124 Sheet – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

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92 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS

The central question we must consider is, "Was Worrell a responsible being at the time of the homicide?"

I have already admitted the difficulty that confronts me at this point. Even if the prejudice invoked by the opening speech of the prosecution did not arise at the call, or if it did arise but has since perished from your minds under the force of a higher sense of justice, I am still met with difficulty in the investigation.

The form of mania I have to address, though complicated, is not the vulgar and palpable form of insanity. It is difficult to prove because it does not strike the casual observer, and the more skilled experts are not here to aid us in the inquiry. The prisoner was forced into trial and is here in your charge without the preparation that every process of this court was unable to provide. More than all, one phase of this mania so closely resembles crime that it can be readily mistaken for it by the common mind; thus, to show him as insane may be to press him with accumulated evidence of guilt. To these impediments, the counsel of the prosecution would add another by warning you against books which contain the insights gained from long years of close and watchful contemplation of the disease of insanity. They would have you cut off from all sources of knowledge exterior to yourselves, unless it be the knowledge which comes from the prosecution in such captivating simplicity—the knowledge which a mere glance inspires, the knowledge which men possess who have never seen the inside of a lunatic asylum, to whom insanity presents but the single phase of roaring madness, with the associated ideas of iron fetters, a straitjacket, periodic stripes, and a dark prison!

They would have you try this question by the rules and ideas that prevailed one hundred years ago in the courts of Great Britain, among men and judges whose stupidity and profound ignorance of the subject of insanity have been pronounced throughout Continental Europe and our own country as a reproach upon the English judiciary. They would make the law an exception out of the sciences and deny to it the means of progress by which every other science advances. Jurors, there is a policy in this prosecution which is at war with the principles of justice and enlightenment.