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

92 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS,

sider the inquiry, ‘‘Was Worrell a responsible being at the
time of the homicide!’’

T have already admitted the diffieulty which meets me at
this point. If the prejudice invoked by the opening speech
of the prosecution did not rise at the call, or if rising it has
since perished from your minds, under the force of the higher
sense of justice, still I am met by difficulty in the investiga-
tion.

The form of mania which I have to treat, though eompli-
cated, is not the vulgar and palpable form of insanity. It ia
difficult of proof, for it does not strike the casual observer,
and the more skillful are not here to aid us in the inquiry.
The prisoner was forced into trial and is here in your charge,
without the preparation which every process of this court
was not able to bring. More than all, one phase of this mania
so resembles crime as to be readily mistaken for it by the
eommon mind; so that, to show him thus insane may be to
press him with accumulated evidence of guilt. To these im-
pediments the counsel of the prosecution would add another,
by warning you against booka which contain the light stricken
out by long years of close and watchful contemplation of the
disease of insanity. They would have you cut off from all
supplies of knowledge exterior to yourselves, unless it be the
Knowledge which comes from the prosecution in such capti-
vating simplicity. The knowledge which a glance inspires,
the knowledge which men possess who have never seen the in-
side of a lunatic asylum, to whom insanity presents but the
single phase of roaring madness, with the associate ideas of
iron fetters, a straight jacket, periodical stripes and a dark
prison! They would have you try this question by the rules
and ideas which prevailed one hundred years ago in the courts
of Great Britain, among men and judges, whose stupidity
and profound ignorance of the subject of insanity have been.
pronounced throughout Continental Europe and our own
eountry a reproach upon the English judiciary. They would
make the law an exception out of the sciences, and deny to it
the means of progress by whieh every other science advances.
Jurors, there is a policy in this prosecution which is at war