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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE CRIMINAL IMBECILE

CHAPTER I

THE CASE OF JEAN GIANINI

“We find the defendant in this case not guilty as charged; we acquit the defendant on the ground of criminal imbecility.”

Such was the verdict by the jury of the Supreme Court of Herkimer County, New York, on May 28th, 1914, in the case of the people vs. Jean Gianini, indicted for the murder of Lida Beecher, his former teacher.

The prosecution and, at first at least, the majority of the citizens of the community held that this had been a carefully planned, premeditated, cold-blooded murder of the most atrocious character, committed with a fiendishness seldom seen among human beings. It was, on the other hand, claimed by the defense that the boy was an imbecile, that he had only the intelligence of a ten-year-old child, that he did not know the nature and quality of his act, and that he did not have any true realization of the enormity of his crime. For some reason unaccountable to a great many people, the jury accepted the view of the defense.

Not infrequently have verdicts in murder trials been unacceptable to the populace. In that respect this verdict is not an exceptional one, but from other standpoints it is remarkable. Probably no verdict in modern times has marked so great a step forward in society’s treatment of the wrongdoer. For the first time in history psychological tests of intelligence have been admitted into court and the mentality of the accused established on the basis of these facts.

The value of this verdict cannot be overestimated. It establishes a new standard in criminal procedure. It recognizes that weakness of mind, as an excuse for crime, is of the same importance as disease of mind; puts feeble-mindedness in the same category with insanity, and requires that it like insanity be considered in all discussions of responsibility. When we add the now accepted fact that the feeble-minded are at least as numerous as the insane, we see the far-reaching significance of this standard set by the Supreme Court of Herkimer County, New York.

That the verdict has not been at once acceptable to the people is due to the fact that the character and the limitations of the high-grade imbecile are not understood. With a view to explaining this type of defective, which the defendant so well illustrates, we propose in the following pages to go over the history of this case, explaining the facts in the light of present-day knowledge of the feeble-minded.

The facts in the case as established by testimony:—

On the morning of March 28th, 1914, Henry Fitch, a farmer of Herkimer County, accompanied by his son, started on his usual work to deliver milk. At a point in the highway, approximately one mile from the village of Poland, Mr. Fitch saw blood and signs of a struggle in the snow and slush in the road; he also found an umbrella and a hat. A bloody path led out of the road to a point some hundred and thirty feet away. Following the tracks he found the body, which proved to be that of Lida Beecher, one of the school-teachers in the village of Poland. She lay at full length on her face, both arms under her. The body was removed to Sprague’s undertaking rooms in the village.

On the same morning Jean Gianini, sixteen years old, left his father’s house on the edge of the village to go to the home of Sam Hutchinson, where he was working and taking his meals. He had his breakfast, went to the barn, and worked a short time. When Mr. Hutchinson went out a little later, he could not find Jean. A Mr. Smith said he had seen him going down the tracks toward Newport. William Taylor, the track foreman, said he passed Jean near the bridge. Mr. Hutchinson then sent word to the boy’s father that he had gone. The father, supposing his son had run away as he frequently did, telephoned to Newport asking that he be apprehended and sent home. This was before anything was known of the crime. Peck Newman, to whom the father telephoned, found Jean in a grocery store in Newport. He had been apprehended at the depot. He was taken home and then to the Justice of the Peace. Here he was stripped, presumably for the purpose of discovering whether there was any blood upon his clothing or his body. Although there is no evidence that any stains were found, yet he had no sooner been stripped than he made a free and open confession. We shall consider this confession in detail later. In substance he said that he killed Miss Beecher to get revenge, because she had humiliated him in school. He told in detail how he had accomplished this and what had been his movements shortly before and after the deed. On the strength of this confession and such corroborative evidence as could be obtained from local witnesses the prosecution sought to convict this boy of murder in the first degree.

It was understood at first that the defense would attempt to prove that he was insane. There did not seem to be much evidence of insanity and it did not appear that the prosecution was in great fear of such a verdict. As a matter of fact, the real defense was imbecility. It is probable that this defense was less intelligible to people who knew Jean Gianini than that of insanity would have been. To one familiar with imbecility, however, there is no shadow of a doubt of the correctness of this