## Facts

- Eugene Raymond Cooper drove recklessly, prompting a police pursuit at high speed through rush-hour traffic.
- During the chase, Cooper shot at and wounded the pursuing officer.
- Cooper then kidnapped a man at gunpoint from a parking lot.
- The victim wrestled away the gun; the car crashed into a freeway divider; Cooper fled but was soon apprehended.
- Before trial, the court ordered a mental examination; court-appointed psychiatrists found Cooper competent to stand trial, and the court so ruled after a hearing.
- Cooper gave timely notice of an insanity defense and presented a psychiatrist and a psychologist regarding his mental condition at the time of the offenses.
- The defense experts tied Cooper’s claimed inability to know the nature/quality or wrongfulness of his acts to several days of amphetamine use, indicating he would have been sane absent the drugs.
- The trial court refused to instruct the jury on insanity and instead instructed only on voluntary intoxication under A.R.S. § 13-132.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court erred by refusing to submit insanity to the jury and refusing insanity instructions in light of the defense expert testimony.
2. Whether a mental state allegedly caused by voluntary amphetamine use can constitute legal insanity under Arizona’s M’Naghten rule, or is addressed only as voluntary intoxication relevant to specific intent.

## Decision

- The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and concurrent sentences of 30 years to life for kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon.
- The court held the trial judge properly refused to submit insanity to the jury because the evidence did not raise an insanity issue under Arizona law.
- The court approved treating the evidence as voluntary intoxication, not insanity, and upheld the intoxication instruction given under A.R.S. § 13-132.

## Legal Principles

- Sanity is presumed in criminal cases; a defendant must produce sufficient evidence to generate a doubt as to sanity before sanity becomes an issue requiring the State to prove sanity beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Arizona applies the M’Naghten test: a defendant is insane only if, due to mental disease or defect, he did not know the nature and quality of the act or did not know the act was wrong.
- Voluntary intoxication is not a defense but may be considered only to determine whether the defendant formed the required specific intent (A.R.S. § 13-132).
- A transient, self-induced drug condition, standing alone, does not qualify as a “mental disease or defect” for purposes of the insanity defense and does not require an insanity instruction.

## Conclusion

Because the defense evidence attributed Cooper’s claimed inability to understand his conduct to voluntary amphetamine use rather than a qualifying mental disease or defect, the trial court properly withheld insanity from the jury and limited consideration of intoxication to specific intent; the convictions and sentences were affirmed.


State v. Cooper, 111 Ariz. 332, 529 P.2d 231 (Ariz. 1974)