NOTICE: This opinion is subject to
formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the
United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the
Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States,
Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal
errors, in order that corrections may be made before the
preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 12–609
_________________
KANSAS, PETITIONER v. SCOTT D. CHEEVER
on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
kansas
[December 11, 2013]
Justice Sotomayor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Fifth Amendment to
the United States Constitution provides that “[n]o person
. . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a
witness against himself . . . .” The question here
is whether the Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from
introducing evidence from a court-ordered mental evaluation of a
criminal defendant to rebut that defendant’s presentation of
expert testimony in support of a defense of voluntary intoxication.
We hold that it does not.
I
On the morning of
January 19, 2005, Scott Cheever shot and killed Matthew Samuels, a
sheriff of Greenwood County, Kansas, and shot at other local law
enforcement officers. In the hours before the shooting, Cheever and
his friends had cooked and smoked methamphetamine at a home near
Hilltop, Kansas. Samuels and multiple deputies drove there to
arrest Cheever on an unrelated outstanding warrant.
When one of
Cheever’s friends warned him that officers were en route,
Cheever rushed outside and tried to drive away, but his car had a
flat tire. He returned inside and hid with a friend in an upstairs
bedroom, holding a loaded .44 caliber revolver. Cheever then heard
footsteps on the stairs leading up to the room, and he stepped out
and shot Samuels, who was climbing the stairs. After briefly
returning to the bedroom, Cheever walked back to the staircase and
shot Samuels again. He also shot at a deputy and a detective, as
well as members of a local SWAT (special weapons and tactics) team
that had since arrived. Only Samuels was hit.
The State charged
Cheever with capital murder. But shortly thereafter, in an
unrelated case, the Kansas Supreme Court found the State’s
death penalty scheme unconstitutional. State v. Marsh, 278 Kan.
520, 102 P. 3d 445 (2004). Rather than continuing to prosecute
Cheever without any chance of a death sentence, state prosecutors
dismissed their charges and allowed federal authorities to
prosecute Cheever under the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994, 18
U. S. C. §3591 et seq.
In the federal case,
Cheever filed notice that he “intend[ed] to introduce expert
evidence relating to his intoxication by methamphetamine at the
time of the events on January 19, 2005, which negated his ability
to form spe-cific intent, e.g., malice aforethought, premeditation
and deliberation.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 69–70.
Pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12.2(b), the
District Court ordered Cheever to submit to a psychiatric
evaluation by Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist, to assess
how methamphetamine use had affected him when he shot Samuels.
Welner interviewed Cheever for roughly five and a half hours.
The federal case
proceeded to trial. Seven days into jury selection, however,
defense counsel became unable to continue; the court suspended the
proceedings and later dismissed the case without prejudice.
Meanwhile, this Court had reversed the Kansas Supreme Court and
held that the Kansas death penalty statute was constitutional.
Kansas v. Marsh, 548 U. S. 163, 167 (2006) . A second federal
prosecution never commenced.
Kansas then brought a
second state prosecution. At the state trial, Cheever presented a
voluntary-intoxication defense, arguing that his methamphetamine
use had ren-dered him incapable of premeditation. In support of
this argument, Cheever offered testimony from Roswell Lee Evans, a
specialist in psychiatric pharmacy and dean of the Auburn
University School of Pharmacy. Evans opined that Cheever’s
long-term methamphetamine use had damaged his brain. [
1 ] Evans also testified that on the
morning of the shooting, Cheever was acutely intoxicated. According
to Evans, Cheever’s actions were “very much influenced
by” his use of methamphetamine.
After the defense
rested, the State sought to present rebuttal testimony from Welner,
the expert who had examined Cheever by order of the federal court.
Defense counsel objected, arguing that because Welner’s
opinions were based in part on an examination to which Cheever had
not voluntarily agreed, his testimony would violate the Fifth
Amendment proscription against compelling an accused to testify
against himself. The State countered that the testimony was
necessary to rebut Cheever’s voluntary-intoxication
defense.
The trial court agreed
with the State. The court was persuaded, in part, by the fact that
the defense expert had himself relied on Welner’s examination
report: “I think that fact alone probably allows the State to
call [Welner] to give his own point of view.” App. 92. The
court allowed Welner’s testimony for the purpose of showing
that Cheever shot Samuels “because of his antisocial
personal-ity, not because his brain was impaired by
methamphetamine.” Id., at 94.
The jury found Cheever
guilty of murder and attempted murder. At the penalty phase, it
unanimously voted to impose a sentence of death, and the trial
court accepted that verdict.
On appeal to the Kansas
Supreme Court, Cheever argued that the State had violated his Fifth
Amendment rights when it introduced, through Welner’s
testimony, statements that he had made during the federal
court-ordered mental examination. The court agreed, relying
primarily on Estelle v. Smith, 451 U. S. 454 (1981) , in which
we held that a court-ordered psychiatric exami-nation violated the
defendant’s Fifth Amendment rights when the defendant neither
initiated the examination nor put his mental capacity in dispute at
trial. 295 Kan. 229, 243–244, 284 P. 3d 1007,
1019–1020 (2012) (per curiam). The court acknowledged, id.,
at 244–245, 284 P. 3d, at 1020, our holding that a State
may introduce the results of a court-ordered mental examination for
the limited purpose of rebutting a mental-status defense. Buchanan
v. Kentucky, 483 U. S. 402 –424 (1987). But it
distinguished Buchanan on the basis that under Kansas law,
voluntary intoxication is not a “mental disease or
defect.” 295 Kan., at 250, 284 P. 3d, at 1023.
Consequently, it vacated Cheever’s conviction and sentence,
holding that Cheever had not waived his Fifth Amendment privilege
and that his federal court-ordered examination should not have been
used against him at the state-court trial. Ibid. We granted
certiorari, 568 U. S. ___ (2013), and now reverse.
II
The Fifth Amendment
guarantees that “[n]o person . . . shall be
compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself
. . . .” We held in Estelle that under the Fifth
Amendment, when a criminal defendant “neither initiates a
psychiatric evaluation nor attempts to introduce any psychiatric
evidence,” his compelled statements to a psychiatrist cannot
be used against him. 451 U. S., at 468. In that case, a judge
ordered a psychiatric exam-ination to determine the
defendant’s competency to stand trial. Id., at 456–457.
The prosecution then used statements from that examination during
the sentencing phase of the trial as evidence of the
defendant’s future dangerousness. Id., at 458–460.
Emphasizing that the defendant had neither “introduced”
any “psychiatric evidence,” nor even “indicated
that he might do so,” id., at 466, we concluded that the
Fifth Amendment did not permit the State to use the
defendant’s statements in this manner.
In Buchanan, we
addressed the admissibility of evidence from a court-ordered
evaluation where—unlike in Estelle—a defendant had
introduced psychiatric evidence related to his mental-status
defense. We held that the Fifth Amendment allowed the prosecution
to present evidence from the evaluation to rebut the
defendant’s affirmative defense of extreme emotional
disturbance. And while, as Cheever notes, the mental evaluation in
Buchanan was requested jointly by the defense and the government,
our holding was not limited to that circumstance. Moreover,
contrary to Cheever’s suggestion, the case did not turn on
whether state law referred to extreme emotional disturbance as an
“affirmative defense.” Buchanan, 483 U. S., at
408, 422 (holding that the prosecution’s use of rebuttal
expert testimony is permissible where a defendant “presents
psychiatric evidence”). The rule of Buchanan, which we
reaffirm today, is that where a defense expert who has examined the
defendant testifies that the defendant lacked the requisite mental
state to commit an offense, the prosecution may present psychiatric
evidence in rebuttal. Ibid. Any other rule would undermine the
adversarial process, allowing a defendant to provide the jury,
through an expert operating as proxy, with a one-sided and
potentially inaccurate view of his mental state at the time of the
alleged crime.
The admission of this
rebuttal testimony harmonizes with the principle that when a
defendant chooses to testify in a criminal case, the Fifth
Amendment does not allow him to refuse to answer related questions
on cross-examination. A defendant “has no right to set forth
to the jury all the facts which tend in his favor without laying
himself open to a cross-examination upon those facts.”
Fitzpatrick v. United States, 178 U. S. 304, 315 (1900) . We
explained in Brown v. United States, 356 U. S. 148 (1958) , which
involved a witness’s refusal to answer questions in a civil
case, that where a party provides testimony and then refuses to
answer potentially incriminating questions, “[t]he interests
of the other party and regard for the function of courts of justice
to ascertain the truth become relevant, and prevail in the balance
of considerations determining the scope and limits of the privilege
against self-incrimination.” Id., at 156. When a defendant
presents evidence through a psychological expert who has examined
him, the government likewise is permitted to use the only effective
means of challenging that evidence: testimony from an expert who
has also examined him. See United States v. Byers, 740 F. 2d
1104, 1113 (CADC 1984) (en banc) (holding that the Government could
present rebuttal expert testimony in part because it is perhaps
“the most trustworthy means of attempting to meet” the
burden of proof (internal quotation marks omitted)). [
2 ]
The prosecution here
elicited testimony from its expert only after Cheever offered
expert testimony about his in-ability to form the requisite mens
rea. The testimony of the government expert rebutted that of
Cheever’s expert. See id. at 1114 (“Ordinarily the only
effective rebuttal of psychiatric opinion testimony is
contradictory opinion tes-timony; and for that purpose
. . . the basic tool of psy-chiatric study remains the
personal interview, which requires rapport between the interviewer
and the subject” (internal quotation marks omitted)); State
v. Druke, 143 Ariz. 314, 318, 693 P. 2d 969, 973 (App. 1984)
(“[A]n in-ference would arise that the evidence presented by
the [defendant] as to his mental condition is true because
un-contradicted”). The trial court therefore did not violate
the Fifth Amendment when it allowed Welner to testify that Cheever
“made a choice to shoot,” App. 131, because the State
permissibly followed where the defense led. Excluding this
testimony would have undermined Buchanan and the core truth-seeking
function of the trial.
III
Neither the Kansas
Supreme Court’s reasoning, nor Cheever’s arguments,
persuade us not to apply the settled rule of Buchanan.
A
Although the Kansas
Supreme Court acknowledged that the State may present evidence
obtained from a compelled psychiatric examination when “the
defendant presents evidence at trial that he or she lacked the
requisite criminal intent due to mental disease or defect,”
295 Kan., at 249, 284 P. 3d, at 1023, it reasoned that
voluntary intoxication is not a “mental disease or
defect” as a matter of state law. Id., at 250, 284
P. 3d, at 1023–1024 (citing State v. Kleypas, 272 Kan.
894, 40 P. 3d 139 (2001)). The court therefore concluded that
“Cheever did not waive his Fifth Amendment privilege and thus
permit his court-ordered examination by Dr. Welner to be used
against him at trial.” 295 Kan., at 251, 284 P. 3d, at
1024.
This reasoning
misconstrues our precedents. Although Kansas law defines
“mental disease or defect” narrowly, to exclude
voluntary intoxication, that phrase is actually not the salient one
under our precedents. In Buchanan, we permitted rebuttal testimony
where the defendant presented evidence of
“the ‘mental status’ defense of extreme
emotional disturbance.” 483 U. S., at 423. And
“mental status” is a broader term than “mental
disease or defect,” at least to the extent that Kansas law
excludes voluntary intoxication from that definition. Mental-status
defenses include those based on psychological expert evidence as to
a defendant’s mens rea, mental capacity to commit the crime,
or ability to premeditate. Defendants need not as-sert a
“mental disease or defect” in order to assert a defense
based on “mental status.”
To the extent that the
Kansas Supreme Court declined to apply Buchanan because
Cheever’s intoxication was “temporary,” our
precedents are again not so narrowly circumscribed. Like voluntary
intoxication, extreme emotional disturbance is a
“temporary” condition, at least according to the
Kentucky state courts where Buchanan was tried. See McClellan v.
Commonwealth, 715 S. W. 2d 464, 468–469 (Ky. 1986) (defining
extreme emotional disturbance as “a temporary state of mind
so enraged, inflamed, or disturbed as to overcome one’s
judgment, and to cause one to act uncontrollably from [an]
impelling force of [an] extreme emotional disturbance rather than
from evil or malicious purposes”). We nonetheless held in
Buchanan that the defense of extreme emotional disturbance, when
supported by expert testimony, may be re-butted with expert
testimony. The same is true here. Cheever’s psychiatric
evidence concerned his mental status because he used it to argue
that he lacked the requisite mental capacity to premeditate. The
Fifth Amendment therefore did not bar the State from using
Welner’s examination to rebut Cheever’s
voluntary-intoxication defense.
B
Cheever further
contends that the Fifth Amendment imposes limits on the
State’s ability to introduce rebuttal evidence regarding a
defendant’s mental status. According to Cheever,
Welner’s testimony exceeded these limits by describing the
shooting from Cheever’s perspective; [
3 ] by insinuating that he had a personality
disorder; and by discussing his alleged infatuation with
criminals.
We have held that
testimony based on a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation is
admissible only for a “limited rebuttal purpose.”
Buchanan, 483 U. S., at 424. In Buchanan, for example,
although the prosecution had used a psychiatric report to rebut the
defendant’s evidence of extreme emotional disturbance, we
noted that the trial court had redacted the report so as to avoid
exposing the jury to “the very different issue” of the
defendant’s competency to stand trial. Id., at 423,
n. 20. Two years later, we explained in dictum that
“[n]othing” in our precedents “suggests that a
defendant opens the door to the admission of psychiatric evidence
on future dangerousness by raising an insanity defense at the guilt
stage of the trial.” Powell v. Texas, 492 U. S. 680
–686, n. 3 (1989) ( per curiam). Here, however, the
Kansas Supreme Court did not address whether Welner’s
testimony exceeded the scope of rebuttal testimony permitted by the
Fifth Amendment or by the State’s evidentiary rules. We
accordingly decline to address this issue in the first instance. [
4 ]
* * *
We hold that where a
defense expert who has examined the defendant testifies that the
defendant lacked the requisite mental state to commit a crime, the
prosecution may offer evidence from a court-ordered psychological
examination for the limited purpose of rebutting the
defendant’s evidence.
The judgment of the
Kansas Supreme Court is therefore vacated, and the case is remanded
for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so
ordered.
