United States v. Faulkner

• Decision Date: 28 April 1888
• Citation: 35 F. 730
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. FAULKNER.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Texas

35 F. 730

UNITED STATES v. FAULKNER.

United States District Court, N.D. Texas.

April 28, 1888

Charles B. Pearre, U.S. Atty., for the Government.

Herring & Kelley and W. S. Baker, for defendant.

McCORMICK J.,

(charging jury.) The defendant is charged with having deposited in the United States post-office, for the purpose of mailing and delivery to the persons addressed, certain unmailable matter, described in the different counts in the indictments consolidated in this case, knowing the unmailable character of said matter. The defendant, through the able counsel representing him on this trial, in open court, and to save time and the necessity of proof of the matters admitted, has admitted that he (the defendant) wrote the letters described in the different counts, and charged to be unmailable matter; that he knew the contents thereof; and that he deposited each of said letters in the post-office of the United States, for the purpose of mailing and delivery; and that said letters are unmailable matter, as charged in said indictments. And the effect and purpose of these admissions are to support all the charges in the indictments, and require at your hands a verdict of guilty on said charges, unless the proof offered in this case as to the mental condition of the defendant at the time he wrote said letters, and deposited them in the mail raises in your minds a reasonable doubt as to his legal responsibility for his said acts. If not legally responsible, he cannot be adjudged guilty. And as, in the absence of the defendant's admissions, he would be presumed to be innocent until the contrary was shown beyond a reasonable doubt, so now, although the law presumes him to be legally responsible, and, as I have told you, this presumption and his admissions would, in the absence of proof as to his mental condition, authorize and require his conviction, still, this proof being made as to his mental condition, you are required to consider it; and if upon the consideration of the whole proof you are not only satisfied that he did the acts charged, (which are fully admitted,) but are also satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that at the time he did the acts charged he was legally responsible, you should convict him on all the counts in the indictments; but otherwise you should acquit him on all of said counts. It is not claimed that he is furiously insane, or that he has lost his mind entirely, or become idiotic. The defense attempted to be made by the proof is that, as a result of secret vice, his mind has become so diseased as to render him incompetent or unable to discern the wrong in these acts done by him, or to resist the impulse to do them. It is not every species or degree of unsoundness of mind that makes the man irresponsible. It need not be furious, or be manifested alike on all subjects, but it must be such, on the particular subject out of which the acts charged as an offense are claimed to have sprung, as to render him incapable, by reason of said mental unsoundness, to discern the wrong of committing said acts; and it must be shown that said acts resulted from said unsoundness of mind.

'A jury is not warranted in inferring that a man is insane from the mere fact of his committing a crime, or from the enormity of the crime, or from the mere apparent absence of adequate motive for it; for the law assumes that there is a bad motive,-- that it is prompted by malice,-- if nothing else appears. ' Guiteau's Case, 10 F. 168.

To enable you to exercise a safe judgment on the question of the defendant's responsibility at the time of the commission of these acts, you have been permitted to hear proof as to his habits and conduct for a number of years before that time, and as to his health and physical condition both before and subsequent to the commission of said acts. Ordinarily witnesses are not permitted to give their opinions to the jury, but must state only facts within their knowledge, and leave the jury to draw their own conclusions (under proper instructions) from the facts. On questions of mental disease the jury are given the benefit of the professional opinions of skilled witnesses, who have peculiar knowledge of diseases, and of their effect on the faculties of the mind and of symptoms indicating the presence and species and degree of mental disorders. And five physicians have been admitted to give you their opinions on these questions in this case, based upon the proof as to the condition and conduct of the defendant. The physician Dr. Brown, whose opinions were excluded because he showed he had based his opinion on the family history, with which he was himself wholly unacquainted until called to see him after his arrest, testified as to his examination of the defendant, and as to his physical condition at that time, and that much of his testimony...