Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/207

 GUITEAU'S CASE. 195 �is wanting, and the crime is not established ; therefore, the burden is oh the Btate to establish sanity, and not upon the prisoner to show insanity. See Fisher v. People, 23 111. 283; Hopps v. People, 31 111. 394. So, also, Judge Brewster, speaking for the jadges of the Philadelphia common pleas, said, in 1868: "The true test in all these cases lies in the word 'power.' Has the defendant in a criminal case the power to distinguish right and wrong, and the power to adhere to the right and avoid the wrong ?" Com. v. Haskell, 2 Brewst.491. �In Indiana a similar view was accepted in 1869. 8tevens v. State, 31 Ind. 485. �'n Ohio insane irresistible impulse is regarded as a defence; BcacJtburn v. State, 23 Ohio St. 146; and such is the view in Minnesota; State v. Out, 13 Minn. 341; and in Kentucky; Smith v. Cam. 1 Duv. 224. In lowa, in 1868, the same point was affirmed by the supreme court, Chief Justice Dillon deliv- ering the opinion. The capacity to distinguish right and wrong, it was held, is not in all cases a safe test of criminal responsibility. K a person commit a homicide, knowing it to be wrong, but driven to it by an uncontrollable and irresistible impulse, arising not from natural passion, but from an insane condition of the mind, he is not criminally responsible. State v. Felter, 25 lowa, 67. See, also, McFarland's Case, 8 Abb. Pr. (N. S.) 57, and Mary Harris' Case, 22 Am. Jour. Ins. 334. To the same efiect is a decision of the supreme court of the United States in 1872. Life Ins. Co. v. Terry, 15 Wall. 580. See, also, Blackburn v. State, 23 Ohio St. 165; Broum v. Com. 78 Pa. St. 122; and other cases in Whart. Crim. Law, (8th Ed.) 145. �In North Carolina, on the other hand, it has been ruled that no impulse, however irresistible, is a defence when there is a knowledge of the difference as to the particular act between right and wrong. State v. Brandon, 8 Jones, 463. And there is no question that the position that an irresistible impulse can be a defence is inconsistent with the rule laid down in the great body of cases which sustain the "right and wrong "test as an exclusive standard. And even where this test is not so received, irresistible impulse is no defence unless the defendant is proved aliunde to be insane. �Thus, in People v. Coleman, K Y. Dec. 1881, Judge Davis charged the jury as follows : " In this state the test of responsibility for criminal acts, where insanity is asserted, is the capacity of the accused to distinguish between right and wrong at the time and with respect to the act which is the subject of inquiry." He further said that the question for the jury to determine is " whether at the time of doing the act the prisoner knew what she was doing and that she was doing a wrong; or, in other words, did she know that she was shooting at the deceased, and that such sliooting was a wrongf ul act ? " The judge f urtlier said : " No imaginary inspiration to do a personal or private wrong, under a delusion, abelief, that some great public beneflt will flow from it, where the nature of the act done and its probable consequences, and that it is in itself wrong, are known to the actor, can amount to that insanity which in law disarms the act of criminality. Under such notions of legal insanity, life, property, and rights, both public and private, would be altogether inse- cure, aad every man who, by brooding over his wrongs, real or imaginary, shall work himself up to an irresisistible impulse to avenge himself, or his ��� �