decide it to be worth their while to pursue.
The voter who has not the courage to insist that hypocritical laws
should be wiped from the statute books should express no surprise when
juries refuse to convict those who violate them. The man who perjures
himself to escape his taxes has no right to expect that his fellow
citizens are going to place a higher value upon an oath than he.

CHAPTER X. Insanity and the Law

Harry Kendall Thaw shot and killed Stanford White on the 25th day of
June, 1905. Although most of the Coroner's jury which first sat upon
the case considered him irrational, he was committed to the Tombs and,
having been indicted for murder, remained there over six months pending
his trial. During that time it was a matter of common knowledge that his
defence was to be that he was insane at the time of the shooting, but as
under the New York law it is not necessary specifically to enter a plea
of insanity to the indictment in order to take advantage of that defence
(which may be proven under the general plea of "not guilty"), there was
nothing officially on record to indicate this purpose. Neither was it
possible for the District Attorney to secure any evidence of Thaw's
mental condition, since he positively refused either to talk to the
prosecutor's medical representatives or to allow himself to be examined
by them. Mr. Jerome therefore was compelled to enter upon an elaborate
and expensive preparation of the case, not only upon its merits, but
upon the possible question of the criminal irresponsibility of the
defendant.

The case was moved in January, 1906, and the defence thereupon proceeded
to introduce a limited amount of testimony tending to show that Thaw was
insane when he did the shooting. While much of this evidence commended
itself but little to either the prosecutor or the jury, it was
sufficient to raise grave doubt as to whether the accused was a fit
subject for trial. The District Attorney's experts united in the opinion
that, while he knew that he was doing wrong when he shot White, he was,
nevertheless, the victim of a hopeless progressive form of insanity
called dementia praecox. In the midst of the trial, therefore, Mr.
Jerome moved for a commission to examine into the question of how far
Thaw was capable of understanding the nature of the proceedings against
him and consulting with counsel, and frankly expressed his personal
opinion in open court that Thaw was no more a proper s