In his own experience he has known of no acquittal.
In several instances the defendants were undoubtedly insane,
but, strictly speaking, probably vaguely knew the nature and
quality of their acts and that they were wrong. In a few of
these the juries convicted of murder in the first degree
because the circumstances surrounding the homicides were so
brutal that the harshness of the technical doctrine they were
required to apply was overshadowed in their minds by their
horror of the act itself. In other cases, where either the
accused appeared obviously abnormal as he sat at the bar of
justice, or the details of the crime were less abhorrent, they
convicted of murder in the second degree in accordance with
the reasoning set forth in the foregoing paragraph. The
writer seriously advances the suggestion that the more the
brutality of a homicide indicates mental derangement the less
chance the defendant has to secure an acquittal upon the plea
of insanity.
And this leads us to that increasingly large body of cases
where the usual scepticism of the jury in regard to such
defences is counterbalanced by some real or imaginary element
of sympathy.
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