The State of Alabama (81 Ala.,
577):
"1. Was the defendant at the time of the commission of the
alleged crime, as matter of fact, afflicted with a disease of
the mind, so as to be either idiotic, or otherwise insane?
"2. If such be the case, did he know right from wrong as
applied to the particular act in question? If he did not have
such knowledge, he is not legally responsible.
"3. If he did have such knowledge, he may nevertheless not be
legally responsible if the two following conditions concur:
"(1) If, by reason of the duress of such mental disease, he
had so far lost the power to choose between the right and
wrong, and to avoid doing the act in question, as that his
free agency was at the time destroyed.
"(2) And if, at the same time, the alleged crime was so
connected with such mental disease, in the relation of cause
and effect, as to have been the product of it solely."
But whatever modification in the present test of criminal
responsibility is adopted, there must come an equally, if not
even more important, reform in the procedure in insanity
cases, which to-day is as cumbersome and out of date as the
law itself.
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