Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-12-11

Of hatred against the victim, the impelling
cause of the final assault may still be in
sanity. Disease of the mind may make
man somber and melancholy may set
him brooding, and may finally goad him
into homicide. The truth is that insanity
is much more common than people gen.
orally suppose. and its gradations are so
fine that it is impossible to trace them. 1t
is, moreover, disease which may Turk
harmless all a life or it may merely give
emphasis to the dominant tendencies OF
character; or it may be latent until mid.
die life, and then manifest itself in some
sudden outbreak of folly frenzy. In short,
it may show itself in thousand ways.
But though insanity is very common,
and though it tinges so many actions, and
though it may be postulated as present in
a great many murder cases, it does not fol-
low that all criminals who have the insane
neurosis, or are actually more or less mad,
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trary, it is necessary to realize that insanity
is quite compatible with complete respon-
sibility. Even supposing that the insane
persons cannot help themselves, Society is
justified in furnishing them if by so doing
it can prevent Others from doing as they
have done. In fact, Society daily pun
ishes those who, by the accident of birth,
are quite as much destined to crime as the
hereditary maniac is to insanity Our So
called dangerous classes are born GRIM
mails, and all their training and tendencies
are in that direction. They could not be
honest and law-abiding with their sur
roundings, yet Society Furnishes them, and
is justified in doing so. But it cannot be
admitted that the insane who commit
crime are in most cases really ire
sponsible in the sense of not knowing
what they are doing. Save in violent mania
and idiocy the capacity to distinguish
between right and wrong is always present.
The man who yields to homicidal mania
knows that he is doing wrong; knows that
he is committing crime actually strug-
giles against the impulse; and finally sur
renders to it very much as any OF us sur
render to more harmless temptations.
Now for the purpose of the law this ability
to distinguish between right and wrong is
all that is necessary to justify punishment.
The law cannot enter into pathological an
alyses. 1t cannot undertake to discrimi-
nate between nice shades of mental dis
ease. 1t must content itself with ascer-
tanning that he who commits murder knew
he was committing murder when he did
the deed. 1t must be remembered that,
as Griesinger observes, "The criminal acts
6 of the insane have not ordinarily the
characteristics of irresistible impulse. 7"
In fact it is very seldom that they could
not have restrained themselves from the
commission of the crime. With this view
all the perplexities which the legal theories
of the relation of insanity to crimes have
raised, will disappear. 1t will no longer
be of consequence whether the defendant is
said to have had the insane neurosis, or to
have been the subject of impulsive insan-
ity or transitory mania, or whatever else it
may be called. 1t will only be necessary
to prove that he understood what he was
doing, to render him fit subject for pun
ishment. As has been observed by DR..
Mayo, "The law should not permit the
g idea of insanity in its agent to plead his
''excuse when he knows that he is per-
g fectly aware of the murderous tendency
"of his actions, and, in being unable to
''resist them, is only in the same predica-
''ment with every recognized aspirant to
the gallows.' The man who commits
murder, possessing intelligence to know
what murder is, should in fact be hanged,
and that without any reference to the
question whether insanity impelled him
to the deed. Unless this is conceded
Society will soon be without the power to
protect itself against murder.