The Editor’s Bag there is no danger of any impairment of the rights of insane defendants.
It can
safely be asserted that our American judiciary is sufliciently humane, wherever
195
And if juries are to fulfill this duty satisfactorily, it might be well to pro vide by law that an insane person found guilty of murder need not be sentenced to confinement in an asylum
a human life is at stake, not to abuse the discretion thus conferred. After a
for
verdict of guilty has been rendered, the
some day restoring him to sanity.
insanity of the prisoner should be deter mined not as a part of the regular trial but as an ex parte proceeding. By this means he could be pronounced guilty
life,
lest there be some chance of
THE GREAT DANGER OF CROSS EXAMINATION—SOMETIMES
perts. In this respect, therefore, the report
OME time ago we printed the entertaining charge in State v. Wilson, sent us by one of our readers in Columbus, 0. To the kindness of the same lawyer we are indebted for the
of the committee is open to criticism, when it remarks in passing: “It may be that the inquiry as to sanity should be made as now by the jury which passes
antedates the other by about thirty years. The presiding judge of the anec dote, by the way, was his own father-in
on his guilt.
law :-—
only by the only authority competent to render such a decision, namely either
the court itself or a commission of ex
That is a detail.”
Such
an observation, if it is to be taken very seriously, weakens the logical consist
ency of the report.
If the determina
tion of this question by the jury during
the trial is such an evil as to require a remedy, it is an evil under any cir cumstances. Closely related to the subject of the plea of insanity is that of the indeter
minate sentence. Too rigid a system of penal law has had the unforeseen efiect
of rendering the jury judges not simply of facts but of punishments as well. How often have unmerited acquittals
been brought about by too stringent and hide~bound a penal statutel The de gree of punishment is a matter for the
discretion of an expert. Perhaps the inde terminate sentence is objectionable when the court is left absolutely free to impose a sentence of that sort, but the law
account of the following incident, which
It was 'way back yonder in time, when
Ohio was presiding long ago, ginner in in it.
not half as old as it is now. The judge himself told me the story though I personally, when a be the profession, knew all the actors
W. was a tall, thin, angular, slow-moving, slow-thinking, iron-gray lawyer, who spent as much time before justices of the peace as in all the higher courts. He had a distin guished nasal twang in speaking. He was defending a client indicted for a felony. The prosecuting attorney was not legally very closely put together and there fore was apt to leave gaps in his professional work. In the trial evidence in chief for the state and for defendant had been closed, and the last witness for the state in rebuttal had been called, examined, cross-examined and re examined, and had left the stand. It had been noted by the court that the
prosecutor had not fixed the venue of the offense, and all that W. had to do was to wait
should at least provide for a large
a moment until the state rested and then suc cessfully move the discharge of his client on
measure of discretion in
the ground of failure of proof.
determining
the mode and degree of punishment,
that the jury may not be prejudiced in its efiort to reach a fair verdict.
As the last
witness reached the bar-gate on his way to the lobby, W. rose and, pointing a long, bony finger toward him, in defiance of rules, shouted through his nose, "And you say that
