Land & Water Law Review Volume 33 Issue 2 Article 11 1998 Criminal Law - Intoxication as a Defense: The Drunk and Dangerous Model - Montana v. Egelhoff Kyndra K. Miller Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/land_water Recommended Citation Miller, Kyndra K. (1998) "Criminal Law - Intoxication as a Defense: The Drunk and Dangerous Model - Montana v. Egelhoff," Land & Water Law Review: Vol. 33 : Iss. 2 , pp. 749 - 762. Available at: https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/land_water/vol33/iss2/11 This Note is brought to you for free and open access by Law Archive of Wyoming Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Land & Water Law Review by an authorized editor of Law Archive of Wyoming Scholarship. Miller: Criminal Law - Intoxication as a Defense: The Drunk and Dangerous CRIMINAL LAW-Intoxication as a Defense: the Drunk and Danger- ous Model. Montana v. Egelhoff, 116 S. Ct. 2013 (1996). INTRODUCTION What began as an adventurous journey into the Yaak region of the Montana mountains to pick mushrooms ended with two people dead and one serving an eighty-four year prison term.' The journey began when James Allen Egelhoff met up with John Christenson and Roberta Pavlova in early July while picking mushrooms., On July 12th, 1992, the trio went to a nearby town in Christenson's vehicle to sell mushrooms and purchase alco- hol.' They purchased a case of beer and at around noon went to a party where they continued to drink most of the day.' At around midnight on the evening of July 12, police officers re- sponded to a potential drunk driver report and discovered Christenson's station wagon in a ditch along U.S. Highway 2.1 Pavlova and Christenson lay in the front seat, each dead from a gunshot to the head. Police found Egelhoff in the back seat intoxicated and yelling obscenities.' Police discovered Egelhoff's .38 caliber handgun on the floor of the car with four loaded rounds and two empty casings.' Egelhoff had gunshot resi- due on his hands' and blood stains on his clothing. The blood stains matched Christenson's and Pavlova's blood."0 An hour after discovering Egelhoff, police measured his blood alcohol content at .36."1 Despite his intoxication, Egelhoff was violent and aggres- sive. He struck two ambulance attendants as they loaded him into the am- bulance", and he kicked a camera from a detective's hands later that even- 1. Montana v. Egelhoff, 116 S. C. 2013,2016 (1996). 2. Id. 3. Id. 4. Petitioner's Brief at 4, Montana v. Egelhoff, 116 S. Ct. 2013 (1996) (No. 95-566) (citing Trial Record at 660-61, 1127, Montana v. Egelhoff, 900 P.2d 260 (Mont. 1996) (No. 93-405) (on file with the Land & Water Law Review). 5. Egelhoff, 116 S. CL at 2016. 6. ld 7. Id 8. Id 9. id. 10. Petitioner's Brief at 8, Egelhoff, 116 S. Ct. 2013 (citing Trial Record at 240-41,245-47, 248-50, 845). 11. Egethoff, 116 S. Ct. at2016. 12. One of the ambulance attendants testified at trial that Egelhoff had threatened to kill the ambu- lance attendant, and that Egeihoffwas the most violent person with whom the ambulance attendant had ever dealt Petitioner's Brief at 6, Egelhoff, 116 S. Ct. 2013 (citing Trial Record at 478-79, 483-87). Published by Law Archive of Wyoming Scholarship, 1998 1 Land & Water Law Review, Vol. 33 [1998], Iss. 2, Art. 11 LAND AND WATER LAW REVIEW Vol. XXXIII ing in the hospital emergency room.'" A Montana trial court convicted Egelhoff of two counts of deliberate homicide." Montana statutes define deliberate homicide as "purposely" or "knowingly" causing the death of another human being." Egelhoff claimed at trial that a fourth person must have committed the crime.6 To bolster his claim, Egelhoff attempted to introduce evidence of intoxication to show that he was not mentally or physically able to commit the murders "purposely" or "knowingly" due to his extreme level of intoxication." The court refused to allow the evidence under the authority of Montana Statute Section 45-2- 203 which prohibits juries from considering evidence of intoxication in de- termining the existence of a requisite mental state." Egelhoff appealed his conviction arguing that the trial court violated his due process rights by denying him an opportunity to present evidence of in- toxication at trial. The Montana Supreme Court overturned Egelhoff's con- viction ruling that Montana's statute prohibiting intoxication as a defense violated the United States Constitution because "the prosecution's burden of proof on the element of mental state was reduced." 9 The Montana Supreme Court agreed with Egelhoff's due process argument and held that the trial court should have considered "all relevant evidence to rebut the state's evi- dence on all elements of the offense charged."' The State of Montana petitioned the United States Supreme Court for certiorari. The United States Supreme Court reversed the Montana Supreme Court, holding that Montana's law abolishing the intoxication defense did not violate due process under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States 13. Petitioner's Brief at 7, Egelhoff, 116 S. Ct. 2013 (citing Trial Record at 701, 839, 849). 14. MONT. CODE ANN. § 45-5-102 (1997). 15. Thejury in Egelhoffwas instructed that "a person acts purposely when it is his conscious object to engage in conduct of that nature or to cause such a result... a person acts knowingly when he is aware of his conduct or when he is aware under the circumstances his conduct constitutes a crime; or, when he is aware there exists a high probability that his conduct will cause a specific result." Egeihoff, 116 S. Ct. at 2016 (citing petition for certiorari 28a-29a, Montana v. Egelhoff, 900 P.2d 260 (Mont. 1996) (No. 93-405). 16. Egelhoff, 116 S. Ct. at 2016. 17. Id 18. The Montana legislature amended the language in 1987. Initially, intoxication was a defense to the specific intent element under Montana's 1973 law. MONT. CODE ANN. § 45-2-203 (1996), construed in Petitioner's Brief at 15, Egeltoff, 116 S. Ct. 2013. Montana's current statute reads: A person who is in an intoxicated condition is criminally responsible for his conduct and an intoxicated condition is not a defense to any offense and may not be taken into consideration in determining the existence of a mental state which is an element of the offense unless the defendant proves that he did not know that it was an intoxicating substance when he con- sumed, smoked, sniffed, injected or otherwise ingested the substance causing the condition. MONT. CODE ANN. § 45-2-203 (1997). 19. Montana v. Egelhoff, 900 P.2d at 265. 20. Id. at 266. https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/land_water/vol33/iss2/11 2 Miller: Criminal Law - Intoxication as a Defense: The Drunk and Dangerous 1998 CASE NOTES Constitution." The Court applied Patterson v. New York which held that to violate the Due Process Clause, a rule must "offend some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked fun- ' on common law history and tradition, the Court held that damental."" Relying 21 the Pattersontest had not been met. The holding in Egelhoff presents a troubling dichotomy. On one hand is the jurisprudential interest in requiring the state to prove all elements, includ- ing intent, of a crime. On the other hand is the public policy concern in al- lowing the defense of drunkenness to mitigate a crime. In light of this dichot- omy, this case note asserts that a better approach is to adopt a drunk and dan- gerous statute that makes committing a crime while intoxicated a punishable offense in itself. In so doing, this note briefly discusses the history of the in- toxication defense and then explores the inconsistencies with both the Mon- tana and Model Penal Code approaches. BACKGROUND Given pre-sixteenth century restrictions upon a criminal defendant's ability to present evidence and testimony,'4 it is not surprising that early common law rejected intoxication as a defense to any crime." Where defen- dants had no absolute right to call witnesses or present evidence, courts naturally recognized that intoxication could not mitigate criminal activity. One case held, "for when he was drunk he had no [u]nderstanding nor [m]emory; but inasmuch as that [i]gnorance was occasioned by his own [a]ct and [flolly, and he might have avoided it, he should not be privileged thereby."21 However, in the nineteenth century, courts began to recognize the im- portance of proving state of mind as a separate element for serious crimes, and subsequently tended to be more sympathetic to intoxication as a defense to specific intent crimes. 7 In 1819, an English court first recognized intoxi- cation as a defense to a specific intent crime. The court in King v. Grindley, 21. Egelhoff, 116 S. Ct. at2024. 22. Id. at 2017 (citing Patterson v. New York, 97 S. Ct. 2319,2322 (1977)). 23. Id. at2018-19. 24. Until the sixteenth century, defendants had "no absolute right to call any witness or present any evidence in his own behalf." Robert N. Clinton, The Right to Present a Defense: An Emergent Constitu- tional Guarantee in Criminal Trials, 9 IND. L. REV. 713, 717 (1976) (quoting W. HOLDSWORTH, A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LAW 224 (3d ed. 1944)). 25. See cases cited in Egelhoff, 116 S. Ct at 2018-19. 26. Egelhoff, 116 S. Ct. at 2018 (quoting Reniger v. Fogossa, 75 Eng. Rep. 31 (K.B. 1550)).