New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1879-07-14
TILE DkEENCE OF INN1NITE.


Mrs Hull, begins this morning in the
Court of General Sessions. Those who
hone as well as those who fear that he
NAV be defended on the ground of insanity,
will do well to remember that by the law OF
this State this defence is confined within mar
row limits. Explicit proof OF mental disease
of a designated nature is now demanded. The
law still is, indeed, as it long has been, that
an alteration of mind which depriyes the VIC
tim of all P5wer to know that his act Is
wrongful rescues him from the gallOws or
State Prison. And insane decisions, diseased
belief in chimeras and Authorizations, which,
if they were true, would Justify an act may,
notwithstanding they are unreal, excuse it.
But these are the limits of the defence Of in
sanity as now recognized in our Courts.
There has been another form Of the de-
fence a view known by the term moral in
" sanity which deduced protection from the
aggregated wickedness Of a crime, and argued
that a being 50 deprayed as to be unable to
refrain from q deed which he knew to be
criminal, is as unfit for vindcatOry punishment
as one who cannot comprehend that crime is
wrong Such view is said to be accepted
law in several of the States. And there was
a time, not long ago, when friends of prompt
penal Justice regarded with apprehension the
footing it was gaining in the courts of this
State There was q series of trials, through
out generation, in which, with varying sue
cess, the punishment of offenders was opposed
on the ground that although what they did
was criminal and they knew this, yet, from
mental disease, they had not the power TO re-
SYST the temptation and refrain from the act.
Huntington's case, in which this plea was re-
iected as an excuse for q series of fOrger
les. and McFarland's, in which it was urged
successfully on his trial for murder, will be
remembered by most readers.
But this plea is now distinctly repudiated by
our highest judicial authorities. The settled
law for this State is that the test of response
bility for criminal act where UnsOundness
of mind is interposed as defence, is the Ca
pacity OF the accused to distinguish between
right and wrong at the time of and with re-
spect to the act charged. The view. popular
with some medical authorities, and accepted
in Difference to their opinion by some courts
elsewhere, that a power OF choosing what is
right, as distinct from the power of cOmpre-
hending il, must exist, to render a cuiprit pun
ishable. has been discarded, as an unsafe rule
for courts Of justice. That it may have some
foundation in medical observation, and be a
proper guide for physicians in the treatment
of patients, is not disputed; but the judi
ciary has declared that it cannot safely
be adopted into the criminal law The
theory that there Is form of insanity
in which the faculties are so disordered
and deranged that man, kleptomaDiac,
for instance, may perceive the moral quality
of his acts, and still be unable TO control
them, being urged by some mysterious pres
sure to the commission OF deeds the cOnse-
ouences of which he anticipates but cannot
avoid is also rejected. The vagueness and
uncertainty of the inquiry which such "a
theory would demand, and the manifest dan
ger of allowing such a ground of defence.
are pronounced good reasons why the courts
should decline ii.
This general view was also taken In the
penal code, which passed both houses of the
last Legislature, but was not signed by the
Governor. Undoubtedly, by our prescott law,
a man who has mental health enough TO be
able to comprehend that climbing into a
dwelling-house by night, approprlating the
Jewels of a woman asleep, and smothenng
her when she begins to awake, are wrong
acts and expose him TO punishment, is SUIT