434 



INSANITY AS A DEFENSE FOR CRIME. 



quality of his acts as wrong, is unable to control them, 

 and is urged by some mysterious pressure to the com- 

 mission of the act, the consequences of which he an- 

 ticipates and knows. This is substantially the lan- 

 guage of the Court of Appeals in the case already 

 referred to. If it were not so, every thief, to establish 

 his irresponsibility, could assert an irresistible impulse 

 to steal, which he has not mental or moral force suffi- 

 cient to resist, though knowing the wrongful nature 

 of the act ; and, in every homicide, it would only be 

 iiivcssiiry to assert that anger or hatred or revenge, or 

 an overwhelming desire to redress an injury, or a be- 

 lief that the killing is for some private or public good, 

 has produced an irresistible impulse to do a known il- 

 legal and wrongful act. Whatever the views of scien- 

 tists or theorists on the subject of insanity may be, 

 and however great a variety of classification they may 

 adopt, the law, in a criminal case, brings the whole to 

 tlie single test ndid the person doing the act at that 

 time have sufficient sense to know what he was doing, 

 and that it was wrong to do it ? If that be his condi- 

 tion, it is of no consequence that he acts under an 

 irresistible influence or an imaginary inspiration in 

 committing the wrong. Emotional insanity, impul- 

 sive insanity, inspirational insanity, insanity of the 

 will or of the moral sense, all vanish into thin air 

 whenever it appears that the accused knew the differ- 

 ence between right and wrong at the time and in re- 

 spect of his act. No imaginary inspiration to do a 

 personal and private wrong, under a clelusion or belief 

 that some great public benefit will flow from it, when 

 the nature of the act done, and its probable conse- 

 quences, and that it is in itself wrong, are known to 

 the actor, can amount to that insanity which in law 

 disarms the act of criminality. Under such notions 

 of legal insanity, life, property, and rights, both pub- 

 lic and private, would be altogether insecure ; and 

 every man who. by brooding over his wrongs, real or 

 imaginary, shall work himself up_ to an irresistible im- 

 pulse to avenge himself or his friend or his party, can 

 with impunity become a self-elected judge, jury, and 

 executioner, in his own case, for the redress of his own 

 injuries, or of the imaginary wrongs of his friends, his 

 party, or his country. But, happily, gentlemen of the 

 jury, that is not the law ; and whenever such ideas of 

 insanity are applied to a given case as the law (as too 

 often they have been), crime escapes punishment, not 

 through the legal insanity of the accused, but through 

 the emotional insanity of courts and juries. I have 

 felt it my duty in this case to give you my views of 

 the law o"f Insanity as applicable to the case in em- 

 phatic terms ; but I assure you, gentlemen, I have had 

 no intention, in doing so, to affect your minds in deter- 

 mining the facts of the case to which you are to 

 apply the law. The prisoner is entitled to a consid- 

 eration of the facts of the case by you, uninfluenced 

 by any expression of opinion in respect of them by the " 

 court. 



The Court of Appeals of the same State ren- 

 dered a decision bearing upon this subject on 

 January 17, 1882. The opinion of the judges, 

 written by Judge Danfortb, was in the follow- 

 ing terms : 



The appellant was convicted of an assault with 

 intent to kill. The conviction was affirmed by the 

 General Term of the Supreme Court, and upon appeal 

 from that decision two points are made in his beualf : 

 1. That the court erred in charging the jury. In sup- 

 port of this proposition it is assumed by nis counsel 

 that the judge charged that " the defense of insanity 

 is an affirmative defense, and the prisoner is bound 

 to satisfy the j " 



That he erred 



to satisfy the jury by proof that he was insane. 

 erred in refusing to charge that 



2. 



the defend- 



ant was entitled to the benefit of any reasonable doubt 

 arising on the evidence as to sanity or insanity. We 

 think neither are well taken. The questions upon 

 the trial were : 1. Were the acts charged committed 

 by the prisoner ? 2. At the time of the commission 

 was he in sach condition of mind as to be responsible 



for them ? If answered in the affirmative, the acts 

 constituted crime and the conviction was proper. As 

 to each, therefore, the burden was upon the prosecu- 

 tors, for upon the existence of both the guilt of the 

 prisoner depended. This result follows the general 

 rule of evidence, which requires him who asserts a 

 fact to prove it. That the first proposition is estab- 

 lished is not denied the legal presumption that every 

 man is sane was sufficient to sustain the other until 

 repelled, and the charge of the judge, criticised in the 

 first point made by the appellant, goes no further. If 

 the prisoner gave no evidence, the fact stood ; if he 

 gave evidence tending to overthrow it. the prosecution 

 might produce answering testimony ; but in any event 

 he must satisfy the jury upon the whole evidence that 

 the prisoner was mentally responsible, for the affirm- 

 ative issue tendered by the indictment remained with 

 the prosecutor to the end of the trial. Without going 

 to other authorities, these observations are warranted 

 by Brotherton vs. the People (75 N. Y., 159), where 

 the general rule above stated was applied to questions 

 similar to those before us. It was not violated by the 

 trial court. After referring to the acts constituting 

 the offense charged and tbe rules of law applicable 

 thereto, the learned judge called attention to the fact 

 alleged in behalf of the prisoner that he was an in- 

 sane man at the time they were committed, and so 

 not responsible therefor, and directed them to deter- 

 mine from the evidence whether or not such is the 

 fact. " He is presumed," the court said, " to be a 

 sane man until he convinces you by evidence that he 

 is insane " ; defined insanity in a manner not object- 

 ed to, and said, " If such was the prisoner's condition, 

 he was relieved from the responsibility, otherwise he 

 was responsible for that which he does " ; and in con- 

 clusion said, " If you have a reasonable doubt from 

 the evidence that the prisoner is guilty of this crime, 

 then you should give him the benefit of that doubt." 

 These words related to and covered the whole issue 

 tendered by the indictment. It is quite impossible 

 that the jury should have misapprehended them. The 

 prosecution had conducted the case upon the theory 

 that the burden was upon him of maintaining as part 

 of that issue the sanity of the prisoner. This further 

 appears from his request. When anticipating that 

 the jury might fail to find the greater offense, the 

 District Attorney asked the court to charge that " if 

 the jury find the wounds were inflicted by the pris- 

 oner, and that he was sane, etc., they could convict 

 of an offense lesser in degree," and the court com- 

 plied. Here, again, as well as in the preceding part 

 of the charge, the sanity of the prisoner is made the 

 necessary element in the definition of the crime ; it 

 therefore was not necessary to comply with the re- 

 quest of the prisoner's counsel and charge as request- 

 ed by his second point. The substance of the request 

 was embraced in the charge made ; and the court could 

 not be required either to repeat it or answer again to 

 different portions as analyzed by counsel. We think 

 the charge will not bear the conclusion on which the 

 first point of the appellant rests, and, as the trial was 

 conducted without error, that the conviction should 

 be affirmed. 



A few days later, on tbe 23d of January, 

 James B. Graves was convicted of murder in 

 Newark, New Jersey, the plea of insanity hav- 

 ing been set up. The judge delivered an elab- 

 orate charge to the jury, in which he said that 

 the law entertained no prejudice against insan- 

 ity as a defense. It respected it, but insisted 

 that it should be clearly proved that insanity 

 existed. The burden of proof rested on the 

 accused. The law presumed every man sane 

 until he was proved insane. The judge con- 

 tinued : 



Insanity is a disease and not a transient impulse of 

 the mind, and manifestations of the existence of the 



