16 Ala. 672 | Ala. | 1849
There was no error in ordering that the witnesses should be examined out of the hearing of each other. It was a matter discretionary with the court, and cannot avail the prisoner on error. It is the uniform practice in civil cases for the court upon the application of the counsel of either party to pass such order, and the rule is the same, both in civil and criminal cases. — 1 Greenl. Ev. § 432 (3d ed.) note 1 to pages
As to what shall constitute evidence of insanity at the time of the commission of the offence, is often a delicate and perplexing question. In this case, there was some evidence adduced tending to show that the party at the time he killed the deceased was laboring under mental aberation, and the question was presented in the court below whether the acts and declarations of the prisoner on the day after the killing took place, evincing insanity at the time of the homicide, could be given in evidence. The court ruled that neither the prisoner’s acts nor declarations, after the alleged offence was committed, could be received as evidence of insanity at the time the act was done. In this view we think the judge clearly mistook the law. Insanity, or a diseased state of the mind, must be proved to the jury, like other diseases, or facts, and it is laid down generally, that evidence of the state of his mind, both before and after the act done, is admissible. — 2 Greenl. Ev. § 371. In Grant v. Thompson, 4 Conn. Rep. 203, 208, it is stated as the invariable practice to go into a connected history of the supposed lunatic’s mind, both before, at, and after the act, for which he is sought to be charged, in order to arrive at his precise mental condition at the moment. — See also Dickinson v. Barber, 9 Mass. Rep. 225; Kinnie v. Kinnie, 9 Conn. Rep. 102. A diseased mind, like a diseased body, must be judged of from its symptoms. In the language of a modern writer upon the subject, “ the malady assumes so many forms and exhibits itself in such Protean shapes, that it is out of our power to give any thing bearing the semblance of a correct definition of the disorder,” — Winslow on Ins. 69 — yet it has its peculiar characteristics and symptoms from which we are to determine its existence and the nature and extent of it.
Let the judgment be reversed, and the proper order entered remanding the cause, and for the safe custody of the prisoner until discharged or otherwise disposed of according to law.