Show MAKING A FALSE confession DR BR W A HAMMOND TALKS ABOUT SELF ACCUSED CRIMINAL I 1 prop proposed osei to show that no uncommon circumstance tor for persons to con COD fesa to having perpetrated perpetrate d crimes of which they were either certainly or probably innocent inno ceat and that there ire are forces in operation in the human mind whick which may prompt to the making of a false confession even though hy fay so doing life liberty and property he be put in C unger danger thus there is a difficulty in the minds of some persons who ex bibiano bibi hib bno ilono other evidence evl dence of mental aberration to discriminate between their thoughts or their dreams and absolute facts they brood over some real or imaginary circum circumstance stane 8 until they bring themselves to believe in its reality such a instance reads in the daily press of shocking murder that has been committed the perpetrator pe of which bas escaped unrecognized he reads it in one newspaper and in another and another hears it talked up among his bis companions and be begins gins by wondering whether or not the murderer will ever be discovered he knows that murders have been committed by persons who at t the time were in a state ot of somnambulism or who were suffering suf ferine from an epileptic paroxysm perhaps he be has himself in his bis youth walked in his sleep or has had bad a convulsion pl siou as his bis mother has told him Sudden suddenly lythe the idea strikes him that he be may be the guilty man at first the notion to is borri horrible Uke to him but its very horror rend renderos render eroM sw attric attractive tive he toes goes to the academy of medicine and reads up on the subject of epilepsy there is scarcely a disease especially of the nervous system of which auy person at sonie some time oi or other of his bis life has bas not bad one or more symptoms toe quack medicine advertisers are fully aware of this fact and make full fall use of it to frighten the ignorant into the purchase of their trash our incipient self acea accuser er hast has therefore no trouble in flading finding what he be is looking after and be goes home fully convinced that he has bad an epileptic paroxysm during which he be may have been a murderer the transition fro from M a possibility to a reality presents no difficulties to his mind said and he be ends by fully believing himself to be the murderer for whom the police are seeking lie he visits the place where the crime was committed questions the residents of the neighborhood in regard to all the particulars and even interrogates the police to their plans for securing becu ing tf the e murderer and the secret evidence they have in their possession at last suspicion turns toward him and eventually he be is arrested the accounts that he has read in t the ae newspaper and the gossip he has heard that regardless of his bis original idea that lie he had perpetrated the crime during an epileptic fit and therefore in a state of conscientiousness that forces him to make atonement be confesses that lie he perpetrated the murder churder and gives a tall full and circumstantial account of the crime inquiry boon however shows that he could not by any possibility have been the perpetrator and he be is therefore after a few days during which the newspapers have given the most sensational account of his bis brutality and aad remorse discharged from custody |