Show MORAL anaesthesia 11 mae L otis the chicago girl charged with conspiracy to murder her mother in order to inherit a few thousand dollars has been dismissed on the plea of moral anaesthesia ranking with dementia americana it Is presumed and similar phenomena says the butte inter mountain an alienist testified that miss otis does not even live up to her moral stand ard she seems seems absolutely subjective to outside suggestion this was a clincher and the banchs decision followed do any of us live up to our moral standards ate are not all of us subject in a degree to outside suggestion what Is crime mania any departure form the moral rule Is mania but can wo we for this cause afford to permit criminals to walk abroad can we safely countenance such an aslon of the law however novel and clever there is a steady and traceable tendency in american criminal courts to trifle with the statutes in the otis case no reasonable person entertains the slightest doubt that the young woman conspired to murder it if sane sho she should be punished if insane incarcerated car in an asylum but sho goes free because of moral anaga chesla to the great satisfaction of alienists allenIs ts at absurd stipends per diem whither do we drift it if a judge may ila flagrantly gr antly violate his oath through pro texts so BO flimsy what becomes of the majesty and the terror of the law our criminal courts are the laughing stock of tho remainder of the civilized world but with those of us afflicted with that second conscience called patriotism coupled with a tendency to take real and honest thought concerning the future of our country tho thing ig far from laughable it Is IB clear to anybody but a a lawyer that the tha only test of sanity in a criminal trial Is the test of sanity where aher e the subject la Is not su swava or held for crime if ten strangers without knowledge of conditions thought harry thaw insane probably ho he was waa but did the jury which sat upon his caso case I 1 1 i honestly consider him a lunatic in tho the ordinary benm of tho the word they I 1 certainly did not hairsplitting counsel had so confused tho the poor men that I 1 after weeks of le leal gal nonsense they actually came to bellevo that they believed that thaw while not insane in the ordinary sense of tho the word could b be insane in an extraordinary sense and therefore merited the asylum and not the gallows A poor defendant without means of such defense could havo advanced no such plea pica and would have long since paid the penalty with his life all these pretexts merely servo to grant immunity under the law to th those ose who can pay for their advancement while destroying at the game came time the very root and foundation of tho the statutes |