430 



INSANITY AS A DEFENSE FOR CRIME. 



have a special mania, such as imagining they 

 are persecuted or watched, and in danger ot 

 being waylaid by secret enemies. Fifth are 

 persons afflicted with general paresis or para- 

 lytic dementia, who are liable to break out into 

 acts of fury directed against any object that 

 for the moment excites anger or hostility. 

 Sixth is " the enormous group of feeble-minded 

 persons, whether primarily imperfect and weak 

 or become demented later in life," which " fur- 

 nishes many of the insane criminals, and prob- 

 ably fully as many criminals who are considered 

 sane by the law. ... In all varieties of this 

 class of feeble-minded persons," says Dr. Se- 

 guin, "actions, whether simply offensive or 

 criminal, result from the execution of instinct- 

 ive or reflex tendencies, not controlled as in 

 health by knowledge of right and wrong, by 

 fear of punishment, by a healthy will. In 

 short, judgment and self-restraint are impaired 

 or absent in these cases." This writer ex- 

 presses the belief that "the criminal insane 

 should be held just as responsible to human 

 punishment i. e., preventive and educating 

 punishment as sane criminals." He would 

 have special accommodations provided for 

 their restraint and treatment, and in most 

 cases he thinks the isolation should be perpet- 

 ual, as the malady from which tbe criminal 

 impulse springs is incurable. In the case of 

 that acute curable mania, whose victims com- 

 mit crimes under the stress of delusions, he 

 says that the isolation should be continued 

 until a long interval of mental health gives as- 

 surance that the attacks will not recur. 



Dr. J. S. Jewell, in treating of the same sub- 

 ject, defines three groups of cases: those in 

 which "the individual becomes the subject 

 of a more or less enduring impulse, or strain 

 of urgent inclination, toward a particular wrong 

 or criminal act," with a knowledge of its char- 

 acter, but an increasing inability to resist; 

 those in which the victim is subject to over- 

 powering delusions, and "absolutely devoid 

 of moral responsibility " ; and those " in which 

 profound modifications of the moral sense do 

 not exist, nor any single definite morbid im- 

 pulse arising from disordered emotion, so often 

 seen in impulsive monomania or the simpler 

 forms of insanity of feeling, but in which the 

 chief feature is lack of consecutiveness in men- 

 tal action. Dr. Jewell declares that there may 

 be partial insanity, affecting " one single men- 

 tal function or group of functions," or involv- 

 ing a certain "degree of aberration in any 

 given direction." He is therefore of opinion 

 that questions of responsibility can be answered 

 only by a " careful study of each case on its 

 own merits, and the application to it of the 

 practical criteria to be obtained from a study 

 of average healthy human beings, observed, as 

 far as possible, under conditions identical with 

 those under which the criminal act was com- 

 mitted." As a practical suggestion, he says 

 that the examination should be made, in any 

 case on triaj, not by expert witnesses called on 



either side, but by an expert commission, en- 

 tirely independent and unbiased, assigned to 

 the "task of aiding the judge and jury (after 

 due questioning by court and counsel), not only 

 to learn what are the facts, but how to esti- 

 mate or value them." 



Dr. 0. F. Folsom says : " Uncomplicated with 

 other mental diseases, moral insanity is, in my 

 opinion, so seldom observed as to constitute 

 one of the curiosities of medical experience ; 

 and then it is associated with symptoms so 

 well marked as to make a diagnosis not diffi- 

 cult, although the term, like masked epilepsy, 

 is frequently resorted to as a cover for re- 

 spectable drunkards, or thieves, or murderers, 

 or to furnish a willing jury an excuse to acquit 

 of homicide the man who kills his wife's se- 

 ducer, or the young woman who shoots her 

 betrayer. So long as the responsibility of the 

 insane is decided upon the grounds 1. That 

 there must be other evidences of insanity than 

 the crime ; 2. That the whole group of symp- 

 toms must correspond to definite disease ; 



3. That the crime must be a part of the nat- 

 ural history of the disease ; 4. That a reason- 

 able degree of self-control should be exercised, 

 according to the capacity for it in each case 

 we are on a secure footing ; and these points 

 must be decided by competent authority, from 

 full consideration of all the circumstances and 

 conditions of each case." The same authority 

 says : " A man distinctly insane by the medical 

 criterion is irresponsible for crime when the 

 conditions defining his legal responsibility are 

 at the time of the act 1. Sufficient mental 

 capacity for ordinary reason, reflection, and 

 judgment ; 2. The knowledge of right and 

 wrong as applied to the particular act ; 3. The 

 power of self-control within reasonable limits ; 



4. The absence of insane delusion overpowering 

 reason the character and strength of the false 

 belief to be judged in each particular case, and 

 not by any general definition of insane delu- 

 sion, that being impossible. What would be 

 an insane delusion in one man under certain 

 circumstances might be entirely otherwise in 

 another with different conditions. The further 

 from reason and probability and the more per- 

 sistent a delusion, the more is it an indication 

 of some unsoundness of the whole mind ; but 

 an insane man may be quite irresponsible, 

 whether his acts were justified or not, sup- 

 posing the facts suggested by his delusion were 

 true, provided his mind were so weakened that 

 he could not reason correctly from his false 

 premises." 



Dr. I. J. Elwell expresses his entire dissent 

 from the doctrine of moral insanity, and doubts 

 the propriety of allowing insanity in any form 

 to be a defense for crime : He says : "If so- 

 ciety can not be securely protected against the 

 sane assassin without destroying him, which 

 seems to be the settled conviction of mankind, 

 it is equally necessary to destroy the 'emo- 

 tional' and 'moral' insane, for society is as 

 much, if not more, in danger from this unstable 



