Justices Uphold Limited Hypnosis : Rule States Can’t Totally Exclude Refreshed Testimony

The Supreme Court, ruling for the first time on the legitimacy of hypnosis in legal proceedings, said today that states may not ban from all criminal trials the hypnotically refreshed testimony of defendants.

The court, by a 5-4 vote, struck down an Arkansas law prohibiting all hypnosis-refreshed testimony.

“We are not now prepared to endorse without qualifications the use of hypnosis as an investigative tool,” Justice Harry A. Blackmun wrote for the court. “Arkansas, however, has not justified the exclusion of all of a defendant’s testimony that the defendant is unable to prove to be the product of prehypnosis memory.”

States Divided on Use

Some states allow, or have allowed, hypnosis-refreshed testimony. But the justices were told that more states have been moving to exclude such testimony. Today’s decision could affect that trend.

(In California, the state Supreme Court in 1982 first declared hypnosis was “inherently unreliable” and prohibited testimony at trial from all witnesses who had been hypnotized to aid their recollections. But later that year, the court modified the decision to permit such testimony from defendants.

(In the Arkansas case the U.S. Supreme Court decided today, California Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp had filed a “friend of the court” brief urging the justices either to permit such testimony from witnesses for both the prosecution and defense in carefully controlled circumstances or, short of that, to bar it from both sides.)

New Trial Likely

The Supreme Court decision set aside Vicki Lorene Rock’s manslaughter conviction in the 1983 fatal shooting of her husband. She likely will receive a new trial.

According to court documents, Rock initially was unable to recall important details about the shooting. Her lawyer arranged to have her placed under a hypnotic trance. Rock then was able to recall that she had not put her finger on the gun’s trigger and that the gun went off by accident as she and her husband struggled during a quarrel.

But the trial judge refused to let her testify about anything she remembered as a result of being hypnotized.

Rock contended that the judge’s ruling, upheld by the Arkansas Supreme Court, had taken the case away from the trial jury.

But Arkansas Atty. Gen. Steve Clark argued that hypnosis “is not generally accepted by the scientific community as reliable.”

Today, the court agreed with Rock.

In another case, the court ruled that states may not impose mandatory death penalties for prison inmates who commit murder while already serving life sentences without possibility of parole.

In the mandatory death penalty case, the justices, by a 6-3 vote, struck down Nevada’s law, ruling it inflicts “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Constitution.

In other action, the court:

--Set the stage for an important employment-discrimination ruling by agreeing to hear the appeal of a Texas woman who says she was denied promotions because she is black.

--Barred challenges to jury verdicts based on allegations that jurors were taking drugs or drinking alcohol during a trial.