say the same thing),
there was evidence capable of supporting the conclusion that the accused's mental state
was so disordered that he was unable to rationally consider whether his act was right or
wrong in the way a normal person would.
The trial judge found that
while the accused was generally capable of knowing that the act of killing was wrong, he
could not apply that capacity for distinguishing right from wrong at the time of the
killing because of his mental disorder. He further found that because of that disorder,
Mr. Oommen was deluded into believing that he had no choice but to kill. These findings
are consistent with the conclusion that Mr. Oommen's mental disorder deprived him of the
capacity to know his act was wrong by the standards of the ordinary person. As the cases
make clear s. 16(1) of the Criminal Code embraces not only the intellectual ability
to know right from wrong, but the capacity to apply that knowledge to the situation at
hand.
Disposition
I would dismiss the appeal and
confirm the order directing a new trial.
Appeal dismissed.
Source: Adapted from R.
v. Oommen (1994), 91 C.C.C. (3d), pp.10 - 20. Copyright © 1994 Canada Law Book. Used with
permission.
Back to
Top
Back
to List of Cases
