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. In cities
like New York, where the jury system is seen at its very best, where the
statistics show seventy per cent. of convictions by verdict for the year
1907, and where the sentiment of the community is against the invocation
of any law supposedly higher than that of the State, our talesmen are
unwilling to condone homicide or to act as self-constituted pardoning
bodies, for they know that an obviously lawless verdict will bring
down upon them the censure of the public and the press. This is perhaps
demonstrated by the fact that in New York County a higher percentage of
women are convicted of homicide than of men.

But the plea of insanity, with its vague test of responsibility, whose
terms the juryman may construe for himself (or which his fellow-jurors
may construe for him) offers an unlimited and fertile field for the
"reasonable" doubt and an easy excuse for the conscientious talesman who
wants to acquit if he can. Juries take the little stock in irresistible
impulses and emotional or temporary insanity save as a cloak to cover an
unrighteous acquittal.

In no other class of cases does "luck" play so large a part in the final
disposition of the prisoner. A jury is quite as likely to send an
insane man to the electric chair as to acquit a defendant who is fully
responsible for his crime.

To recapitulate from the writer's experience:

(1) The ordinary juror tends to be sceptical as to the good faith of the
defence of insanity.

(2) When once this distrust is removed by honest evidence on the part of
the defence, he usually declines to follow the legal test as laid down
by the court on the general theory that any one but an idiot or a maniac
has some knowledge of what he is doing and whether it is right or wrong.

(3) He applies the strict legal test only in cases of extreme brutality.

(4) In all other cases he follows the medical rather than the legal
test,