Criminal lunatics : a letter to the Chairman of the Commissioners in Lunacy / by W. Charles Hood.

  • Hood, W. Charles (William Charles), 1824-1870.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Criminal lunatics : a letter to the Chairman of the Commissioners in Lunacy / by W. Charles Hood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    f which it has arrived, should be postponed,Uintil the state of the prisoner’s mind at the time has been made the subject of inquiry, at the same or some following session or assize, as the case may be, and as then shall be directed before an ordinary jury, whose verdict of insanity, if such it shall be, shall in all cases be recorded by the Court as an answer to the previous indictment. It seems, indeed, altogether inconsistent and contradictory to allow a prisoner to / allege that he did not commit the offence for which he is charged, and that when he did commit it he was of unsound mind ; yet both these grounds of defence are admissible under the plea of Not Guilty. Several advantages would ensue by thus making it essential that insanity, as a defence, should be offered in a distinct and independent shape, such as ^ ' is suggested ; and it must be obvious that some such provision is necessary, for when a man’s mental capa- city to take care of and manage his property is to be tested, a special jury is summoned under the Great Seal, and some of the most delicate points of psycho- logical science are carefully examined and weighed; but in a case of far more momentous character than the loss of property, when, indeed, human life is at stake, the same jury which has been impanelled to try a case of simple larceny, is often called upon to decide whether a prisoner is or is not so far incapable of distinguishing right from wrong as to warrant an acquittal on the ground of insanity—the prosecutor having in general no previous notice that insanity will be set up as a defence, and, consequently, being /