The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1906-05-01
PLEA FOR
JOHNSON
Protest Against Hang
ing Simeon Wharton's
Slayer.

Editor Advertiser: Obligation cal
not, any more than God. grow old ant
Gle: till obeyed, it stops in the presen
tense and represents the eternal now
And so. sir. 1 feel myself urged L
write. and even at this late hour. may
it be. the words sent forth good fruit
may bear.
The Hawaiian Star OF the 25th inst
| commences an editorial. ''Johnson's
Sanity Established" in this wise: 1t
is satisfactory TO all to have proof that
Murderer Johnson was not insane" In
Gods name, Mr.. Editor, to whom can
such a feeling be satisfactory? Where
| are they to be found? Has the Stars
| devil been playing pranks or has that
other devil. Mephistopheles, been at his
subtle work upon that papers editor?
An innocent child of tender years
cruelty, ferociously killed. A man is
found guilty OF the awful deed, and
the Stars writer not only himself finds
satisfaction. but deliberately says il is
satisfactory to all, TO have proof that
the convicted degenerate was not an in
sane man. Impossible it is, beyond
reasonable doubt. to believe any such
assertion. An assertion which, if true,
would place the men Of this community
where most certainly they are not. and
hence can not be found. It is not
true, Mr. Editor that it can be
source of satisfaction to a single living
soul to think any sane human being
could commit so dannable, SO inhuman.
so utterly revolving a deed as that per-
petrated in the Wharton case. Bad
enough. too bad, too cruel, We're the
perpetrator insane. but utterly inco:a-
prehensibIe, utterly Impossible, utterly
beyond all, reasonable liberation is the
thought that any could derive salts
faction in the fact that the cruelest OF
cruel deeds was to be set down as
sane mans act and not as the work OF
one of unsounG mind The Star writer
himself in clearer moments Of better
thought would thankfully acknowledge
that no men OF sound mind are abso-
lutely devilfsh. The star writer APP
parently thinks had the degenerate
johnson been thought insane there
would have been a miscarriage of JUS
tice. but, Mr.. Editor, where a question
of sanity is to be decided on what the
Star calls indefinite lines may there
be no miscarriage if man is hanged
owing to such indefniteness? In pa
per read in the section of neurology
and medical jurisprudence, at the
forty-ffth annual meeting of the Amer
lean Medical Association, by DR.. T. D.
Crothers, is the following:
1.-The decisions of the law insist on
fixing boundaries of responsibility, and
urge medical men to go into this
penumbra region of sanity and insanity
and draw lines between vice and
disease, and indicate where human JUS
tice should punish and where excuse"
1t seems to many of the earth's most
enlightened a poor use to which to put
murderer. to hang him, even when
no question of sanity crops up; but
when insanity appears possible, nay,
probable, and the proof is difficult
owing TO the natural obscurities at
tending it, the possible nor appreciation
of mental failure of an accused may
well attend the giving of evidence of
even medical men. In another place I
nave Sdlu. hSlldI cOHOltlOllS where
men constantly use alcohol and some
times TO excess are, we are told on
authority. profoundly involved, and the
border line between sanity and its
antithesis may not only not be strongly
marked, but the reverse An authority
writing in the Alienist and Neurologist
on 'Unrecognized Toxic Insanities''
says. Criminal impulses to take ad-
70 Of ir1i,J h,.iro
these toxic insanities into prominence.
Is Such insanittes are seldom or
never recognized, except when some
extraordinary change or conduct at
tracts unusual attention" The Stars
indefinite lines" are only too well
known. DR.. Oscar T. Woods. medical
Cork District Asylum.
said. Il have formed a strong
opinion that there is much unregistered
insanity still in the country and much
neurotic disease existing to be turned
into active insanity by the slightest +
exciting cause
DR.. C. A Drew. medical director
State Asylum for Insane Criminals.
Mass. speaking or the
of alcoholism. crime and in
sanity, said, The man who drinks be-
cause his comrades drink is not of a
kind with him who yields to an i'm
pulse from within which has almost the
resistless force of an epiieptic explo-
sion. The latter is just as truly the
victim of q neurosis as the epileptic.
The instructive criminal, the habituaI
the occasional criminal, and
the criminal by passion are not of a
kind, although the lines of demarkation
7an not De sharply drawn. In all these
eases, however. alcohol plays an i'm
portant causatve role, because, as
Victor HorsIey Of England. Kraeplin of
Germany, BerkleE Of Johns Hopkins.
ana others have affirmed and demon
strated. the oft repeated presence of
eFen moderate quantity of alcohol in
he circulation viii cause marked
ehanges in the cortical neurons of the
brain. change in the shape of the
the disappearance of the