Sleeping Killer: An Analysis of Voluntary Acts
By Amber McGee, Staff Writer
The very idea that a person could commit crimes while sleeping is unsettling at best. Criminal law requires a voluntary act to convict a defendant of a crime. That being said, unconscious individuals committing even the most heinous crimes, including murder, have been able get away with it entirely if they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the act they committed was involuntary. This slippery slope in the law has been puzzling academics as they try to reconcile this defense with establishing guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and mens rea, or a guilty mind. Until recently, “consciousness was the ‘ghost in the machine,’ an unobservable, immeasurable, phenomenon rendered irrelevant to objective science.” [1] While it is still a tricky thing to prove, memory studies and lie detection tests can be used to aid factfinders in sorting out whether the accused had unconsciously acted.
There have been some disturbing cases involving sleepwalking as a defense. One such case involves a man who had fallen asleep in a hotel lobby. When a porter attempted to wake him, he shot him three times, killing him. [2] In this case, the trial court did not allow the defendant to submit evidence of his medical record which would prove a history of sleepwalking. The trial court convicted the defendant of manslaughter. On appeal, the trial court’s decision was reversed and remanded. [3] Mens rea, or ‘criminal intent’ could not be formed here when a defendant acted involuntarily, or due to a sleep disorder.
The ‘sleepwalking defense’ ultimately worked out for the defendant in Fain v. Commonwealth, but could a defendant use this as a defense without having proof of a history of sleepwalking? Most courts require proof of this type of history to acquit, however some cases have relied on family history of sleep disorders or other testimony of unconsciousness to uphold this defense. [3] In Regina v. Parks the defendant drove 14 miles while asleep to the house of his in-laws. [3] When he arrived, he strangled his father-in-law until the man passed out. He bludgeoned his mother-in-law with a tire iron and stabbed them both with a kitchen knife. The mother-in-law died while the father-in-law barely survived the attack. Experts testified that due to the defendant’s strong family history of sleep disorders, it was likely that he committed the murder while unconscious. [3] The circumstances surrounding this case also came into play as the defendant’s relationship with his in-laws was examined. The defendant had a good relationship with his in-laws, and so the court determined it was unlikely that the defendant intended to kill them.
Circumstances in State v. Bradley seem to point in the direction of guilt. [3] In State v. Bradley a Texas man placed a pistol under his pillow fearing “an enemy who had made threats against him”. [3] He then went to bed with his mistress. According to the defendant, he heard a noise that woke him and he fired in the direction of that noise. When the defendant turned on a lamp he saw that he had shot and killed his girlfriend. Although the circumstances are certainly leading in this case, the case was acquitted because the jury was convinced that the defendant may have unconsciously acted.
It has been determined that “defenses involving voluntary acts can be confused conceptually with other key criminal law defenses, primarily insanity, thereby resulting in vastly disparate dispositions for similarly situated defendants.” [1] Uniformity in the law is important, however there is still a lot to learn about consciousness and how the mind works. Psychologists have proposed that the voluntary act requirement be replaced with three parts: (1) voluntary acts, (2) involuntary acts, and (3) semi-voluntary acts. “Semi-voluntary acts would incorporate cases that have previously been shoehorned into the first two categories. The result of integrating increasing knowledge about the unconscious into the criminal law will mean that individuals will be held both more and less responsible than the conventional understanding.” [1] It is apparent that changes should be named to reconcile recent psychological advances. Awareness and consciousness are no longer mysterious things. Criminal law should incorporate this new knowledge into the voluntary act requirement.
[1] Crime and Consciousness: Science and Involuntary Acts, 87 Minn. L. Rev. 269, 2002.
[2] Fain v. Commonwealth, 78 Ky. 183 (1879).
[3] Lyons, Lindsay, 7 Criminal Cases That Invoked the ‘Sleepwalking Defense’ U.S. News and World Report, 2009.
