1887.1 -^J- [Vaux. 



It became important to the administration of justice that a rigid en- 

 forcement of the law should be secured. 



To relieve one guilty of murder from the just penalty of his crime, by 

 the interposition of a scheme to confess the act and avoid the conviction, 

 by the assertion that the accused was insane, needed to be subjected to 

 the test of scientific investigation. Medical experts who look up the 

 specialty of mind diseases made of it a sort of avocation. 



There ought to be a significant distinction between an "expert " and a 

 "witness." This distinction is not always made in these trials. An 

 "expert" is almost always called as a witness, while his function as an 

 " expert " is to give merely professional opinions. Many of these experts, 

 •so called, were too ignorant to do more than cast suspicion on the value 

 of anj^ medical testimony. It was not long before the intelligent of both 

 professions became disgusted with this expert system of building up a 

 theory of want of mental responsibility for acts committed. 



Judge Ludlow was one of the first of the Judges in Philadelphia to de- 

 feat the purpose for the use of these medical experts. 



In the Commonwealth vs. Sayres, he laid down the principles which 

 should govern the investigation of insanity as a plea against a conviction 

 of murder. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania confirmed Judge Lud- 

 low's law in this case. 



His opinion in this case became recognized authority. Tlie Insane 

 Asylum at Utica, New York, published that opinion as canon law on this 

 subject. 



The case of the Commonwealth vs. Taylor, 1884, was perhaps tlie most 

 important of all the cases which were subjected to judicial determination. 

 To those best informed as to the character of the prisoner, there was no 

 doubt of his entire responsibility for the crime of murder of which he was 

 convicted and afterwards hanged. 



The insanity plea was fully discussed, and the Supreme Court on appeal 

 finally settled the law on this subject in the Commonwealth, by endors- 

 ing Judge Ludlow's opinion in Taylor's case. From that opinion we 

 make the following extract as indicating his views and asserting the law 

 as now settled : 



" I do not intend to review the law as settled by our Supreme Court in 

 Sayres' Case, 7 Norris, 201, upon the subject of insanity. 



"I tried that cause, and the charge then delivered was before the appel- 

 late tribunal. On the trial of this case I quoted from that charge freely, 

 and added the words contained at the end of the ninth reason for a new 

 trial of record. 



" My object was to draw a line of distinction between what may be called 

 legal and medical insanity, between acts which an eccentric, angry, jeal- 

 ous, sentimental and revengeful man may do, when medically and scien- 

 tifically, in one sense, insane, and when by every legal test that man is a 

 ■responsible being, and for the protection of society must be held so to be. 



" It is quite possible for one to commit a violent act, when by reason of 



