58 Miss. 741 | Miss. | 1881
delivered the opinion of the court.
The opinions of non-experts as to the sanitj7 or insanity of persons with whom they are acquainted is receivable in evidence. Their opinions are not receivable in answer to hypothetical questions, or upon statements of facts deposed to by other witnesses. This is the province of experts only. Whether a man is sane or not, is always more or less a matter of opinion; and while insanity, in some cases, is so well developed as to admit of no doubt, it can never be regarded as standing upon the same footing as the happening of a physical fact, like birth, or death, or presence, at or absence from a particular place.
How much weight is to be given to the opinion of a witness on the question of insanity depends, like the weight to be given to all other opinions, upon the intelligence of the witness and his opportunities of observation; and while the testimony of a professional man, with equal opportunities, would ordinarily be more reliable than that of a non-professional, the testimony of -an intelligent friend who had known the subject of the inquiry for years, might be more weighty than that of the most experienced expert who had seen him
Judgment reversed.