78
Souter, J., dissenting
such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial capacity . . . to conform his conduct to the requirements of law") and § 2.02(2)(a)(i) ("A person acts purposely with respect to a material element of an offense when . . . it is his conscious object to engage in conduct of that nature or to cause such a result"). And quite apart from any technical irrationality, a State might think that admitting the evidence in question on culpable mental state but not capacity (when each was a jury issue in a given case) would raise too high a risk of juror confusion. See Brief for State of Hawaii et al. as Amici Curiae 16 ("[U]se of [intoxication] evidence runs an unacceptable risk of potential manipulation by defendants and [will lead to] confusion of juries, who may not adequately appreciate that intoxication evidence is to be used for the question of mental state, not for purposes of showing an excuse"). While Thomas Reed Powell reportedly suggested that "learning to think like a lawyer is when you learn to think about one thing that is connected to another without thinking about the other thing it is connected to," Teachout, Sentimental Metaphors, 34 UCLA L. Rev. 537, 545 (1986), a State might argue that its law should be structured on the assumption that its jurors typically will not suffer from this facility.4
Quite apart from the fact that Montana has made no such arguments for justification here, however, I am not at all sure why such arguments would go any further than justify-4 Teachout notes that Powell acknowledged that this concept was not explicitly described in his essay entitled A Comment on Professor Sabine's "Pragmatic Approach to Politics," 81 Pol. Sci. Q. 52, 59 (1966), but in a letter wrote:
"If you think you can think about a thing that is hitched to other things without thinking about the things that it is hitched to, then you have a legal mind."
Quoted in Teachout, Sentimental Metaphors, 34 UCLA L. Rev., at 545, n. 17.
Page: Index Previous 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007