THE INSANITY DODQE.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 11973, 17 September 1906, Page 4

THE INSANITY DODQE.

Th» plea of insanity so often set up in murder trials in the United States has received a damaging blow by a remarkable case heard in the New York courts. A man named Tighe was sent five years ago to the State Asylum for the insane on the report of four medical experts pending ius trial for the murder of his wife. He waa recently declared to have recovered, and was placed on trial for rfls crime. One of the doctors who had examined Tighe originally testified that he believed . the man was insane then, and was insane now, and it seemed Tighe would be allowed his freedom, when his lawyers were surprised by the production of a new witness by the people's prosecutor, who had been Tighe's fellow-prisoner in -the Tombs awaiting trial. This man said Tighe had confided to him that he was shamming madness, and was successfully . deceiving the well-known alienists examining him. He would walk straight into the wall, tell wild stories, drink a decoction of lemon juice and honey to produce a. nervous state, and rub his skin with a liniment brought to him by his mother to make it hard and dry — another symptom not usual in mad people. On hearing the strange disclosure Tighe knew the case was up, though he must have maintained his pretended madness more or less during five years, and he allowed his counsel to accept the plea of guilty of manslaughter, whereupon he was sentenced to the maximum penalty of twenty years. Curiously enough, all the usual tests had been made by the doctors. Needles pierced his skin without seeming to arouse sensation; a general tremor of the muscles was noticed, and there were other signs that the experts pronounced evidence of Tighe's insanity. The conditions of the pupils of the eyes and of the skin, and the reflex action, they said, could not be feigned, nor could all the symptoms taken together be shammed unless the prisoner was one of the most remarkable actors that ever lived. At any rate Tighe escaped the electric chair.