Just Murder
- Author:
Edward Robinson. LmcolnsPrager, London. 1^4/. rp. z/i. race izs. oa.
This book has an excellent introduction by Professor Harold Laski, in which he explains that the author’s aim is to advocate the reform of the law respecting those accused of murder whose plea is insanity at the time of the alleged offence. The duty of the judge in his instruction of the jury in such cases is based upon the McNaghten Rules of 1843. McNaghten shot and killed Mr. Drummond, Sir Robert Peel’s secretary, in the belief that he had killed Sir Robert himself, and under the delusion that he was being persecuted by the Tories! He was found ” not guilty ” on the ground of insanity. Much controversy was raised by this case, and, after a debate in the House of Lords, five questions were put to the Judges, and these resulted in the formulation of the McNaghten Rules, which may be stated thus :
To establish a defence on the ground of insanity it must be clearly proved that at the time of the act the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature or quality of the act he was doing, or, that he did know it but did not know that it was wrong.
If the accused is undoubtedly insane and unfit to plead, and the jury agree, the judge may order his detention in Broadmoor. If it is decided that he is fit to plead, and the defence of insanity is persisted in and accepted by the jury, the verdict will be ” guilty but insane and that also means Broadmoor. When the accused is found to be insane on arraignment, he is not found guilty of an offence and his mental condition at the time of the alleged offence is not inquired into. If found ” guilty but insane ” he is found guilty of the charge and his mental condition at the time is inquired into. Thus he may be of sound mind at the time of the trial and yet be sentenced to detention as a criminal lunatic.
These complicated possibilities make a very serious set of problems for judge and jury. It is easy for Mr. Robinson to show by means of examples of trials which occurred between 1919 and 1939, that the result of all these complications is most unsatisfactory from a psychological viewpoint. The cases are excellently chosen, but it is a great pity that the author has not classified them so that the reader should be able to grasp clearly the kind of confusion or injustice represented by each case, and the different forms of injustice which seem to him to run through them all. It is not sufficient that the cases should be left to convince the reader by themselves, and a careful summing-up by the author would have been a great help. Dr Charles Berg’s interesting ” last word ” is very valuable and could not be dispensed with.
This book, though the author does not consciously intend it as such, is perhaps one of the best kinds of argument that could be brought forward for the abolition of the death penalty altogether. The very fact that a man has committed murder is the strongest piece of evidence of his gross mental derangement at the time. If there were any evidence that punishment helped people who had committed murder, so that they were less inclined to do it again, then there would be a possible case favouring punishment, but the murderer’s death does not help anybody, least of all the murdered man, and all attempts to show that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on others are unavailing. Murder has never become more common where the death penalty has been abolished. The McNaghten Rules are a relic of psychological ideas probably out of date already in 1843, and the death penalty is a relic of the cruel forms of retributive justice dating from the Middle Ages and earlier times. R.W.P.
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