Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/181

 GUITEAU'S CASE. 169 �of so distinguishing ? And did this continue down to and embrace the act for which he is tried? If so, he was simply an irresponsible lunatic. �Or, on the other hand, had he the ordinary intelligence of sans people, so that he eould distinguish between right and wrong, as to his own actions? If another person had committed the assassina- tion, would he have appreciated the wickedness of it? "If he had had no special acoess of insanity impelling him to it, as he claims was the case, would he have understood the character of such an act and its wrongf ulness if another person had suggested it to him ? If you ean answer these questions in your own minds it may aid you towards a conclusion as to the normal or ordinary condition of the prisoner's mind before he thought of this act ; and if you are satisfied that his chronic or permanent condition was that of sanity, at least so far that he knew the character of his own actions, and whether they w^ere right or wrong, and was not under any permanent insane delusions which destroyed his power of discriminating between right and wrong as to them, then the only inquiry remaining is whether there was any special insanity connected with this crime ; and what I shall further say will be on the assumption that you find his general condition to have been that of sanity to the extent I have mentioned. �On this assumption it will be seen that the reliance of the defence is on the existence of an insane delusion in the prisoner's mind which so perverted his reason as to incapacitate him from perceiving the difference between right and wrong as to this particular act. �As a part of the history of judicial sentiment on this subject, and by way of illustrating the relation between insane delusions and responsibility, I will refer to a celebrated case in English history already freely commented on in argument. Nearly 40 years ago one MacNaghten was tried in England for killing a Mr. Drummond, private secretary of Sir Eobert Peel, mistaking him for the premier himself. He was acquitted on the ground of insanity, and his ac- quittai caused so much excitement that the house of lords addressed certain questions to the judges of the superior courts of England in regard to the law of insanity in certain cases, and their answers have been since regarded as settling the law on this subject in England, and, with some qualification, have been approved in the courts of this country, One of the questions was : �" If a person, under an insane dehision as to the existing facts, commits an oiience in consequence thereof, is he thereby excusedV" ��� �