Margaret Wright, 17th January 1820, for the same crime, and that of vending seditious publications. Lastly, on 30th May 1824, James Affleck pleaded guilty to a charge of blasphemous publications, tending to bring the Christian religion and the Holy Scriptures into contempt, and was sentenced to three months' imprisonment, and to find caution for his good beha viour for five years.1 CHAPTER XXXV. OF THE EXCUSES FOR CRIMES ARISING FROM THE STATE OF THE PANNEL. How clearly soever a crime may be proved to have been committed, there may be circumstances in the situation of the pannel which prevent him from being the fit object of punishment. He may be insane at the time of the trial, or he may have been so at the time of the acts in question. He may have been a pupil too young to have been capable of distinguishing right from wrong, or to be the object of the severity of criminal law; or he may have acted under such constraint as alleviates, or totally exculpates him. Hence the defences against a libel, founded on the state of the pannel, may be divided into those arising from insanity, from pupilage, or from constraint to the will. SECT. I.-INSANITY AND IDIOCY. IF insanity be of that complete and perfect kind which entirely overpowers the reason, and takes away from the pannel the power of distinguishing right from wrong, or knowing what he is doing, it forms a complete bar to any criminal pro secution; and the pannel is ordered to be disposed of in such a 1 Hume, i. 573. way as to prevent his being hurtful to others in time to come. But several nice and delicate questions arise as to the degree of insanity which in law have this effect. 1. To amount to a complete bar to punishment, the insanity, either at the time of committing the crime, or of the trial, must have been of such a kind as entirely deprived him of the use of reason, as applied to the act in question, and the knowledge that he was doing wrong in committing it. Though law requires, as a complete defence against a criminal prosecution, on the ground of insanity, that the pannel should have laboured, at the time of committing the act, under a complete alienation of reason, yet it is not to be understood that this means either that he was altogether furious, or did not understand the distinction of right or wrong.2 Cases of that extreme kind very seldom occur, and certainly much more unfrequently than the instances in which the pannel's state of mind has been such as to render him not a fit object of punishment. It is very seldom that a mad person is either deprived of the power of knowing what he is doing, or of reasoning and conversing on its different subjects, or of understanding the distinction between right and wrong, in the general case, and with reference to other persons. The great characteristic of insanity, which originates in the general case, is an excessive turning of the mind to its own affairs, consists in an alienation of reason with reference to itself, and in the illusions under which it labours, and the chimeras it has nourished in regard to its own concerns. Few men are mad about others, or things in general; many about themselves. Although, therefore, the pannel understands perfectly the distinction of right and wrong; yet if he labours, as is generally the case, under an illusion and deception, as to his own particular case, and is thereby disabled from applying it correctly to his own conduct, he is in that state of mental alienation which renders him not criminally answerable for his actions. For example, a mad person may be perfectly aware that murder is a crime, and will admit that, if pressed on the subject; but still he may conceive that a ho 1 Hume, i. 37-37.—2 Ibid. i. 37. micide he had committed, was nowise blameable, because the deceased had engaged in a conspiracy with others against his own life; or was his mortal enemy, who had wounded him in his dearest interests, or was the devil incarnate, whom it was the duty of every good Christian to meet with the weapons of carnal warfare. If, therefore, the accused is in such a situation that, though possessing a sense of the distinction between right and wrong, he cannot apply it correctly to his own case, and labours under an illusion which completely misleads his judgment, as mistaking one person for another, or fastening a dreadful charge, entirely groundless, on a friend, he is entitled to the benefit of the plea of insanity in defence against a criminal charge.1 2 This principle was well expressed by Dr Monro senior, in the case of David Hunter, 13th March 1801, charged with murder. Dr Monro deponed, "that he was incapable of judging of the propriety of his actions, or of reasoning with propriety upon them; and, in particular, he gave the deponent a strong indication of this, by leading the deponent to believe that he had been led to commit the crime of which he stood accused, by the circumstance of the woman whom he was accused of shooting, having smothered his own mother, in the presence of a number of persons who had made it up among them; and that the pannel did not seem to have any remorse at what had happened, saying repeatedly that the woman had shed innocent blood." "It is the condition of very many," says Lord Hale, "especially melancholy persons, who, for the most part, discover their defect in excessive fears and griefs, and yet are not wholly destitute of the use of reason; but this partial insanity seems not to excuse them in the committal of any capital offence. Doubtless mad persons that kill themselves, are under a partial degree of insanity when they commit these offences; and it is very difficult to define the invisible line that divides perfect from partial insanity; but it must rest upon circumstances, to be duly weighed by the Judge and jury, lest, on the one hand, there be an inhumanity towards the defects of human nature; or, on the other, too great an indulgence shewn to great crimes."3 In the case of Robert Spence, June 30. 1747, it appeared 1 Hume, i. 37-38.—2 Ibid. 38.-3 Hale, i. 30. that the pannel and the deceased, who was a schoolmistress, were occupiers of separate floors in the same building. The pannel having risen from bed in his shirt in the dusk of the evening, knocked at her door, and upon its being opened rushed in, uttering some strange and incoherent expressions, and struck the woman with a hatchet on the head, which killed her. He then ran off to his own house, and escaped from a posse who assembled to seize him. On returning to his own house, he violently clove through a wig-block which stood there, and was found besmeared with the woman's brains and gore. Great restlessness, disordered behaviour, and a wandering disposition, had been observed in him for some days preceding, but without any actual outrage; and some years before he had shewn symptoms of derangement on board a ship, and had been in consequence confined occasionally for ten days at a time. The jury "found it proven that the pannel was furious at the time he committed the said murder, but to what degree they could not determine;" and, in pursuance of this verdict, he was ordered to be confined for life.1 It was plain that, though not insane on every subject, he laboured under some hallucination with reference to the object of his violence. Jean Blair, 14th March 1781, was charged with murdering her mistress. It appeared in evidence, that, in a sudden fit of frenzy, she had seized a hatchet and murdered her mistress, with whom she had lived as a confidential servant, set fire to the house, and ran out stark naked into the street, and herself gave the alarm to the guard. She had shewn symptoms of insanity ten years before. She was of course acquitted of the murder, and ordered into confinement for the remainder of her life.2 A more difficult case, and which well illustrates the delusions under which insane persons labour, was that of Robert Thomson, June 1739. He was accused of the murder of George Forrester, on the Moor of Ballincrief, between Haddington and Aberlady, at noonday. The pannel had been employed in his trade as a blacksmith as usual that morning, and those who saw him a little before the commission of the fatal act saw nothing remarkable in his appearance; but, when taken into custody, he used many expressions clearly indicating that he was 1 labouring under a mental delusion at the time he committed the act; saying that the deceased had many times cried for mercy when he was striking him on the ground, but that he had no mercy on him, for he believed it was the devil which he had killed. He added, that, before meeting Forrester, he had chased the devil through the moor, and that he had suddenly vanished. He was proved also to have been subject to fits of melancholy, and frequently started from his bed, saying he was grappling with the devil; and he had been in one of these fits a few days before the murder. The jury found no insanity proved till after the murder; but he received a trans-, portation pardon, and there seems little doubt that he was in+ sane at the time of committing it.1 A similar case was that of Ann Sparrow, Glasgow, autumn 1829. It there appeared that she had poured vitriolic acid'in considerable quantities down the throat of her own child, a girl of seven years of age, and nearly killed it. After committing the horrid act, she ran into the neighbours' houses in a state of evident derangement, saying that she had killed the devil; and before that she had frequently threatened her own life, and expressed to the neighbours her resolution to commit suicide. The case was proved, as well as the insanity, and she was ordered to be confined for life. So also, in a case related by Sir M. Hale, a woman, married, and of good charac ter, not having slept for some nights after her delivery, and, being otherwise evidently disordered in her intellects, being left alone, killed her own child. Shortly after she shewed the body to some persons, and told what she had done. She was instantly carried to jail, where she soon fell into a deep sleep, and wakened quite sane, and wondered how she came there. She was found not guilty of the murder. Similar to that was the case of Agnes Crocket, 23d July 1756, who also had killed her own child. She was unmarried, but had nursed her child; and she was somewhat strange in her conduct, and, being left alone with the infant, destroyed it. She made, however, no attempt to conceal the body, but shewed it to the people of the house, saying the devil had tempted her. The evidence of insanity was very weak, and the jury rightly found the pannel guilty; but the Royal mercy prevented her execution.3 Ano 1 Hume, i. 40.-2 Hale, i. 36.—3 Hume, i. 42. |