Commonwealth v. Hollinger

Citations

• 190 Pa. 155
• 42 A. 548
• 1899 Pa. LEXIS 999

Syllabus

<p>Criminal law — Murder—Degree of crime — Insanity.</p> <p>On the trial of an indictment for murder where all the evidence, shows a wilful and premeditated killing, an instruction to the jury that if the killing was wilful and premeditated they may bring in a verdict of murder of the first degree, without further instructing them that they have power to render a verdict of murder of a less degree, is not error as a binding instruction.</p> <p>Insanity can be pleaded as a defense to a charge of crime, but not in mitigation of the degree- of guilt. When the jury are instructed that, if defendant was insane, he should be acquitted, he is not prejudiced by a charge that evidence of insanity can have no effect in reducing the degree of the murder.</p> <p>The courts do not ask the jury to undertake the impossible task of discriminating between degrees of insanity so as to find a prisoner incapable of forming a deliberate and premeditated intent to kill, while he has still so much sanity that he is a person of sound memory and discretion, as he must be to be guilty of murder even in the second degree. Per Simon-ton, P. J.</p>