People v. Hoin

McKinstry, J.: The Court below charged the jury: “As a defense to this prosecution the defendant has interposed the plea of insanity. * * * ‘Insanity/ as used in this sense, means such a diseased and deranged condition of the mental faculties as to render the person incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong in relation to the act with which he is charged.”

The charge as given is substantially the law as laid down by Tindal, C. J., in the answers of the English Judges to the questions propounded to them by the House of Lords, after [121]the acquittal of McNaughton: “The jury ought to be told * * * that to establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of committing the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong. The mode of putting the latter part of the question to the jury on these occasions has generally been, whether the accused, at the time of doing the act, knew the difference between right and wrong, which mode, though rarely if ever leading to any mistake with the jury, is not, as we conceive, so accurate when put generally and in the abstract, as when put with reference to the party’s knowledge of right and wrong in respect to the very act with which he is charged.”

Counsel for defendant asked the Court below to charge: “ The mere intellectual knowledge of right and wrong is not enough to defeat a defense of insanity, unless with such knowledge the defendant also has the volitional power to choose the one instead of the other. No thoroughness of knowledge by the defendant that the act of killing the deceased then and there was wrong and forbidden, would defeat his defense of insanity, if it were also legally proved that, while he possessed such knowledge, he did not possess the power to do or not to do the killing under the guidance of such knowledge.”

It is evident from the ease as presented, that the instructions requested refer to an entire absence of power of choice which, it is assumed, may exist with a capacity to distinguish between right and wrong as applied to the particular act. There is no evidence tending to prove the existence of such physical disease as, of itself, and separate from its effect upon the mind, would deprive one of the control of his action, as in the case of the “ convulsive fit” spoken of by Sir James Fitz Stephens. (Digest of Criminal Law, note 1, p. 361.) Such irresistible impulse to commit an act which he knows is wrong or unlawful (if it ever exists), does not constitute the insanity which is a legal defense.