Eckstrom

Defendant Carl Anders Eckstrom was charged with two counts of murder and one count of assault with a deadly weapon. He pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. After a court trial, defendant was found guilty as charged; the murder counts were fixed in the first degree. It is evident that the conviction was not based on a felony-murder theory, but on express findings of deliberation and' premeditation. The trial court found defendant to be sane. In People v. Eckstrom, 2d Crim. 25002, filed in February 1975, the court affirmed the judgment of conviction, but remanded the cause for a new sanity hearing.

This time the issue of defendant’s sanity was tried to a jury, which found that he was sane at the time of the commission of all three offenses.

On appeal, defendant contends that the rule that a defendant must prove his insanity by a preponderance of the evidence (e.g., In re Franklin (1972) 7 Cal.3d 126, 141 [ 101 Cal.Rptr. 553 , 496 P.2d 465 ]) denies him due process of law. There is no merit to that contention.

Defendant recognizes that in Leland v. Oregon (1952) 343 U.S. 790, 794, 798-799 [ 96 L.Ed. 1302 , 1306-1309, 72 S.Ct. 1002 ], the Supreme Court…