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EDWARD D, WORRELL. 157

assistance, if indeed, to watch to prevent surprise, and by
the knowledge of that fact, encourage and inspire the active
agent with confidence and resolution to do the deed. It is
not alone sufficient to render such persons liable, that they
were present at the doing of a criminal act, the evidence
must go farther, and show that they participated in the
guilty purposes of the principal perpetrator of the deed,
and were present aiding and abetting in its accomplishment.
Tf, therefore, the jury find that the prisoner actually shot Mr.
Gordon, or that William Bruff did it, himeelf having knowl-
edge of his purpose, and being present aiding and abetting
him in the deed, then they will find him guilty of murder in
the first or second degree, as the evidence in the cause shall
show the killing to belong to the one class or the other, accord-
ing to the law above explained.

And if upon the whole evidence in the cause, the jury shall
entertain 4 reasonable doubt of the guilt of the prisoner, they
will acquit him; but the doubt which acquita must be such
as the mind rationally entertains after an examination and
consideration of the evidence; it must arise out of the evi-
dence, and is not that species of doubt or hesitation of mind
which the jury may be disposed to indulge from mere idle
fancy or vague conjecture.

But the jury should not lose sight of another important
and essential element of all crime, which in this case is
brought prominently into view by the line of defense adopted.
In every stage of this cause the inquiry arises, whether at
the time of committing the act charged against him, the pris-
ouer was in a condition of mind rightly to comprehend its
nature and moral quality, or, on the contrary was he laboring
under such a defect of reasoning arising from the mental
disorder as to have no just sense of its enormity? Was he
laboring under insane delusions of the existence of a state
of facts and circumstances which in consequence deprived
his act of any guilty consciousness, or whether rightly com-
prehending the guilty quality of the act, his mind and will,
from the overwhelming violence of its disease, was brought
under the control and dominion of insane impulses to such

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