The Criminal Imbecile: An Analysis of Three Remarkable Murder CasesGoddard, Henry Herbert
Science
The Criminal Imbecile: An Analysis of Three Remarkable Murder Cases
Goddard, Henry Herbert
Crime -- Case studies; Murder -- Case studies; Offenders with mental disabilities -- Case studies
Defendant requests your Honor to charge the jury that, the defendant being
charged with the crime of murder, the commonwealth is bound to prove
every and all the essential facts necessary to constitute this crime
beyond a reasonable doubt before the jury can convict the defendant of the
crime charged in the indictment.
VI
Defendant requests your Honor to charge the jury that, upon the whole
case, if the commonwealth has failed to prove all of the facts beyond a
reasonable doubt, the defendant is entitled to be acquitted.
VII
Defendant requests your Honor to charge the jury that the burden in this
case rests with the commonwealth, from the beginning to the end of the
trial, to establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, every fact essential to
the conviction of the defendant, and if the commonwealth has failed to
prove such charge beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant is entitled to
an acquittal.
VIII
Defendant requests your Honor to charge the jury that the unintentional
killing of a human being by another without motive, intent, premeditation,
is neither murder nor manslaughter.
IX
Defendant requests your Honor to charge the jury that the questions of
deliberation and premeditation, intent and motive, are purely questions of
fact, to be determined by the jury from the evidence alone.
X
Defendant requests your Honor to charge that if the jury cannot say,
beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant was sane at the time of the
commission of the act, and cannot say whether, at that time, he was sane
or insane, the defendant must be acquitted.
XI
Defendant requests your Honor to charge the jury that if, at the time the
defendant committed the act charged against him, upon seeing the deceased,
he was thrown into a state of mind from which he was deprived of his
understanding, so as to be unaware of the nature and quality of the act he
committed, or so as to be unable to distinguish between right and wrong in
reference to that particular act at the time of its commission, this
defendant must be acquitted.
XII
Defendant requests your Honor to charge the jury that, although sanity is
assured and presumed to be the normal and natural state of the human mind,
when imbecility is once shown to exist in a person, it is presumed to
exist and continue until the presumption is overcome by contrary or
repelling evidence proving sanity.
XIII
Defendant requests your Honor to charge the jury that if defendant was
deprived of his reason at the time the act charged against him was
committed, and which resulted from a settled and well-established mental
alienation, or from the pressure and overpowering weight of circumstances
occurring before and at the time of the commission of said act, the said
defendant is legally irresponsible for it and must be acquitted.
XIV
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