MADNESS AND CRIME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18192, 11 September 1922, Page 5

MADNESS AND CRIME.

QUESTION OF RESPONSIBILITY

LAW VERSUS MEDICINE.

"The criminal responsibility of the alleged insane has given rise to sharp conflict between law and medicine," observed Dr. Andrew Ellison, of Glasgow, in a paper read before- the British Medical Association Congress on the importance of teaching medical jurisprudence to students of medicine and law. "The difference is due largely to failure to recognise the standpoint of the oilier side. A criminal act implies the existence of intention, will, and malice, and involves punishment; but if the accused is proved to have been insane at the time he committed the act he is cither sent to an asylum or handed over to the care ',i his friends. "The difficulty lies in determining v.hat constitutes insanity. According to the law of England, 'to establish a defence on the ground of insanity it must he clearly proved that at tho time of committing the act the accused was labouring under such a defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know th* nature and quality of the act ho was doinjc, or, if he did know it, that he did not know that what ho was doing was wrong.' To the jury is left t,he ta-k of deciding. The idiot and *ho manias may satisfy the legal test, but certainly net the majority of the certified insane. »"Medical men recognise that there is no infallible symptom or character, that will distinguish the crirainal of unsound mind from the sane criminal. It has been truly said that ' The mad and the bad pais by insensible gradations the one into the other.' The state of the law is clearly unsatisfactory. The jury arc swayed by many considerations, and no one '.an tell what their verdict may be In a particular case .thero is always the danger that the merelv vicious may escape pun.shment, while the n.entally unsound may bo sent to imprisonment or even to tho scaffold. Mere recriminations will not cause tho difficulties l o moappcar, and it is the dutv of the medical and legal professions to' assist each other in reaching a satisfactory conclusion.".