INSANITY IN LAW

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 34, 9 August 1933, Page 9

INSANITY IN LAW

PERPLEXING PROBLEM

ADDRESS BY BARRISTER

INTERESTING CASES

Many _ interesting cases, civil and criminal, wore referred to by Mr. TV. E. Leicester, LL.B., in his address to the New Zealand Insurance Institute recently on tho subject of "Insanity in Law." The placo of insanity in our law, said Mr. Leicester, was ono of the moat interesting, but, at the same time, ono of the most perplexing of its problems. Tho intricacies of the subject itself, tho ever-changing views held in regard to it, and the different standards adopted by the medical and tho legal professions combined to make tho study of tho lunatic a sort of mental labyrinth. Medicine was tho progressive, law tho positive science; the one concerned with tho health of tho social unit, tho other with the good of society. The tendency in the physician vas to take top kind-hearted & view of the conduct of tho patient whom he regarded as torn and tormented by "the tyrrany of his organisation," while the lawyer was prone to sacrifice individual justice to codified precision, and _to bring every offender within the section of some Act. Yet, strango as it might seem, the humane treatment meted out in this age to the mentally afflicted was duo more to tho efforts of legal men to unravel the mysteries of conduct than to the researches of medical practitioners into tho realms of sick minds. It was only during the last quarter of a century that the study of mental diseases could be said to have made much progress. CRIMINAL INSANITY CASES. After referring to the views held in early times in regard to insanity, Mr. Leicester dealt 'with the principles underlying insanity in criminal law, an understandng of which, he said, was of assistance in viewing difficult questions of insanity in other branches o± law. On June ID, 1843, the House of Lords summoned tho Judges to give their opinions on the existing law relating to crimes committed by persons afflicted by insane delusions. Five questions wer© put, and answered by tourteen of the fifteen Judges who attended; and it was upon their answers that iudements in criminal insanity cases had since been founded. The replies given by the Judges could bo summed up in this way:— 1, Every man is presumed to be sane, and' to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes, until the contrary be proved to the satisfaction, of a jury. 2. To establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be "clearly" shown that, at tho time of committing tho act, tho party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from.djseas? of ,the mind, as not to know tho nature and quality of the act he was doing, Or (if he did know this) not to know that he was doing wrong morally. So far as the terms "nature and "quality" are concerned, these havo reference to the physical nature of the act as distinguished from the moral nature. A madman who cut a woman's throat under the idea that Ho was cutting a loaf, of bread would not be guilty. So far as knowledgo that what he. was doing was wrong is concerned, a person who ipiagmed that lie had received a Divine command to kill would be entitled under the law prevailing in New Zoahuul to a verdict of not guilty upon the ground of in-. " 3. As to his knowledge of the .wrongfulness of the act, the Judges said: It the accused was conscious that the act was ono which he ought not to do and if that act was at' the same, time contrary to the law of tho land, he is punishable." Thus the test was the power of distinguishing between right 'and wrong, not, as was once supposed, .in the abstract, but in regard to tlio particular act committed. 4. Where a criminal act is committed'by a man under some- insane delusion as to the surrounding facts, which conceals from him the true nature of the act he is doing, he will be under the same degree of responsibility as if the- facts had been as ho imagined them to be. He may, for instance, kill "under the imagination cither that he is an executioner lawfully carrying out a judicial sentence; or, on the other hand, merely that a person killed had once cheated him at cards," UFE INSURANCE CONTRACTS. A contract of' life insurance, _ Mr. Leicester said, had an implied condition that the assured would not intentionally terminate his own life. For the. company to avoid pnyment tho act oi self-destruction should be a voluntary and wilful act of a man, having at the time sufficient powers of mind and reason to understand the physical nature and consequence of what ho did, and having at the time the real pivrpose and the actual intention to bring about his death by the means that he adopted. The question whether at the time he was capable of understanding and appreciating the moral nature and quality of his purpose had no relevance to tho inquiry other than to illustrate the extent of his capacity to understand the physical character of tho act itself. Insurance was legally a contract, in which the insurer, in consideration of a premium equivalent to the risk run undertook either against probablo perils and losses or against a certain event as in the case of death, but uncertain as' to the period of its taking place. If the assured, therefore, could at any time by his own act determine the event, it was against the essence of the contract, and this is especially' so if that act. was felonious, and in itself against the law. An interesting case in which this principle was brought into play was that of Henry Fauntleroy, who was a partner in a very large English banking house. This gentleman was no relation to Littlo Lord Fauntleroy, an insufferable prig and one of tho horrors of our childhood, and his life seemed to have been conducted in a fashion from which Little Lord Fauntleroy would have immediately rebelled. Henry Fauntleroy committed most heartless forgeries to the extent of £170,000, and spent tho money after the fashion of a rouo of his time. In ten years ho converted the whole of this huge sum to his own use, and the public, on his apprehension in September, 1824, became so alarmed that a run on the banking house took place and this suspended payment, being eventually wound up under a commission of bankruptcy. POISONING CASE. A further case- of interest in this connection, was that of tho famous Dr. William Palmer, who, along with Dr. I'ritehard, the notorious Scotch murderer, could be placed in tho plus-one class as a poisoner. Palmer, tho son of a dissolute mother, was reared in demoralising circumstances and obtained his medical certificates under some difficulties, as his mother on three occasions had to compensate victims for his thefts while a student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Although as a doctor at Eugeley he was continuously in debt, and was notorious both as a rake and a racecourse patron, he never failed to pass as a paragon of respectability, and a month before he was arrested for the poisoning of John Par- j

sons Cook, when he had three- murders to his score, ho caused a seeno in church by the vehemence of his indignation that a small boy should be- giggling at the service. After insuring his wife for £13,000 he- poisoned her and obtained tho money from the insurance office. He followed tho same procedure in the case of his brother Walter, and it was following his execution for tho murder of Cook that the . Prince of Wales's Association, a Life office, brought an application in Chancery, for a declaration that tho policy of insurance for £13,000 which ho obtained on the life of his brother Walter might be declared void and cancelled upon the ground that it had bedn fraudulently obtained. Tho company alleged that William Palmer had no insurablo interest in his brother's life, and that he had afterwards murdered his .brother, who was proved to be a mau of very intemperate habits, but who, curiously enough, had called the attention of the insurance office to tho fact that he had several • times been - attacked with delirium tremens, and who had in consequence been required to pay an additional premium in the form of adding twenty years to his age. A solicitor named Pratt, who had been engaged in the negotiations for effecting the policy, was afterwards required to attend at the record office to make an affidavit on the matter, and promptly proceeded to become raving mad. Tho Master of tho Bolls considered that the evidence produced by the company showed that the policy in reality was William Palmer's policy (it had been assigned to him nominally in discharge of a debt for £400) and had been .effected by William Palmer, as part of a scheme to get large sums of money from various insurance offices. Tho Master of the Bolls expressed the view that William Palmer insured the lives of persons who were under his control, and then lie precipitated, by his own- act, the period at which these insurances wcro to boconio claims on the insurance offices. This was certainly a kindly and euphemistic way of describing the methods of a murderer. At all events, the company succeeded in its application, but was required to pay all the costs out of tho first premium (the large sum of £710) which must have been a source of melancholy satisfaction to the lawyers j concerned. DESTRUCTION OF LIFE. i It was a fundamental condition of tho contract of life insurance, said Mr. Leicester, even if the policy were silent on - tho subject, that the life of the assured was not voluntarily destroyed, or, if feloniously destroyed, that the person committing such an act could not obtain the benefit of the insurance by thus precipitating the payment of the sum insured. The.'fact of suicide was not ( in itself evidence of insanity. It was important also to remember that a condition in a life policy that a person would not die by his own act applied only to cases of solf-destruction voluntarily and wilfully done.. It did not apply where the death had been self-inflicted but by accident. In. the consideration as to whether the act was intentional or not, it wiis most material for the. Court to decide whether there was any inducement to form the intention. Evidence of motive had been held to assist tbo insurer to sustain the onus of proving by a preponderance of evidence that the assured committed suicido. The object of permitting the introduction of such evidence was to rebut the natural presumption that a sano person did not commit suicide and thus to enable tho jury in weighing the 'evidence* which indicated suicide to determine whether the death was accidental or self-in-flicted. " A RULE OF LAW. . ''Suicide is a criminal offence," said Mr, Leicester, "and there is, in the law of evidence, a legal presumption against the imputation of crime demanding, before crime can be held to be established, proof of a more cogent character than in ordinary cases where no such" imputation is made. In criminal cases this rule is often expressed by saying that the crime iniputcd must bo proved to the exclusion of reasonable doubt, and there is authority for the proposition that the presumption of innocence from crime- should be applied with equal strictness in civil as well as in criminal cases. Where tho policy stipulates against liability, should the accused commit suicide whether sane or insane, if the evidence is conflicting it is presumed that death was accidental and not intentional. Thus claimants under the policy should in such circumstances derive the bene-, fit. of any reasonable doubt —not, it should be stressed, of every doubt, but only of a doubt for which reasons can be given; for it is said that everything relative to human affairs and dependent on human evidence is open to «omo possible or imaginary doubts. As was remarked by Cockburu, C.J., in the famous Tichbornp case: 'It must not be tho. mere doubt of a vacillating mind that has not the moral courage to decide upon a difficult and complicated question, and therefore takes shelter in an idle scepticism.' 'I am inclined to agree with tho .contention,' said Mr, Justico Ostler, in 'Moser v. Norwich Union Life Insurance Society, a case heard in the Supremo Court at Wellington in November, 1981, 'that in such a case as this where the crime of suicido is charged, and tho act regarded as disgraceful by rightthinking men, the onus resting on the defendant company of proving that death was duo to natural causes is one not lightly to be discharged. There is a presumption of innocence which the company must rebut, and such a case as this ought not to depend upon the mere balance of probabilities, unless the balance is well weighed down on ono side; but tho company must prove its allegation more strictly, and if it leaves open any reasonable probability by which death could be accounted for innocently, it has failed to prove its defence.' Here tho deceased was at the timo of his death in apparently good health, he was 41 years of age, married with no family, of a cheerful disposition, well-liked, with no domestic troubles and no financial worries. He had a good practice and no motive whatever was .suggested for suicide. Th« Court held that the company had not discharged the onus even so far as to show a balance of the probabilities in favour of its theory of suicido. It is true that the doctors disagreed, but this is not uncommon, and it should be remembered that a cynic once said that where doctors disagree, the patient lias tho best chance, because Nature can tako its course. It may be, of course, th»t insurance doctors are like inycrtcd Micawbers, always waiting for something to turn down; but it. is a safe rule to adopt in tho opposition of claims thought to bo brought about by suicido that it is the facts which speak the loudest find the theories which go (o (he wall."