Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/215

 GUITEAU S CASE. ���me ���to know what lie was doing at the time, then he is responsiMe, for it is con- scious knowledge coupled with the act which constitutes crime." See De|ty, Amer. Crim. L. § 236. p. 62, and cases cited. �The prisoner Mmself endeavored to impress the jury with the idea that he had acted under an insane delusion that he had been commissioued by the Deity to commit the act, but he failed in his effort to so impress the jury. " Monomania is insanity only on a particular subject and with a single delusion ; the mind.in other respects retaining its intellectual powers, has imbibed sorae single notion contrary to common sense or experience. It excuses only when it deprives the party of his reason in regard to the act chargea to which it must immediately relate, and the delusion must be mental, not moral, and the act must be done bonaflde and without malice, and not from motives of re- venge for supposed injuries. If the delusion is only partial, the person is equally liable with a person of sound mind ; or, if the delusion was an opinion that ordinary reason might have produced, it will not excuse from crime." Desty, Amer. Crim. L. § 25d, and cases cited. �Moral insanity co-existing with mental insanity has no fcundation in law, and will not furnish an excuse from punishment for crime il he is conscioua he is doing wrong, whether he has power over his conductor not; so a blunted moral sense sufflcieiit to free the mind from remorse is not insanity. See many decisions cited in Desty, Amer. Crim. L. § 25e, p. 69. The vagaries of the human mind shaped by religions opinions, superstitions belief, or inspirational rhapsodies, however they may aflect the moral character, are in no sense to be considered as delusions constituting an insane condition of the mind, so as to excuse from punishment for crime. �Insanity to be an excuse from punishment should be such as dethrones the reason, overpowers the will, and creates an irresistible impulse to perform the act, while it deprives the party of thepowerto judge betweenright and wrong as to the particular act committed, as is established by abimdant authority. �It is to be hoped that the charge of Judge Cox, its eflect, and the verdict ren- dered, will exercise a salutary influence in the administration of justice in the future in cases of premeditated homicide, and that the long conflict of medical science, speculative at most. with its fine distinctions of mental and moral aberration, transmission by deseent, physical convolutions of the brain, etc., etc., against legal science, upon the subject of human responsibility, will speedily approach an end, and criminals be suhject to a reasonable legal test of responsibility for crime. — [Ed. ��� �