INSANITY PLEAS BY CRIMINALS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4441, 17 July 1922, Page 4

INSANITY PLEAS BY CRIMINALS.

THE NECESSARY LIMITS TO ACCEPTANCE. PUBLIC ENTITLED TO CONSIDERATION. A distinguished London neurologist discusses in the following article in the “Manchester Guardian" the question of personal responsibility, tor criminal offences as raised again at the tiial for murder of Ronald True. The case of Ronald True raises once more th,e difficult question of personal responsibility in relation to criminal offences. As a. neurologist, with only so much knowledge of the legal side of the question as is conir mon to the ordinary .educated member of society, I thijik that all the doctors, Doth of ihedicine and law, will agree that if “ the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason from disease of. the mind as not to know he was doing what was wrong," then lie was insane both medically = and legally, and should be judged if guilty also insane. The further and debatable point which Mr. Justice McCardie raised in True's case was this: “.Was the accused by mental disease deprived of the power to control his actions ?” Now, J am convinced that cases occur—they even occur frequently—in which some desire or motive leads on uncontrolably to action. Indeed, there are those who would argue that this is always the case. The usual sequence of events is this. Some afferent impulse , such as a sensation of touch, sight, or hearing, reaches the brain in * the well-balanced mind, the sensation instantaneously arouses memories of similar past sensations and o( the results, pleasing or painful, which followed the subsequent action. These memories thus become motives for or against the various possible lines of action. Besides these memories the emotions are also aroused, and desires for gratification in one direction or another, present or future, form often very powerful and insistent motives. Now there are two sets o,f people in whnn action may occur uncontrollably, namely, the congenitally impulsive person who acts before thje memories which should control his line or. action have had time to arise, and secondly, there is the person who has for long given way to his desires with impunity till, the habits of indulgence lias become uncontrollable. In both of these classes punishment may lie salutary by supplying a new motive powerfully deterrent both to the ir.dividual and to others similarly constituted. ' I should be willing' to admit that morally the victims of such compelling rnd irresistible desires are no*, to blame, but laws seem to ine to bo rightly based not upon views of right and wrong, but on expediency, and the only rational excuse

the community has for punishing will tend to" deter him from offending again by giving way to the same desire. He may be perfectly aware of what he is doing; he may know it is wrong, and the punishment he has suffered may deter him from similar wrongdoing in future, and his suffer-' ing will also act as a deterrent to others similarly tempted—a point of very great public importance. Tt is evident that there would be no end tc- it i,f we were to admit such a defence as this. Every criminal could plead irresistible impulse to steal, to libel, or to murder, and our criminal asylums would have to be indefinitely enlarged. If a man commits a crime and it is sought to absolve hjm from responsibility on account of insanity the onus of proof should clearly be upon his counsel to prove such insanity, and I hold it better that now and then a criminal lunatic •should be hanged than that a guilty person should be set free and be tempted to repeat the offence, as happened recently in the South Wales child murders case. Further, such, crimes tend to be followed by a crop of similar offences. vide the veritable epidemic of reeent murders by youths of seventeen to eighteen years of age. When there is doubt in such cases

the public and not the prisoner should get. the benefit of it. Even from the criminal’s point of view there can be little to choose between hanging and pro'onged detention in an asylum, and I am certain that the former acts the better of the two as a deterrent to other tempted persons of unstable mind. As regards epilepsy this is already safeguarded, the sufferer from ‘ petimai” (a minor form which stops short of producing a fit) or from post epileptic automatism is quite unconscious of his actions, and therefore clearly not accountable. With reference to morphia, I see no reason why addiction to this drug should be regarded in any different light than intoxication due to that other drug, alcohol, which is, I think, rightly, not .admitted as a competent defence in criminal charges.