## Facts

- Gary Vance Lewellyn, a Des Moines stockbroker, handled investments for two Iowa banks.
- He was indicted for nine counts of bank embezzlement (18 U.S.C. § 656), three counts of making false statements (18 U.S.C. § 1014), and three counts of mail fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1341), based on converting more than $17 million in money and securities.
- Before trial, the government moved in limine to bar an insanity defense premised on “insanity by reason of pathological gambling” and to exclude related evidence.
- After a pretrial evidentiary hearing, the district court granted the motion, concluding the proffer did not meet the threshold for an insanity submission.
- Lewellyn waived a jury and proceeded to a bench trial largely on stipulated evidence; the court found him guilty on all counts.
- On appeal, Lewellyn did not claim he was unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his acts; he argued that compulsive gambling deprived him of substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the law, including refraining from crimes used to obtain gambling funds.

## Issues

1. Under the Eighth Circuit’s ALI insanity test, did Lewellyn present sufficient evidence that pathological gambling is a “mental disease or defect” that caused a lack of substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the law, entitling him to present an insanity defense?

## Decision

- The Eighth Circuit affirmed the convictions.
- The court applied the circuit’s ALI insanity standard and declined to modify it, noting only the en banc court could change existing circuit law.
- The court held Lewellyn failed to make the minimum evidentiary showing required to submit insanity to the factfinder based on pathological gambling.
- Even assuming Lewellyn suffered from pathological gambling, the record did not establish that the condition generally, or in his case, produced the legally required incapacity to refrain from crimes such as embezzlement and fraud.

## Legal Principles

- In the Eighth Circuit, the ALI insanity test governs: a defendant is insane if, due to a mental disease or defect, he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate wrongfulness or to conform conduct to law; “mental disease or defect” excludes abnormalities manifested only by repeated criminal or antisocial conduct.
- A defendant must make a threshold evidentiary showing sufficient to warrant submission of the insanity defense to the trier of fact.
- Diagnostic recognition of a condition (including in professional manuals) does not, by itself, establish that it qualifies as a “mental disease or defect” for legal insanity or that it causes the requisite incapacity.
- An insanity claim premised on an impulse disorder requires a supported causal connection between the disorder and an inability to conform the charged conduct to legal requirements.

## Conclusion

The court held that the proffered evidence on compulsive gambling did not establish, under the ALI standard, that Lewellyn’s condition constituted a qualifying mental disease or defect causing a substantial inability to conform his conduct to the law; the district court therefore properly barred the insanity defense and the convictions were affirmed.


United States v. Lewellyn, 723 F.2d 615 (8th Cir. 1983)