LEGAL INSANITY

The medieval scientific theories have always furnished much amusement to the people of this more enlightened age. Particularly have students enjoyed the anecdote that divines of the thirteenth century argued furiously the number of angels able to stand on the point of a pin. But the layman in his attitude toward science today is often stupid where the ancients whom he reads were merely uninformed. His conception of the action of a radio, or psycho-analysis is no more intelligent than their belief in the efficacy of a saint's bones or the spices from a mummy. And one wonders if the burners of witches were more concerned with the problems of demonology, than the troubled Governor of New York will be with those of psychology in considering during the next week the case of Ruth Snyder, sentenced to burn by the consumption of amperes rather than fagots.

"Though she can comprehend the nature and consequences of her acts, her will is powerless to deter her from courses of conduct that have their roots in her emotional abnormality," glibly states her lawyer in his plea for elemency. It is said that the defence of young Hickman will be virtually the same, in his instance the abnormality being sadism. These two cases, together with the shocking acquittal of bootlegger Remus, seem a perfect justification of Governor Smith's plan for a board of criminologists and psychiatrists who might make disposal of all convicted criminals. It would remove the perplexing scientific problems from the hands of ignorant juries, and yet the dangerous tendency towards leniency would persist as the experts became bogged in the theories of behaviorism. Thus, it is disconcerting but wise, to realize that posterity too will have its laugh at the difficulties contemporary penology is having with a clumsily handled mass of hypotheses.