The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-04-17
BERGERON WOULD ESCAPE HANGING BY NOVEL PLEA Judge Burpee Found Him Guil- ty of First sDegree
 Murder. CLAIM JUDGES MIND
 NOT OPEN TO DOUBT Thinks Sentence Should Re, Commuted Because There
 Was No Jury.
 Jury.

arguments in the case of the state vs-
 Joseph F. Bergeron. The counsel for
 Bergeron, indicted for murder of Elizabeth Dowsett at New Haven on May 28, 1913, and found guilty by Judge Burpee in the first degree, were Joseph e. Woods and J. Birney Tuttle.s l In the brief for the accused it was set forth that the degree of crime, under 1 the statute and after a plea of guilty,
 was left to the deteruination of the court.
 .eWe believe says the brief, that l this is the first time this statute has ever been invoked and while there l fore experimental, there are Weighty l reasons which induced counsel for the l accused to assent to his choice of tribunals The accused claimed that i at the time Of the homicide he was in q state of alcoholic intoxication and therefore incapable of murder in the I first degree. Establishment of his mental condition would, in a large measure, depend upon the scientific | testimony of experts and it seemed to counsel that the trained and 1 learned judge was better fitted to try Isthis question than the ordinary jury. 1 unlearned, untrained and incapable of l scientific understanding.
 F 4" It was also the intention of the ac- cused to save the state the great ex- I pense of a Jury trial.
 s'The experiment. which perhaps ought not to have been tried, seemed I more than Justified. The result was I to deprive the accused of the safe l personalities. While the evidence I convinced the one intellectual person
 alify that goes to make up the trial I Judge, it is certain that one or more
 Of the 12 personalities making up a jury would have been differently af- fected by the same evidence.
 The accused ought not to be hung I if there is anything in the evidence si which would affect with a reasonable
 doubt any one of the 12 variegated personalities which might have made S up the jury"
 The brief sets up that the evidence leaves a reasonables doubt as to Ber- gerons mental condition that it ought
 to have left a doubt in the mnd of the trial court. stss T The accused claimed that his crime was no greater than murder in the fssecond degree by reason of the fact
 that at the time he was in a state of q acute alcoholic lntoxication and in
 capable of presneditation, deliberation
 l or malice afoHethought; that no ed-
 eQuate motive for the crime existed
 and no express malice toward the vic-
 tim existed or was proven. Bergeron,
 ] it was claimed, had been a kind and
 considerate husband and father o1 four children until in 1909 he met
 Elizabeth Dowsett. In November 1911, he acted strangely so that his wife thought The was going insane, :, Reciting the events leading up to the homicide. ths brief says that on the Saturday night prior to the act the accused was so drunk that he seemed to a physician to be on the verge oi l delirium tremens. On the morning o1 the homicide 1t was shown in evidence
 that Bergeron was drunk and in the ]. same extremely delirious condition i from use of liquor as he had been fol 5 some days. The record discloses the
 absence of a motive for the wornar he loved. This all,'' as the. state char. 5 acterIzed that relation.
 "O11r contention, says the brief : that there was no intention to in.
 jure the woman up to Tuesday nigh I l was so impressive that the state wa, , forced to develop a new theory, name : 1y, that Lizzie Dowsett fi1aliy dis missed the accused on Tuesda, ! Reviewing the record Of the case a [ this point the accused then claims t this:
 t The. truth Is that up to the tim, Bergeron went to bed intoxicated so1 Tuesday night he had never had an, ] intention to inJure Mrs. Dowsett I , was in his room that the seeds O 2 ] murder were first sown; his drunkef 2 mind was there inf1aned with pas ,. sion and the scene set for the awfu tragedy.
 ? In concluding the brief the accused ? sets up that he was. as the result O
 antecedent conditions, under the in
 fuence of a moral mania. Also tha
 inert is little controversy about tn.
 law.
 The last paragraph is:
 i. We respectfully suggest that tn, . trial judge has so strong a. conviction r about the guilt of the accused tfla a his mind was not receptive nor ope1 a to the elements Of Adoubt which i'm . pregnated the whole case; so that h, t unconsciously and unwfttingly ex n cluded from his mind facts and con . ditfons which ought to. have inf1u :. enced a different conclusion We asl : the judgment to be set aside and tn q crime be reduced to murder in tn :. second degree
 : Wethersfield Prison Is