The Arizona sentinel., 1888-05-05
SELF-ACCUSATIONS.
Innocent Persons Confessing to
 Criminal Acts.
Cases by No Means Recommendations ceived-C -Confoundins Dreams with Realities-Motives for Falso
 Confessions.

it is no uncommon circumstance for persons to confess to having perpetrat- ed crimes of which they were certain ly or probably innocent and that there are forces in operation in the hu- man mind which may prompt to the making of a false confession. even though by so doing life, liberty or
 property be put in danger. Thus there is difficulty in the minds of some persons who exhibit no other evidence of mental alteration to discriminate between their thoughts or their dreams and absolute facts. They brood over some real or imaginary circumstance
 until they bring themselves 10 believe in its reality.
 Such person, for instance. reads in
 the daily press of some shocking mur- der that has been committed, the per- petrator of which has escaped un- recognized. He reads it in one news paper and in another and another, hears it talked up among his com panions. and begins by wonder ing whether or not the mur- derer will ever be discovered. He knows that murders have been com mitted by persons who at the time were in state of somnambulism. or who were suffering from an epileptic paroxysm. Perhaps he has himself in his youth walked in his sleep. or has had a convulsion, as his mother has told him. Suddenly the idea strikes him that he may be the guilty man. At first the notion is horrible 10 him, but its very horror renders it attract i've. He goes to the Academy of Med icine and reads up on the subject of epilepsy. There is scarcely disease, especially of the nervous system, of which any person at some time or other of his life has not had one or more symptoms. The quack medicine advertisers are fully aware of this fact, and make full use of it, to fright en the ignorant into the purchase of their trash. Our incipient self -accuser has, therefore. no trouble in finding what he is looking for. and he goes home fully convinced that he has had an epileptic paroxysm. during which he may have been murderer. The transition from a possibility to a real ity presents no diff culties to his mind, and he ends by fully believing himself to be the murderer for whom the police are seeking. He visits the place where the crime was committed questions the residents of the neighborhood in regard to all the particulars, and even in- terrogates the police relative to their plans for securing the murderer and the secret evidence they may have in their possession. At last suspicion is turned toward him and eventually he is arrested. The accounts that he has read in the newspapers and the gossip he has heard. that regardless of his original idea that he had perpetrated inc crime during an epileptic fit and therefore in state of unconscien- tiousness that forces him to make atonement he confesseS that he per petrated the murder and gives a full and circumstantial account of the crime. Inquiry soon, however, shows that he could not by any possibility have been the perpetrator and he is therefore, after a few days, during which the newspapers have given the most sensational accounts of his brutality and remorse, discharged from custody.
 Sometimes. however, the termIna- tion is not so fortunate for the false confessor.
 Several years ago boy, Francis Laville Kent four years old, was found murdered in an outhouse on his fathers premises in England. The throat was cut 10 the bone and there was a wound in the chest which penetrated to the heart The corpse was wrapped in a blanket which belonged to the bed in which the child had slept the night before, q piece of flannel. such as women sometimes wear on the chest, was found under the body and DOT tion of newspaper which had evil dently been used for wiping bloody knife lay upon the floor Nothing else was discovered calculated 10 indicate fhe perpetrator of the deed and even the ownership of the piece of flannel could not be tracel. Before gong to ]