Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-12-07
eu1rEAu AND TEE EXPERTS.

Several medical witnesses have ex-
pressed their belief that Guiteau is insane.
There is certainly some ground for such an
opinion. But the really important consid-
Grafton ought TO be, not so much
whether the man is insane, as whether he
is or is not responsible for his actions. It
is well understood by alienists that mad
men are frequently possessed of an amount
of intelligence which renders them, or
should render them, fully accountable for
all they do. The popular notion that a
mailman is driven forward by some irresist-
ible power which deprives him of the ca
pacity for reflection, is for the most part
fallacious. The instances in which the
insane are incapable of comprehending and
Distinguishing clearly between that which
is proper and right and that which is i'm
proper and wrong, are extremely rare. In
the worst cases of homicidal insanity there
is almost always found, not only suffi-
cient power of self-restraint, but con-
sciousness that this power ought 70 be ex-
ercised. When homicidal maniac yields
to the impulse which besets him, he is
voluntarily Withdrawing his opposi-
ton to what he knews to be
lawless desire. As rule, he is in all re-
spects as responsible for his actions as the
man who, knowing that drunkenness is a
bad thing, yet deliberately makes himself
drunk. Guiteau is in just this kind of po-
sition. His own testimony has shown how
completely he held his homicidal impuls
under control, even surprising him to be in
sane. There can be no doubt that he
could have restrained himself rs success
fully in the Baltimore and Ohio depot, had
he desired to do so. Testimony to his in
sanity, therefore, is not testimony to his
responsibility. We hope that the prose.
cution will make this distinction clear to
the jury, and that it will not make the
mistake of assuming deliberately the abb
sence of al insane faint in the prisoner.
We believe the proper ground to be that
insanity may co.exist with complete ac-
countability, and that it is not enough to
prove murderer insane he must also be
found irresponsible before he can be acquit-
ted on the score of mental alteration. The
presumption no doubt is that the jury will
bring in verdict of guilty, no mat.
ter what the medical testimony may be,
but if Guitesu is convicted on the hypothe.
sis that he is thoroughly sane, his trial will
have added one more case to the long
series in which the teachings of science
have been rendered abortive through the
perverse endeavor to make them accord
with legal doctrine which has no iusti-
fcation in fact. Science demonstrates
that there are manifold degrees of insanity,
and that in large number of cases there
exists as complete an ability to reason, to
judge, to distinguish between right and
wrong, as among the sanest people. The
true deduction from the results of research
In mental pathology therefore is that
insanity may and very often does coexist
with degree of responsibility fully
warranting the iufiction of the ordinary
penalties of the law for crimes. Guiteau
is probably not entirely sane, but he is
quite sane enough to know what he is
doing, and therefore quite sane enough to
be hanged.