Pollard v. United States

282 F.2d 450 (6th Cir. 1960)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

In April 1956, D had been a Negro member of the Detroit Police Department. He was highly intelligent, had a pleasing personality, and a happy disposition. His rating as a member of the Police Department was excellent. He was married and had four children. He was a good husband and father and had never been in any trouble. He left a Detroit high school, where he was a good student, when he was in the twelfth grade, to enlist in the Navy, earning, after his full service there, an honorable discharge. In April 1956, while on duty, his wife and small daughter were brutally murdered in their home by a drunken neighbor. D became the victim of chronic depression or melancholia, appearing generally, to be overcome with fatigue, bursting into tears and crying and sobbing for considerable periods, and repeatedly threatening to commit suicide with his police gun. D’s performance at worked suffered. D was silent, morose, and expressionless, appearing for long periods not to hear questions addressed to him. His brother-in-law on one occasion prevented him from deliberately running onto a thru-way, where he probably would have been killed by swift-moving cars. Two years after the murder of his wife and daughter, D remarried, on May 22, 1958. On the day before this marriage, D attempted to hold up a branch of the Detroit Bank & Trust Company at about eleven o'clock in the morning. With a gun, he threatened the teller, ordering her to fill up a paper bag with money. The teller did so and handed the bag to D, who ordered a bank official to accompany him to the exit. As they approached the door, the official suddenly threw his arms around Pollard, who then dropped the bag of money and ran out of the building. On the afternoon of the same day, at about 4:00 P. M., D attempted to hold up a branch of the Bank of the Commonwealth. He walked to a railing behind which a bank employee was sitting and pointing his gun at him, told him to sit quietly. The employee, however, raised an alarm and D ran out of the bank. On the same afternoon, D planned to rob a third bank but finally decided not to do so. On June 3, 1958, he entered another bank to attempt a hold-up. A week later, D attempted to hold up a grocery market, but when the proprietor screamed, D ran out of the building, leaving his car in the rear of the market. The car was placed under police surveillance, and D was arrested by detectives. D immediately confessed to eleven other attempted robberies, or robberies. D eventually claimed he suffered from a defect of the mind, denominated by psychiatrists, as a disassociative reaction, and that he committed the attempted robberies under the compulsion of an irresistible impulse. Six psychiatrists, a psychologist, a psychiatric social worker, and the Chief Medical Officer of the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, including all of the expert witnesses, both for the government and appellant, were either of the opinions that D acted under an irresistible impulse when he attempted to rob the three banks, or that all the evidence available to them tended to show this fact. No expert or non-expert testimony was submitted in opposition. The court ignored them all and found that D did not act under an irresistible impulse and, accordingly, found him guilty of the crimes charged. It based its conclusion on the testimony of lay witnesses, on certain statements taken from the testimony of the experts or official reports of the United States Medical Center, and on its own personal judgment of the matter. D appealed.