190 Slide – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

158 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

& degree as te deprive him of all capacity of resistance. The
law widely distinguishes between the guilt of an act which
is the result of criminal design, and one committed under the
pressure of mental disorder and of its insane impulses. The
one is regarded as a crime deserving of punishment, the other
as a misfortune deserving of compassion; the one is regarded
as the act of a free agent eapable of reason and influenced by
motives, the other as of a victim of disease and a slave of de-
lusion.

Tn order to impart any guilty or criminal quality to an
act done in violation of the law, it must appear that the
person who commita it had at the time mind and intelligence
sufficient to deliberate on its necessity and propriety, and to
form criminal purposes. Such persons, and such only, are
adjudged capable of crime and responsible for their acta. It
were a perversion of law and incompatible with the dignity
of public justice to inflict punishment on that unfortunate
elass of mankind, whose minds from disease have become so
depraved and perverted as that they have no will, no con-
seience, no controlling power over their actions, and have
become the unresisting slaves of false impressions and insane
delusions,

The diseases of the mind are of so mysterious a nature, and
manifest themselves in so many forme, and in such verious
degrees of intensity, that, were I otherwise able, it were im-
possible, in a charge to the jury, to attempt even any general
account of them. The evidence relied on to prove, and to
disprove its existence in the present case, is before the jury
and demands at your hands the most careful and watchful
examination. Confining myself within the limits of my legiti-
mate duties, all that I propose to do to aid you in your in-
quiries is to present to your view the general principles of the
law which excuses an act of homicide on the score of insanity,
and exempts the unhappy agent who commits it, from any
accountability.

Ist. If the prisoner, at the time of committing the act
charged against him, is found by the jury to have been labor-
ing under such a defect of reason, from mental disorder, as