The
Editor’ s Bag
A CORRECTION
Llli r
was that insane persons charged with crime shall be tried like other persons,
AST month, in urging in this de partment the need of a million
unless adjudged by the court incapable of properly preparing for their own
dollar Foundation of Jurisprudence as an aid to the securing of a complete and adequately co-ordinated statement of the American Corpus juris, we referred to Lucien Hugh Alexander's connection with the drafting of the American Bar Association's Code of Ethics. Mr. Alexander did not know of our editorial in advance of publication, and considers that we gave his connection with the drafting of the canons undue
prominence, and in order to prevent any misimpression, has asked us to state that the various drafts for the American Bar Association's Canons of Ethics were the work of the entire committee, and that
the final result was in a very real sense the joint product of the earnest labors
defense, that on trial they shall not be allowed to plead insanity, that when a verdict has been rendered the court may defer sentence and cause an inquiry to be made into the mental condition of
the prisoner at the time the crime was committed, and that after such an inquiry the prisoner shall be sentenced either to death or imprisonment, or to confinement in an asylum, according to
whether he is found sane or insane. The adoption of these recommenda tions would unquestionably be a step in the right direction. The practice of allowing the plea of insanity to be interposed as a defense has resulted in debasing criminal trials into farcical proceedings to determine the sanity or
of all the members of the committee, aided by the suggestions and criticisms of more than a thousand members of the American Bar Association.
insanity of a prisoner, the jury being a body necessarily unfit to undertake such an inquiry.
Laws designed for the pro
tection of society are violated just as truly by the insane as by the sane, and THE PLEA OF INSANITY
the legitimate province of a jury is solely that of determining whether or not there has been such a violation. Efiicient ad
HE most important feature of the thirty-third annual meeting of the ministration of the criminal law demands New York State Bar Association, in concentration of the attention of the the opinion of the daily press of the jury upon the essential issues of fact, country as well as of many of its mem bers, was the presentation of the report
aimed at remedying the evil of the abuse of the plea of insanity in criminal trials. The recommendation of the report, and it is one likely to elicit wide discussion,
without
regard to
matters
of
law
and of penal discretion which properly fall exclusively to the lot of the court. In allowing the court to decide whether or not an inquiry should be instituted into the mental condition of the prisoner
