Year: 1874

In the trial of the boy .Pomeroy in Boston, who was found guilty of mur- der, Dr. G. F. Choate testified for the prosecution. He was for seventeen years connected with the Taunton In sane Asylum, and for the last four years has conducted private asylum about thirty miles from New York. He said: Assuming that the testimony of the injured boys given to-day be true, and the homicide of the NTillin boy to have been proved, I do not consider the fact of Pomeroy's insanity to be shown by it; there is certainly an absence of the Ordi- nary motives which would accompany the commission of such acts, which would lead tofurther investigation of his mental condition, but of themselves would fail in establishing insanity. l have had two interviews with the prisoner at the jail of from all hour to two hours in length; think he did not know who I was or my object in visiting him; he asked me if I was connected with the press, and when informed I was not, he gave me paper and pencil to take notes; there was no manifest impairment of his intellectual or perceptive faculties that I could observe; his ability to converse, to remember, and to learn seemed to be good; ill conversation about the acts charged against him, he said he knew he had done wrong, and appeared to un- counsel, and said he should like to have heard that he had got man acquitted recently on the ground of insanity; when spoken to as to his legal responsibility o4c o1, | 41,a4 he had studied the legal as well as the moral aspect of his crimes; when I asked him what he thought would be done sent to the State prison or to a lllnatic as they had never yet hung a boy of believe they would commence on him; insane desire to commit murder, and said that that was his trouble.

 "He once told me that he had an un- contrellable desire to commit torture on boys, which he thought might have come from reading cheap novels, which he had done a great many times; he took great delight in reading Indian tales where cruelties were described; he told me that once he stole some money, with which he intended to run away and live with the Indians; he also said that if he could be sent away to sea he would get over his desire to commit cruelties, but when remarked to him that it would be difficult for him to get a chance, as 8 captain might have fears that he would kill him in the night, he replied that he had no desire to injure men, but only boys; at the second interview with him he denied that he ever committed any acts of cruelty to children, and that the confession he. made was written at the time the body of the Curran girl was found, for the purpose of shielding his mother and brother. Though the acts committed were not of themselves of a character to establish insanity, they were so extraordinary that further investiga- tion into his mental condition seemed to be warranted to ascertain it's true state; his mind was not that of ordinary boys, but I am of the opinion that he was of sound mind when the murder of the Millin boy was committed; think he is deficient in the moral qualities; there is, in my opinion, no defect in his intel lectual organization, but there is a de- fciency in his moral organization in proneness to commit acts of cruelty and 8 weakness in the powers of resistance; there is difference in the degrees of such weakness. .'