177 Page – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

Here is the translated text as follows:

EDWARD D. WORBRELL. 145

He does or says nothing without reason. Prolonged disease and extreme old age contribute largely to this species of insanity. Ray says, "The mind passes gradually from its sound and natural condition to the enfeeblement and total extinction of its reflective powers." When we see a person greatly advanced in life, who has lost his recollections of persons, things, dates, and events, and who in his tone, conversation, and habits plays the part of a second childhood, we say he labors under dementia.

Idiocy is characterized by the want of mental power, being congenital. The person comes into the world without intellect and goes out of it in the same condition. He is called a natural fool, incapable of reasoning at all.

But we must return to the subject of monomania, for it is under the head of homicidal monomania that the defense in this case necessarily comes. Homicidal monomania is defined to be a state of partial insanity, accompanied by an irresistible impulse to commit murder. It differs from mania and other forms of insanity in this, that there is no appearance of disorder of either mind or body. It cannot be traced to any physical cause, and hence the labor of the learned counsel to establish the existence of epilepsy in his client was an entire waste of ammunition. The desire to kill is sudden and the impulse irresistible. Nearly all authors on medical jurisprudence lay down certain tests by which the existence of the disorder is to be ascertained, and I propose now to apply these tests to the case of the prisoner, as the best method of determining whether he killed Gordon by means of this irresistible impulse.

The first test of a homicidal monomaniac is "that he never has accomplices." This, I believe, is almost universally conceded, and I know of no case in the books which furnishes an exception to the rule.

How stands the case with the prisoner at the bar? He had an accomplice in Braff, who deserted with him from the fort, was present aiding and abetting in the murder, and fled with him to Vincennes.

Another test is this: "A sane man always acts from real motives, while the insane man or monomaniac is without a motive."