OF CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY, AND PLEAS IN BAR OF EXECUTION.
In the preceding pages we have endeavoured to lay down such rules, and to draw attention to such points, as may enable medical witnesses to assist the ends of Justice in detecting the perpetration of crime; another duty remains: having discovered the guilty, questions may yet arise, as to whether the criminal is or is not a proper subject for the severity of the law; 1st, in respect of natural incapacity, as in the case of infants and idiots _a nativitate_; 2d, of accidental incapacities, as in lunacy and temporary derangement of intellect. So also it may be a medical question whether a prisoner stands mute of malice, or by the visitation of God; and 3dly, of temporary unfitness for punishment, as where judgment on a female is to be respited, by reason of her pregnancy; to these we shall add the plea of non-identity, for though we have already stated that personal identity does not appear to us to be a subject peculiarly appropriate to medical jurisprudence,[87] yet as the greater number of writers on this subject have so considered it, we should not be warranted in omiting all notice of the subject.
“It is clear that an infant above fourteen and under twenty-one is equally subject to capital punishments, as well as others of full age; for it is _præsumptio juris_, that after fourteen years they are _doli capaces_, and can discern between good and evil; and if the law should not animadvert upon such offenders by reason of their nonage, the kingdom would come to confusion.[88] Experience makes us know, that every day murders,[89] bloodsheds, burglaries, larcenies, burning of houses,[90] rapes,[91] clipping and counterfeiting of money, are committed by youths above fourteen and under twenty-one; and if they should have impunity by reason of such their minority, no man’s life or estate would be safe. In my remembrance, at _Thetford_, a young lad of sixteen years old was convict for successive wilful burning of three dwelling houses, and in the last of them burning a child to death, and yet had carried the matter so subtilly, that by a false accusation of another person for burning the first house, an innocent person was brought in danger, if it had not been strangely discovered: he had judgment to die, and was executed accordingly.” _1 Hale. P. C._ _p._ 25.