Now let us assume that the defence is meritorious and that the
prisoner's experts have created a favorable impression. Let
us go even further and assume that they have generated a
reasonable doubt in the mind of the jury as to the defendant's
responsibility at the time he committed the offence. What
generally occurs? Not, as one would suppose, an acquittal,
but, in nine cases out of ten, a conviction in a lower degree.
The only usual result of an honest claim of irresponsibility
on the ground of insanity is to lead the jury to reduce the
grade of the offence from murder in the first, entailing the
death penalty, to murder in the second degree. The jury have
no intention of "taking the chance" involved in turning the
man loose on the community and their minds are filled with the
predominating fact that a human being has been killed. They
have an idea that it is as easy to get "sworn out" of a
lunatic asylum as they suppose it is to get "sworn into" one,
and they know that if the prisoner is found to be insane when
sent to State's prison he will be transferred elsewhere.
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