Jeffrey Ames Hughes v. James Mathews, Warden

CASTLE, Senior Circuit Judge.

This appeal from the granting of a writ of habeas corpus to a state prisoner presents the general problem of integrating the disciplines of law and psychiatry in a usable, if not precise, manner. The particular questions to be resolved are: (1) whether a rebuttable presumption that a person intends the probable consequences of his acts coupled with an exclusion of all psychiatric evidence offered to show lack of capacity to form intent, unconstitutionally relieves the prosecution of proving the intent element of the crime; and (2) whether an evidentiary rule…