The more I think over the two cases--one woman found sane and hanged, the other declared insane and sent to a lunatic asylum--the more I am convinced that equal justice has not been done. Probably the madness in both women proceeded from the same cause, and it is clear that neither of them had the slightest compunction about shedding blood.
I will deal briefly with my next case, and of a truth there is not much to be said. He was a clerk about twenty-six years of age. He had married a decent young woman, for whom he had made no provision other than a loaded pistol. He had no home and no money, excepting a few pounds that he had embezzled, and with this he had paid the marriage expenses. With his last few shillings he hired a cab; drove, accompanied by his wife, from place to place, in pretence of finding a home for her; and, finally, while still in the cab, he did the deed for which he had prepared--he shot her. He made no attempt to escape; he offered no reason for his deed; he was quite satisfied with his action; and when before the court he was absolutely unconcerned. I had several conversations with him, and as he had publicly owned to the deed, there was no harm in my assumption of his guilt. I said to him: "Tell me why you did this cruel deed?" He said: "I don't consider it a cruel deed. What else could I do? You would have done the same." Argument, of course, was out of the question, but I did venture to express the hope that I might not have done what he had done, when he again replied: "You think so now; but if you had to do it, you would do it!" And this frame of mind he maintained to the end--for he was hanged.
I do not say that he ought not to have been hanged, for it is difficult to point out in what other way he could have been dealt with; but so long as insanity is considered a sufficient reason for preventing the death penalty, I do say that every possible means should be taken to test a prisoner's sanity before a final decision is arrived at; and, further, that the appearance of positive sanity is under such circumstances an indication of insanity. Every criminal, in addition to murderers, ought to be subjected to a careful and prolonged scrutiny and mental examination by experts. The cost would not be great, and I am fully sure the results would compensate if the expense was great. Prisons ought to become psychological observatories, and be made to furnish us with a vast amount of useful information. There are so many things we ought to know, and might know if we would only take pains to know. It might be that the information obtained would make us sad and excite our fear; it might be that our pity would be deeply stirred, and that we should have a whole army of human beings upon our hands, for whom we might feel hopeless and helpless. But we have these even now, and for them imprisonment or hanging is a ready and simple plan that suffices us! But ought they to suffice in these enlightened days? I think not. At any rate, we ought to gather knowledge. With knowledge will come power, and with power better methods of dealing with erring or afflicted humanity. For the days will surely come when the hangman's rope will be seldom in requisition; when all the unhealthy and demoralizing publicity attaching to a murder trial will be a thing of the past; when criminals will not be made into public heroes, because of the speculative and perhaps equal chances of life or death; when morbid and widespread sentiment will not be created by public appeals to the Home Secretary; and, perhaps best of all, when diseased minds will be no longer influenced by the unhealthy publicity of the details pertaining to a death sentence to commit the other crimes for which no motives have been apparent.