The Sun.
London, England, 1851-11-21 00:00:00

ject of insanity when set up as a plea in criminal cases.
The lawyer invariably considers that an insane par-
son is necessarily irresponsible—that if he be not ir-
responsible he cannot be insane, in fact, that so far
as the plea of insanity in criminal cases is concerned,
insanity and irresponsiblity are convertible terms.
Not so the doctor, he believes i❑ the existence of mo-
ral insanity, which is repudiated by the lawyer, be-
cause it being admitted that the person suffering from
moral insanity is capable of distinguishing right from
wrong, but acts under some uncontrollable impulse,
the lawyer contends if the patient knows right from
wrong, and yet chooses the wrong, and sets up as
an excuse that he acted under some uncontrollable
impulse he is as amenable to punishment as the thief,
who knows wall thatit is wrong to pick pockets, and
yet is unable to resist the impulse to snatch a gold
chain from off the neck of the casual passer-by ; in
short, the lawyer contends that if once the doctrine
of uncontrollable impulses is admitted there must
be an end to all punishment for crime, for
every person committing any crime may be said to be
acting under an uncontrollable impulse. It is clear,
therefore, that lawyers and medical men do not attach
the same meaning to the term insanity, that whilst
the medical man calls by the name of insanity all
sorts of aberrations from what he considers right reason,
the lawyer restricts the application of the term to those
cases, and those cases only, in which the mental dis-
turbance is so great as to render the party absolutely
irresponsible. It would, therfore, tend greatly to
simplify the evidence in cases is which the plea of
lunacy may be hereafter set up, if the counsel and
the court, in examining medical witnesses, would con-
fine their attention to the single point, responsible or
not responsible, as the only point at issue.' Dr. WooD,
in common with every other person, complains of the
confusion that has existed and the mistakes that have
been made in cases where the plea of insanity has
been set up ; and this confusion will continue, and
these mistakes will recur, and many will
be confined as criminal lunatics who have
never been insane at all, and many who
are in the strictest sense of the word insane, will con-
tinue to suffer as criminals until some better method
of trying the issue of insanity in criminal cases
shall be adopted. As nothing can be more
absurd than to suffer a man in whose de-
fence it is intended to set up the plea of
insanity to plead previously to the indictment,
inasmuch as he cannot, if insane, know the meaning
of what he is doing, or if in such a state of insanity
at the time he committed the offence as to authorise
his acquittal on that ground, he cannot possibly
know any thing about the matter charged
against him, we would repeat the suggestion
which we some time since offered, that it should
not be competent after a person had once pleaded
to an indictment either for himself, his counsel, or
his friends, to raise the issue of insanity, but that
when it was intended to raise the plea of insanity it
should be pleaded in bar to the indictment, and
that a jury should be impanelled to try
the issue of insanity, irrespective of the
crime with which the prisoner might be charged.
Should such jury find him insane, of course the trial
of the indictment would not be proceeded with;
should they, on the contrary, find that he was re-
sponsible for his actions, then the trial would proceed.
We are satisfied that some such alteration as this in
the mode of criminal procedure would obviate the
greater number of the difficulties of which at present
complaint is so justly made.