H o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



JUKIES, JUDGES, AND INSANITY. 



By Db. HENKY MAUDSLEY. 



THE recent trials for murder, in which insanity has "been alleged 

 for the defence, whatever differences of opinion they may have 

 given rise to, have clearly shown how entirely unfitted a common 

 jury is to decide the delicate and difficult question of a prisoner's 

 mental state. Had the wit of man been employed to devise a tribunal 

 more unfitted for such a purpose, it might have exhausted itself in the 

 vain attempt. It is one of the anomalies of British jurisprudence that 

 while in an action for libel or any civil injury a special jury may be 

 claimed, and the services of men who are above the lowest levels of 

 ignorance and prejudice be thus obtained, it is quite otherwise when a 

 person is on trial for his life. In this most momentous issue, however 

 complicated the circumstances, however obscure the facts, he must 

 stand the verdict of twelve common jurymen. In ordinary cases of 

 murder, when the facts are such as any person of average sense and 

 experience may judge of, the system works sufficiently well, or at any 

 rate no great harm ensues ; but, in any case in which it is necessary to 

 form a judgment upon scientific data, a common jury is assuredly a 

 singulary incompetent tribunal. The very terms of science they are 

 ignorant of, and they either accept the data blindly on the authority 

 of a skilled witness, or reject them blindly from the prejudice of 

 ignorance. The former result is commonly what happens in regard to 

 scientific evidence of poisoning ; the latter is commonly what happens 

 in regard to scientific evidence of insanity. There are few persons who, 

 without having had a special chemical training, would venture to give 

 an opinion on the value of the chemical evidence given in a case of 

 poisoning, but everybody thinks himself competent to say when a man 

 is mad ; and, as the common opinion as to an insane person is that he 

 is either a raging maniac or an idiot, it is no wonder that juries are 

 prone to reject the theory of insanity which is propounded to them by 

 medical men acquainted with its manifold varieties. It would seem 

 to be an elementary principle of justice that a prisoner on trial for his 

 life should have the right to claim a jury of men specially competent, 

 or at any rate not absolutely incompetent, to judge of the facts on 

 which his defence is to be based. 



It is an additional evil of the present system that judges too often 

 share the ignorance of juries, and surpass them in the arrogant pre- 

 sumption which springs from ignorance. Instead of urging them to 

 throw off all prejudice, and aiding them with right information, they 

 sometimes strengthen their prejudices by sneers at the medical evi- 

 dence, and directly mislead them by laying down false doctrines. 

 They may even go so far as to flatter them in the opinion that they, as 



