The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-05-19
INSANITY AND MURDER.

From the Baltimore Sun.
We have heretofore noticed that Governor
Alcorn, of Mississippi, has sent special
message to the State Legislature in regard to
the plea of insanity in trials for murder, man
slaughter, and assaults with intent to kill.
He recommends that in all cases in which
that plea is interposed the question shall be
tried in equity, the prisoner to be held in
custody meanwhile, without bail, to await the
decree. If the decree shall be that the pri
soner is sane, he shall be tried as such for the
crime committed; that if he shall be found to
be insane, the court shall order him to be
confined in lunatic asylum, and in that
portion thereof designated for the dangerous
insane" In the case of assault with intent to
kill, this confinement shall be for the term of
one year, in a case of manslaughter for the
term of three years, and in case of murder for
period of five years. In Maryland it is re-
quired by the code that when any person in
dicted for crime or misdemeanor shall allege
insanity or lunacy in his defense, the Jury en-
panelled to try him shall find by their verdict
whether he was at the time of committing
the ofense, or still is, insane, and if the Jury
find that he then was and still is insane, the
court may send him to an almshouse hospital,
or some place better sui ed to his condition,
there to be confined until he shall have re-
covered his reason and be discharged by due
course of law. If such a provision as this is
often witnessed of turning loose murderers
who claim to have acted under an uncontrol-
liable impulse of insanity, and giving them an
opportunity to perpetrate similar acts, will be
avoided. 1t is we'll known by those acquainted
with cases of undoubted homicidal mania,
that patients, aware of their condition. have
themselves begged to be secured, so as to be
saved from the act which they felt impelled
to perpetrate. 1t would hence be blessing
. IN ha n c.
guard to society, to shut up murderers found
by juries to be insane in lunatic asylumns
where others, suffering from madness, though
not murderers, are confined.
The increase of insanity of late, as deve-
loped by the criminal proceedings in courts of
justice, would seem almost to justify the saying
of the transcendental Emerson, that there is a
crack in everything human" The rogues and
manslayers of former days may well complain
of their unlucky fate in being born before
this ingenious device for cheating the ends of
Justice was invented. We have now what is
called "moral insanity, being an alienation
or peryersion of the moral faculties, unaccom-
panied by any marked perversion of the in
tellect once considered by the doctors a
characteristic, to greater or less degree, of
the whole of fallen humanity. There is no
doubt confusion of ideas, to some extent,
among all criminals, such as was defined byaf
nous Irish barrister as "a confusion of the head
arising from corruption of the heart" 1t
has been reserved to this day, however, to
afford juries pretext for aoquittal in emo
tional madness, moral idiocy, and the like, to
an extent that calls for some such legislative
provisions in other States as is found in our
own code or is recommended by the Governor
of Mississippi. In the meantime it is impos-
sible not to admire the courage which gen.
tlemen of the bar exhibit in sitting for days
and weeks, through a protracted trial, in
close proximity to a homicidalsmadman, with
out the precaution of having him ironed,
when at any moment, and especially under
the exciting influence OF the scenes in court,
iury practical illustration of his condition by
making murderous assault upon his counsel.