Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/323

 THE GREEN BAG state was not due to extravagance. He had been in excellent employment. He had been in the service of an hotel company, and was at one time private secretary to Sir Henry Burdett. He went to Russia with excellent introductions to the British Ambassador. Unfortunately, the prisoner became unemployed, and at the time of this story he was in a destitute condition. So far from that being in any way against him, it explained his subsequent conduct. He had fits of depression, and seemed to feel his position acutely. All this gradually oper ated upon a mind never of a powerful equilibrium, and on a body enfeebled by the drinking tendencies of his mother, grand mother, and great-grandmother. He was not going to suggest that he was insane in the legal sense of the word at the time he went to Mr. Whiteley's, but he did contend that this was a case of a man of a degenerate mind whose mental heritage was tainted by at least two generations of alcoholism. While in many matters of life he was shrewd, clever, and even accomplished, yet he was just in that condition of mind as to which, quite apart from mental experts, they knew from their own experience that there were men and women who at some crisis of their history had mental explosions, and in a moment were guilty of ' acts of impulsive insanity which had never manifested them selves before, and which, once the explosion had taken place, never occurred again. It was promised that witnesses were to be called on the subject of impulsive insanity, and that the prisoner would testify as to what took place in the interview with Mr. Whiteley. The prisoner, in his destitute condition, having come to the conclusion that there was a mystery about his birth, and that Mr. Whiteley could satisfy him about it, paid the visit to Westbourne-grove, and took the revolver with him, thinking that if his request for information and mon etary assistance failed, he could take his own life — possibly in Mr. Whiteley's presence. He had had but little to eat that day, and

had taken some drink. He had never in tended to hurt Mr. Whiteley, and he remem bered nothing more than pulling the trigger. Seeing Mr. Whiteley on the floor, he turned the pistol on himself." The first witness was the prisoner's wife. She told her story in a few words. Other witnesses were then called, and finally the prisoner himself testified at considerable length but was not cross-examined. Medi cal testimony was then given, to the effect that persons who had been perfectly rational for years had then been guilty of acts of mental instability, and subsequently re covered their normal sanity. The pris oner's ancestry, his drinking, his want of regular food, his distress of mind from pov erty and anxiety would diminish his selfcontrol, and in those circumstances he would be more susceptible to the influence of an insane impulse at any crisis. Instead of the "brain storms" of the Thaw case we are introduced, to a new form of insanity designated as "mental explosions." On the close of this evidence Mr. Muir requested the Court to rule that there was no evidence to go to the jury that the prisoner was insane. The Lord Chief Justice promptly so ruled. Thereupon Mr. Elliott summed up the case for the defense to the jury. Mr. Muir briefly replied on the part of the crown. The brevity and business like directness of these arguments is strik ing. Accustomed to such jury address it is no surprise to hear that the English Bar has characterized the fervid rhetoric of both Delmas and Jerome as "flapdoodle," and express surprise that it should be supposed to be effective with any jury. Lord Alverston' charged the jury also very briefly, and within nine minutes they returned a verdict of guilty. Immediately his lordship sentenced the prisoner to death. The trial had been completed within a single day in less than seven hours. Within a month of the verdict, according to the English practice, Rayner will be hanged, unless pardoned or granted a new trial.