QUESTION OF INSANITY

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 13730, 19 March 1915, Page 5

QUESTION OF INSANITY

THE EVIDENCE CONCLUDED

(Received March 18, 11.35 p.m.)

Sydney, March 18

In the Hermann case the medical superintendent of the Callan Park Asylum, where Hermann stayed for three weeks, gave evidence that he had come to the conclusion that Hermann's delusions were not genuine. He was a sane man and not an epileptic.

Counsel for the defence, addressing the jury, said that on the evidence he could not ask for an outright acquittal, but he asked for a verdict of not guilty on "the ground of intermittent insanity, adding that if ever he had heard of a purposeless piece of stupidity it was this—a man forging for the fun of the thing and leaving footprints with the certainty of detection.

Counsel for the Crown contended that the careful and systematic acts involved in the case were those of a sane man. No saner acts had ever been

shown