"Was 't Hamlet wronged Laertes? Never Hamlet Who does it, then? His madness: if't be so, His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy." So the idiot is purloined from himself, and he does it not. Upon these grounds, it is evident that the principle of irresponsibility, when the individual is wholly idiotic, is only rational. To all such cases, the test of irresponsibility, as laid down by the Judges, will apply; but in all cases of idiocy, as we understand the term, a verdict of irresponsibility will be pronounced. ? 85. Imbecility in relation to Crime.-We had occasion to say incidentally in the preceding chapter that the term "innocent" as applied to imbeciles was really a misnomer. Our experience teaches us that it requires power to be good. The great man is to our thinking the only good man, and the many public people that you hear spoken about as amiable, as harmless, and as good, are after all good or harmless only in a narrow, negative sense, if good at all, but it is just of such stuff that the bad are made of, and these weak, amiable, stupid, good people, are, after all, only good for the nonce, because circumstances favor their remaining upright. So, too, it has been a frequent subject of remark that what little intelligence imbeciles possess more generally goes to foster, strengthen, and sharpen their evil propensities than to raise them to a level of moral sentiment and self-control. Hence, we see the necessity of considering the question of imbecility in relation to the criminal law. A few cases in which the evil propensities of persons of defective intellect have led to crimes will show the necessity still more strongly, and indicate the class of cases in which medical jurists may be called in and asked to perform medico-legal functions in connection with imbeciles. Imbecility and weakness may, as we have seen, exist in different degrees between the limits of absolute idiocy on the one hand and of perfect capacity on the other. In cases in which some of the minor degrees of imbecility BR. INS.-11 Hamlet. act v., scene 2. exist, there arises much difficulty in the decision of the question as to whether the individuals are to be regarded as criminally responsible for their acts. This is necessarily so, for, as Sir John Nicholl has remarked, "Imbecility is a matter of degree, and the degree of weakness differs in the same individual under different circumstances, and according to the different habits existing and the different situations he is placed in at one time or another of his life." As the weakness varies, so does the strength to resist temptation. And in many cases it would be utterly contrary to the real spirit of the law to punish imbeciles for their criminal acts. This is scarcely the proper place for considering the relation which criminal acts bear towards individuals who are mentally incapable, either by reason of mental weakness or by reason of actual delusion, of appreciating the real inducements to any given act. It is evident that the relations of a man to the State with regard to his criminal acts, and his responsibility or irresponsibility, must be very much the same whether the irresponsibility arises from an inability to appreciate motives, from absolute weakness of intellect, from the false motives of delusions, from the absolute incoherence of mania, or from dementia. It does not matter in what way the irresponsibility arises. All that the law can or ought to take cognizance of in such cases is the fact that the individual, from some cause or other, is unable to appreciate the real reasons which ought to make a man refrain from the commission of crime. It is true that there are always excellent reasons to a wise man for refraining from crime. The man who cannot appreciate these is not mad, he is only stupid, and stupidity is compatible with criminality, if it is not the very stuff that criminality is made of. But the stupidity must be due to unsoundness of mind, and it must be of such a nature and of such a degree as to render the individual utterly incapable of being influenced by the motives which the criminal law provides. If he was in such a condition that, at the time of the commission of the crime, and at the date when punishment would be inflicted, he would not be influenced by any certainty of punishment; if ordinary motives had no influence Portsmouth v. Portsmouth, 1 Hagg. Ecc. Rep., 355. [70] upon his conduct; if, instead of being influenced by a supposed hope of escaping detection, as the stupid man is; if, instead of only miscalculating probabilities, he has not calculated 170 probabilities at all; and if this want of the common forethought and prudence of mankind is due to mental disease, or that congenital defect which we have described, then it would be as absurd to punish such an individual as it would be to punish a stone because it cut a man's head open. In every sense, and for every reason, it would be the height of injustice and inexpediency to punish such an individual. But the question whether this inability to be influenced by ordinary motives arises from imbecility, or mania, or dementia, is one of fact. The law wishes to be assured of the fact of irresponsibility, and it is of very little importance in the result whether it arose from one or other of these diseases. It is from this circumstance that lawyers have made the absurd mistake of regarding it as of little or no consequence as to whether there was any real difference between these diseases, that they have come to regard all forms of mental disease as the same, and have set up one kind as a standard, and attempted to judge of all other cases of mental disease by referring them to this crude criterion. That it is of the utmost importance to distinguish clearly between each of these forms of insanity or mental unsoundness is as clear as that, when irresponsibility has been made out, it matters little to law by means of what series of circumstances, as constituting what has been called conduct, this irresponsibility has been proved. The only question which it is of importance to decide is that which refers to the exact degree of weakness which will amount to irresponsibility. A rule for the decision of this point has been given. Wherever, as we have said before, the individual is hors de combat with regard to actual choice-and this may arise either from utter inability to understand the nature of the question to be decided, from a driving delusion, e. g., the command of God-or any other product of mental disease, he shall be regarded as irresponsible for any act committed while he was thus, as it were, inanimate with regard to it; for is not that mystery of choice or selection the very sign of life? Of course it is not always easy to decide when this is the case, but neither is it easy to say, in any case where fraud has been used to obtain a conveyance from some one who is in a confidential relation to the party using the deceit, or who, owing to youth or inexperience, has been the more easily imposed upon, whether the fraud is of such a nature as to void the deed. But the difficulty in any case does not prove the impracticability of the rule. And that such must be the rule seems to us certain if disputes are to be avoided and scandal cases of medical testimony are not to arise. ¿ 86. Crimes committed by Imbeciles.—“An idiot,” says Dr. Hainsdroff, "in the Hospital at Salzburg, appearing to be singularly insusceptible of fear, an experiment of an appalling character, and of appalling consequences, was made upon him as a means of putting his susceptibility to the test. It was proposed to make the impression upon him that he saw a dead man come to life. A person accordingly laid himself out as a corpse enveloped in a shroud, and the idiot was ordered to watch over the dead body. The idiot, perceiving some motion in the corpse, desired it to lie still, but the pretended corpse raising itself in spite of this admonition, the idiot seized a hatchet, which unlucky was within reach, and cut off first one of the feet of the unfortunate counterfeit, and then, unmoved by his cries, cut off his head. He then calmly resumed his station by the real corpse." This indicates the falseness of the theory which holds the harmlessness of these almost mindless creatures. In relation to such a crime, it may be said that the legal test, if applied, would establish the fact of irresponsibility. "A few years ago," says Dr. Guy, in the work from which we have already quoted, "a commission was granted in the case of a young gentleman aged 20, who was the slave of a childish fancy for windmills, with an aversion equally as strong to watermills. Having been placed under control in a place where there were no windmills, he cut the calves of a child's legs through to the bone, and stated that he should have taken away its life, that he might be tried for his act and removed from a place where there were no windmills. He had always been violent when Mayo on Medical Testimony in Lunacy. pp. 93 and 94. thwarted in his fancy, had threatened his keeper and members of his family, and had more than once made preparations for committing murder. In this instance, childishness of fancy, insufficiency of motive, absurdity of act, and ignorance of legal consequences, were strikingly combined." And in such a case it would seem to be wrong to hold the individual responsible for any act which was directly connected with his insane craving, if it could be shown that that craving was so strong as to be unrestrainable, even under the influence of the strongest motives. It is much more difficult to see upon what principle the criminal Carr, whose case is given below, was exempted from punishment. In order that the true principles of the law may be understood in relation to what we cannot but regard as their violation, we give this case in full. Cuthbert Carr was tried at the Winter Assize at Durham, in the year 1866, for the murder of a female child, six years of age. When he was taken into custody, or rather gave himself up to the police, he made the following voluntary statement, after having been cautioned: "On Friday, the 13th April, that is, just the time about half-past two in the afternoon, I saw the little girl coming up the road, the same road as the father and mother came after. I took hold of her first and carried her away: she was over-frightened to cry-never spoke a word. I took her into the stables, and up yon ladder like into the loft, at the far end l'ke. She then said, 'Mother! mother!' I just choked her then before she was choked, I laid her down: then, you can understand. She was choked after that. I laid her un derneath the hay to keep her warm. I can tell you the time when I think on: it was half-past six o'clock. I got one piece of string about a yard long. I split the twine in two: did not cut it, you know, I just split it with a pull. I tied the twine on her neck first: it had a loop on it. If I can mind right, she was dead long before that. I also tied her wrists together. That was at half-past six, you know. You know there is a door in yon stable: I opened it, and just looked out at the door, and I saw two women coming down: this 'Guy's Principles of Forensic Medicine, 2d edit., p. 164. |