## Facts

- Robert Pasqual Serravo stabbed his sleeping wife, seriously injuring her.
- Immediately after the stabbing, Serravo told his wife and later police that an intruder committed the attack.
- Weeks later, Serravo’s wife discovered letters in which Serravo admitted the stabbing.
- Serravo later stated that God told him to “sever their marriage” by stabbing her, and that he believed he was required or justified in doing so.
- Mental-health experts testified that Serravo suffered from a psychotic delusional disorder involving perceived communications from God and “evil spirits,” affecting his moral judgment about the act.
- Serravo was charged with attempted first-degree murder, first-degree assault, and a violent-crime count, and he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
- The jury trial focused on insanity under a statute defining legal insanity as being “incapable of distinguishing right from wrong.”

## Issues

1. Whether “incapable of distinguishing right from wrong” refers to moral wrong, legal wrong, or both.
2. Whether the relevant measure of “moral wrong” is an objective societal standard or the defendant’s personal moral code.
3. Whether a “deific-decree” delusion (belief that God commanded the act) operates as a separate exception to the right-wrong test or is analyzed within the ordinary statutory test.

## Decision

- The Colorado Supreme Court held that “wrong” in the statutory phrase refers to moral wrong, not mere illegality.
- The Court held the inquiry is cognitive and measured by an objective societal standard of morality, not a purely personal and subjective moral standard.
- The Court rejected treating deific-decree delusions as a freestanding exception; instead, such a delusion may establish insanity if it destroys the defendant’s cognitive ability to distinguish right from wrong under societal morality.
- The Court concluded the trial instruction was erroneous insofar as it permitted a finding of insanity based on the defendant’s belief that his act was morally right without tying “moral right” to societal standards.
- The Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the intermediate appellate judgment and remanded for further proceedings consistent with its interpretation.

## Legal Principles

- In Colorado’s right-wrong insanity formulation, “wrong” means moral wrong rather than only legal wrong.
- The relevant moral benchmark is objective: whether, because of mental disease or defect, the defendant lacked the cognitive ability to distinguish right from wrong as measured by societal morality.
- A defendant is not legally insane merely because he personally approves of, rationalizes, or prefers the act; the question is impaired cognitive appreciation of society’s moral standards.
- A psychotic delusion that God commanded the act can support legal insanity when it destroys the defendant’s cognitive capacity to distinguish right from wrong under societal morality, even if the defendant understands the act is illegal.

## Conclusion

The court construed Colorado’s insanity statute to require an objective, society-based moral right-wrong inquiry, clarified that “wrong” means moral wrong, and treated deific-decree cases as applications of the standard test rather than separate exceptions.


People v. Serravo, 823 P.2d 128 (Colo. 1992)