Commonwealth v. Hallowell

Citations

• 223 Pa. 494
• 72 A. 845
• 1909 Pa. LEXIS 561

Syllabus

<p>Criminal law — Murder—Insanity—General insanity — Evidence.</p> <p>1. Mental unsoundness which exempts from legal responsibility for what otherwise would be felonious and therefore criminal homicide, denotes a mind so far devoid of understanding that it is unable to distinguish between right and wrong and is therefore without freedom of moral action.' However unsound in mind a man may be generally it is only when he has lost utterly this power of moral perception that he ceases to be responsible in the eye of the law.</p> <p>2. On the trial of an indictment for murder where general insanity is set up as a defense, and a large number of the witnesses, including two alienists, testify that in their opinion the defendant was of unsound mind, the court commits no error in charging as follows: “Before speaking of their (defendant’s witnesses) testimony I would also say to you that the question here is not — Was this prisoner of unsound mind? Or, if you choose to put it so — Was he insane? That, gentlemen of the jury, is not the question. The question which you will have to determine is — ■ was his mind so affected by disease as to make him irresponsible according to the standard set down by the law? And whether you approve of the law, whether the doctors approve of it, or any of us approve of it, we are bound to administer it as it is. In order to excuse the prisoner on the grounds of insanity it must be shown — and of course the burden of proof is upon him — by fairly preponderating evidence, that at the time when he committed the act his mind was so affected by disease, that he did not know the nature and consequence of his act. Or if he did know the nature and consequence of it, that he did not know that it was wrong and would be punished by law, or that he was so impelled by an impulse that he had no power whatever of resisting. That is the legal standard, gentlemen, and you will see that it is a very different standard from the mere general impression that a man