They, therefore, as a rule, waste little time upon the
question of how far the defendant was irresponsible within the
legal definition when he committed the deed, but convict him
"on general principles," trusting the prison officials to
remedy any possible injustice. The jury in such cases ignore
the law and decline either to acquit or to convict in
accordance with the test. Their action becomes rather that of
a lay commission condemning the prisoner to hard labor for
life on the ground that he is medically insane.
Assuming that the jury take the defence seriously, there is
only one class of cases where, in the writer's opinion, they
follow the legal test as laid down by the court--that is to
say, in cases of extreme brutality. Here they hold the
prisoner to the letter of the law, and the more abhorrent the
crime (even where its nature might indicate to a physician
that the accused was the victim of some sort of mania) the
less likely they are to acquit. The writer has prosecuted
perhaps a dozen homicide and other cases where the defence was
insanity.
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