OF CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY, AND PLEAS IN BAR OF EXECUTION.
In the preceding pages we have endeavoured to
lay down such rules, and to draw attention to such
points, as may enable medical witnesses to assist the
ends of Justice in detecting the perpetration of
crime; another duty remains: having discovered the
guilty, questions may yet arise, as to whether the criminal
is or is not a proper subject for the severity of
the law; 1st, in respect of natural incapacity, as in the
case of infants and idiots a nativitate; 2d, of accidental
incapacities, as in lunacy and temporary derangement
of intellect. So also it may be a medical question
whether a prisoner stands mute of malice, or by the
visitation of God; and 3dly, of temporary unfitness for
punishment, as where judgment on a female is to be
respited, by reason of her pregnancy; to these we
shall add the plea of non-identity, for though we
have already stated that personal identity does not
appear to us to be a subject peculiarly appropriate to
medical jurisprudence,[1] yet as the greater number
of writers on this subject have so considered it, we
should not be warranted in omiting all notice of the
subject.
"It is clear that an infant above fourteen and under twenty-one is equally subject to capital punishments, as well as others of full age; for it is prœsumptio juris, that after fourteen years they are doli capaces, and can discern between good and evil; and if the
- ↑ See vol. i, p. 219, tit. Supposititious Children.
