Courts and Criminals Part 12

Hence the necessity for a vigorous and adequate criminal law and procedure which shall command the respect and loyalty of the community, administered by a fearless judiciary who will hold jurors to a rigid and conscientious obedience to their oath.

There is nothing sacred about an archaic criminal procedure which in some respects is less devised for the protection of the community than for the exculpation of the guilty. The portals of liberty would not fall down or the framers of the const.i.tution turn in their graves if the peremptory challenges allowed to both sides in the selection of a jury were reduced to a reasonable number, or if persons found guilty of crime after due process of law were compelled to stay in jail until their appeals were decided, instead of walking the streets free as air under a certificate of "reasonable doubt" issued by some judge who personally knew nothing of the actual trial of the case. As things stand to-day, a thief caught in the very act of picking a pocket in the night-time may challenge arbitrarily the twenty most intelligent talesmen called to sit as jurors in his case. Does such a practice make for justice? It is even possible that the sacred bird of liberty would not scream if eleven jurors, instead of twelve, were permitted to convict a defendant or set him free, while the question of how far the right of appeal in criminal cases might properly be limited or, in default of such limitation, how far under certain conditions it might be correspondingly extended to the community, is by no means purely academic.* It is also conceivable that some means might be found to do away with the interminable technicalities which can now be interposed on behalf of the accused to prevent trials or the infliction of sentence after conviction.

* "Limitation of the Right of Appeal in Criminal Cases," by Nathan A.

Smythe, 17 Harvard Law Rev. 317 (1905).

Yet these considerations are of slight moment in contrast to that most crying of all present abuses,-the domination of the court-room by the press.* It is no fiction to say that in many cases the actual trial is conducted in the columns of yellow journals and the defendant acquitted or convicted purely in accordance with an "editorial policy." Judges, jurors, and attorneys are caricatured and flouted. There is no evidence, how ever incompetent, improper, or prejudicial to either side, excluded by the judge in a court of criminal justice, that is not deliberately thrust under the noses of the jury in flaring letters of red or purple the moment they leave the court-room. The judge may charge one way in accordance with the law of the land, while the editor charges the same jury in double-leaded paragraphs with what "unwritten" law may best suit the owner of his conscience and his pen. "Contempt of court" in its original significance is something known today only to the reader of text books.**

*Cf. "Sensational Journalism and the Law," in "Moral Overstrain," by G.W. Alger.

**By the New York Penal Code section 143, an editor is only guilty of contempt of court (a misdemeanor) if he publishes "a false or grossly inaccurate report" of its proceedings. The most insidious, dangerous, offensive and prejudicial matter spread broadcast by the daily press does not relate to actual trials at all, but to matters entirely outside the record, such as what certain witnesses of either side could establish were they available, the "real" past and character of the defendant, etc. The New York Courts, under the present statute, are powerless to prevent this abuse. In Ma.s.sachusetts half a dozen of our princ.i.p.al editors and "special writers" would have been locked up long ago to the betterment of the community and to the increase of respect for our courts of justice.

Each State has its own particular problem to face, but ultimately the question is a national one. Lack of respect for law is characteristic of the American people as a whole. Until we acquire a vastly increased sense of civic duty we should not complain that crime is increasing or the law ineffective. It would be a most excellent thing for an a.s.sociation of our leading citizens to interest itself in criminal-law reform and demand and secure the pa.s.sage of new and effective legislation, but it would accomplish little if its individual members continued to evade jury service and left their most important duty to those least qualified by education or experience to perform.* It would serve some of this cla.s.s of reformers right, if one day, when after a life-time of evasion, they perchance came to be tried by a jury of their peers, they should find that among their twelve judges there was not one who could read or write the English language with accuracy and that all were ready to convict anybody because he lived in a brown-stone front.

*"The Citizen and the Jury," in "Moral Overstrain," by G.W. Alger.

Merchants, who in return for a larger possible rest.i.tution habitually compound felonies by tacitly agreeing not to prosecute those who have defrauded them, have no right to complain because juries acquit the offenders whom they finally decide it to be worth their while to pursue. The voter who has not the courage to insist that hypocritical laws should be wiped from the statute books should express no surprise when juries refuse to convict those who violate them. The man who perjures himself to escape his taxes has no right to expect that his fellow citizens are going to place a higher value upon an oath than he.

CHAPTER X. Insanity and the Law

Harry Kendall Thaw shot and killed Stanford White on the 25th day of June, 1905. Although most of the Coroner's jury which first sat upon the case considered him irrational, he was committed to the Tombs and, having been indicted for murder, remained there over six months pending his trial. During that time it was a matter of common knowledge that his defence was to be that he was insane at the time of the shooting, but as under the New York law it is not necessary specifically to enter a plea of insanity to the indictment in order to take advantage of that defence (which may be proven under the general plea of "not guilty"), there was nothing officially on record to indicate this purpose. Neither was it possible for the District Attorney to secure any evidence of Thaw's mental condition, since he positively refused either to talk to the prosecutor's medical representatives or to allow himself to be examined by them. Mr. Jerome therefore was compelled to enter upon an elaborate and expensive preparation of the case, not only upon its merits, but upon the possible question of the criminal irresponsibility of the defendant.

The case was moved in January, 1906, and the defence thereupon proceeded to introduce a limited amount of testimony tending to show that Thaw was insane when he did the shooting. While much of this evidence commended itself but little to either the prosecutor or the jury, it was sufficient to raise grave doubt as to whether the accused was a fit subject for trial. The District Attorney's experts united in the opinion that, while he knew that he was doing wrong when he shot White, he was, nevertheless, the victim of a hopeless progressive form of insanity called dementia praec.o.x. In the midst of the trial, therefore, Mr. Jerome moved for a commission to examine into the question of how far Thaw was capable of understanding the nature of the proceedings against him and consulting with counsel, and frankly expressed his personal opinion in open court that Thaw was no more a proper subject for trial than a baby. A commission was appointed which reported the prisoner was sane enough to be tried, and the case then proceeded at great length with the surprising result that, in spite of the District Attorney's earlier declaration that he believed Thaw to be insane, the jury disagreed as to his criminal responsibility, a substantial number voting for conviction. Of course, logically, they would have been obliged either to acquit entirely on the ground of insanity or convict of murder in the first degree, but several voted for murder in the second degree.

A year now elapsed, during which equally elaborate preparations were made for a second trial. The State had already spent some $25,000, and yet its experts had never had the slightest opportunity to examine or interrogate the defendant, for the latter had not taken the stand at the first trial. The District Attorney still remained on record as having declared Thaw to be insane, and his own experts were committed to the same proposition, yet his official duty compelled him to prosecute the defendant a second time. The first prosecution had occupied months and delayed the trial of hundreds of other prisoners, and the next bid fair to the do same. But at this second trial the defence introduced enough testimony within two days to satisfy the public at large of the unbalanced mental condition of the defendant from boyhood.

After a comparatively short period of deliberation the jury acquitted the prisoner "on the ground of insanity," which may have meant either one of two things: (a) that they had a reasonable doubt in their own minds that Thew knew that he was doing wrong when he committed the murder-something hard for the layman to believe, or (b) that, realizing that he was undoubtedly the victim of mental disease, they refused to follow the strict legal test.

Nearly two years had elapsed since the homicide; over a hundred thousand dollars had been spent upon the case; every corner of the community had been deluged with detailed accounts of unspeakable filth and depravity; the moral tone of society had been depressed; and the only element which had profited by this whole lamentable and unnecessary proceeding had been the sensational press. Yet the sole reason for it all was that the law of the land in respect to insane persons accused of crime was hopelessly out of date.

The question of how far persons who are victims of diseased mind shall be held criminally responsible for their acts has vexed judges, jurors, doctors, and lawyers for the last hundred years. During that time, in spite of the fact that the law has lagged far behind science in the march of progress, we have blundered along expecting our juries to reach substantial justice by dealing with each individual accused as most appeals to their enlightened common sense.

And the fact that they have obeyed their common sense rather than the law is the only reason why our present antiquated and unsatisfactory test of who shall be and who shall not be held "responsible" in the eyes of the law remains untouched upon the statute-books. Because its inadequacy is so apparent, and because no experienced person seriously expects juries to apply it consistently, it fairly deserves first place in any discussion of present problems.

Thanks to human sympathy, the law governing insanity has had comparatively few victims, but the fact remains that more than one irresponsible insane man has swung miserably from the scaffold. But "hard cases" do more than "make bad law," they make lawlessness. A statute systematically violated is worse than no statute at all, and exactly in so far as we secure a sort of justice by evading the law as it stands, we make a laughing-stock of our procedure.

The law is, simply, that any person is to be held criminally responsible for a deed unless he was at the time laboring under such a defect of reason as not to know the nature and quality of his act and that it was wrong.

This doctrine first took concrete form in 1843, when, after a person named McNaughten, who had shot and killed a certain Mr. Drummond under an insane delusion that the latter was Sir Robert Peel, had been acquitted, there was such popular uneasiness over the question of what const.i.tuted criminal responsibility that the House of Lords submitted four questions to the fifteen judges of England asking for an opinion on the law governing responsibility for offences committed by persons afflicted with certain forms of insanity. It is unnecessary to set forth at length these questions, but it is enough to say that the judges formulated the foregoing rule as containing the issue which should be submitted to the jury in such cases.*

* The questions propounded to the judges and their answers are here given: Question 1.-"What is the law respecting alleged crimes committed by persons afflicted with insane delusion in respect of one or more particular subjects or persons, as, for instance, where, at the time of the commission of the alleged crime, the accused knew he was acting contrary to law, but did the act complained of with a view, under the influence of insane delusion, of redressing or revenging some supposed grievance or injury, or of producing some supposed public benefit?

Answer 1.-"a.s.suming that your lords.h.i.+ps' inquiries are confined to those persons who labor under such partial delusions only, and are not in other respects insane, we are of opinion that, notwithstanding the accused did the act complained of with a view, under the influence of insane delusion, of redressing or revenging some supposed grievance or injury, or of producing some public benefit, he is, nevertheless, punishable, according to the nature of the crime committed, if he knew at the time of committing such crime that he was acting contrary to law, by which expression we understand your lords.h.i.+ps to mean the law of the land.

Question 4:-"If a person under an insane delusion as to existing facts commits an offence in consequence thereof, is he thereby excused?

Answer 4.-"The answer must of course depend on the nature of the delusion; but, making the same a.s.sumption as we did before, namely, that he labors under such partial delusion only, and is not in other respects insane, we think he must be considered in the same situation as to responsibility as if the facts with respect to which the delusions exist were real. For example, if under the influence of his delusion he supposes another man to be in the act of attempting to take away his life, and kills the man, as he supposes in self-defence, he would be exempt from punishment. If his delusion was that the deceased had inflicted a serious injury to his character and fortune, and he killed him in revenge for such supposed injury, he would be liable to punishment.

Question 2.-"What are the proper questions to be submitted to the jury when a person, afflicted with insane delusions respecting one or more particular subjects or persons, is charged with the commission of a crime (murder, for instance), and insanity is set up as a defence?

Question 3.-"In what terms ought the question to be left to the jury as to the prisoner's state of mind when the act was committed?

Answers 2 and 3.-"As these two questions appear to us to be more conveniently answered together, we submit our opinion to be that the jurors ought to be told, in all cases, that every man is presumed to be sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes, until the contrary be proved to their satisfaction; and that, to establish a defence on the ground of insanity it must be clearly proved that at the time of committing the act the accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong." (The remainder of the answer goes on to discuss the usual way the question is put to the jury.)

Now, with that commendable reverence for judicial utterance which is so characteristic of the English nation, and is so conspicuously absent in our own country, it was a.s.sumed until recently that this solemn p.r.o.nunciamento was the last word on the question of criminal responsibility and settled the matter once and forever. Barristers and legislators did not trouble themselves particularly over the fact that in 1843 the study of mental disease was in its infancy, and judges, including those of England, probably knew even less about the subject than they do now. In 1843 it was supposed that insanity, save of the sort that was obviously maniacal, necessitated "delusions," and unless a man had these delusions no one regarded him as insane. In the words of a certain well-known judge:

"The true criterion, the true test of the absence or presence of insanity, I take to be the absence or presence of what, used in a certain sense of it, is comprisable in a single term, namely, delusion.... In short, I look on delusion .... and insanity to be almost, if not altogether, convertible terms."*

* Dew vs. Clark.

This in a certain broad sense, probably not intended by the judge who made the statement, is nearly true, but, unfortunately, is not entirely so.

The dense ignorance surrounding mental disease and the barbarous treatment of the insane within a century are facts familiar to everybody. Lunatics were supposed to be afflicted with demons or devils which took possession of them as retribution for their sins, and in addition to the hopelessly or maniacally insane, medical science recognized only a so-called "partial" or delusionary insanity. Today it would be regarded about as comprehensive to relate all mental diseases to the old-fas.h.i.+oned "delusion" as to regard as insane only those who frothed at the mouth.

But the particular individual out of whose case in 1843 arose the rule that is in 1908 applied to all defendants indiscriminately was the victim of a clearly defined insane delusion, and the four questions answered by the judges of England relate only to persons who are "afflicted with insane delusions in respect to one or more particular subjects or persons." Nothing is said about insane persons without delusions, or about persons with general delusions, and the judges limit their answers even further by making them apply "to those persons who labor under such partial delusion only and are not in other respects insane"-a medical impossibility.

Modern authorities agree that a man cannot have insane delusions and not be in other respects insane, for it is mental derangement which is the cause of the delusion.

In the first place, therefore, a fundamental conception of the judges in answering the questions was probably fallacious, and in the second, although the test they offered was distinctly limited to persons "afflicted with insane delusions," it has ever since been applied to all insane persons irrespective of their symptoms.

Finally, whether the judges knew anything about insanity or not, and whether in their answers they weighed their words very carefully or not, the test as they laid it down is by no means clear from a medical or even legal point of view.

Was the accused laboring under such a defect of reason as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or not to know that it was wrong? What did these judges mean by know?

What does the reader mean by know? What does the ordinary juryman mean by it?

We are left in doubt as to whether the word should be given, as justice Stephens contended it should be, a very broad and liberal interpretation such as "able to judge calmly and reasonably of the moral or legal character of a proposed action,"* or a limited and qualified one. There are all grades and degrees of "knowledge," and it is more than probable that there is a state of mind which I have heard an astute expert call upon the witness stand "an insane knowledge," and equally obvious that there may be "imperfect" nor "incomplete knowledge," where the victim sees "through a gla.s.s darkly." Certainly it seems far from fair to interpret the test of responsibility to cover a condition where the accused may have had a hazy or dream-like realization that his act was technically contrary to the law, and even more dangerous to make it exclude one who was simply unable to "judge calmly and reasonably" of his proposed action, a doctrine which could almost be invoked by any one who committed homicide in a state of anger.

*"General View of the Criminal Law," p. 80.

Ordinarily the word is not defined at all and the befuddled juryman is left to his own devices in determining what significance he shall attach not only to this word but to the test as a whole.

An equally ambiguous term is the word "wrong." The judges made no attempt to define it in 1843, and it has been variously interpreted ever since. Now it may mean "contrary to the dictates of conscience" or, as it is usually construed, "contrary to the law of the land"-and exactly what it means may make a great difference to the accused on trial. If the defendant thinks that G.o.d has directed him to kill a wicked man, he may know that such an act will not only be contrary to law, but also in opposition to the moral sense of the community as a whole, and yet he may believe that it is his conscientious duty to take life. In the case of Hadfield, who deliberately fired at George III in order to be hung, the defendant believed himself to be the Lord Jesus Christ, and that only by so doing could the world be saved. Applying the legal test and translating the word "wrong" as contrary to the common morality of the community wherein he resided or contrary to law, Hadfield ought to have achieved his object and been given death upon the scaffold instead of being clapped, as he was, into a lunatic asylum.

On the other hand, if the word "wrong" is judicially interpreted, it would seem to be given an elasticity which would invite inevitable confusion as well as abuse.

Moreover, the test in question takes no cognizance of persons who have no power of control. The law of New York and most of the states does not recognize "irresistible impulses," but it should admit the medical fact that there are persons who, through no fault of their own, are born practically without any inhibitory capacity whatever, and that there are others whose control has been so weakened, through accident or disease, as to render them morally irresponsible,-the so-called psychopathic inferiors.

Most of us are only too familiar with the state of a person just falling under the influence of an anesthetic, when all the senses seem supernaturally acute, the reasoning powers are active and unimpaired, and the patient is convinced that he can do as he wills, whereas, in reality, he says and does things which later on seem impossible in their absurdity. Such a condition is equally possible to the victim of mental disease, where the knowledge of right and wrong has no real relevancy.

The test of irresponsibility as defined by law is hopelessly inadequate, judged by present medical knowledge. There is no longer any pretence that a perception of the nature and quality of an act or that it is wrong or right is conclusive of the actual insanity of a particular accused. In a recent murder case a distinguished alienist, testifying for the prosecution, admitted that over seventy per cent. of the patients under his treatment, all of whom he regarded as insane and irresponsible, knew what they were doing and could distinguish right from wrong.

Countless attempts have been made to reconcile this obvious anachronism with justice and modern knowledge, but always without success, and courts have wriggled hard in their efforts to make the test adequate to the particular cases which they have been trying, but only with the result of hopelessly confounding the decisions.

But, however it is construed, the test as laid down in 1843 is insufficient in 1908. Medical science has marched on with giant strides, while the law, so far as this subject is concerned, has never progressed at all. It is no longer possible to determine mental responsibility by any such artificial rule as that given by the judges to the Lords in McNaughten's case, and which juries are supposed to apply in the courts of today. I say "supposed," for juries do not apply it, and the reason is simple enough-you cannot expect a juryman of intelligence to follow a doctrine of law which he instinctively feels to be crude and which he knows is arbitrarily applied.

No juryman believes himself capable of successfully a.n.a.lyzing a prisoner's past mental condition, and he is apt to suspect that, however sincere the experts on either side may appear, their opinions may be even less definite than the terms in which they are expressed. The spectacle of an equal number of intellectual-looking gentlemen, all using good English and all wearing clean linen, reaching diametrically opposite conclusions on precisely the same facts, is calculated to fill the well-intentioned juror with distrust. Painful as it is to record the fact, juries are sometimes almost as sceptical in regard to doctors as they always are in regard to lawyers.

The usual effect of the expert testimony on one side is to neutralize that on the other, for there is no practical way for the jury to distinguish between experts, since the foolish ones generally look as learned as the wise ones. The result is hopeless confusion on the part of the juryman, an inclination to "throw it all out," and a resort to other testimony to help him out of his difficulty. Of course he has no individual way of telling whether the defendant "knew right from wrong," whatever that may mean, and so the ultimate test that he applies is apt to be whether or not the defendant is really "queer," "nutty" or "bughouse," or some other equally intelligible equivalent far "medically insane."