ADDRESS TO THE JURY IN BEHALF OF THE PRISONER, ON THE TRIAL OF JOHN M. THURSTON, AT THE TIOGA OYER AND TERMINER, OWEGO, N. Y., October 18, 1857. DEFENCE, INSANITY. [The jury rendered a verdict of guilty of murder, which was reversed on appeal to the Supreme Court, and a new trial ordered, upon which, at Ithaca, Tompkins County, the prisoner was acquitted by reason of insanity, and sent to the Asylum for the Insane at Utica.] MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT, GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY— When a worthy and esteemed citizen is cut off in the prime of his usefulness, by an act of violence and blood, and with startling suddenness, the mind is ordinarily disqualified from judging dispassionately of the causes which incited to and produced it. Deeply impressed with this obvious truth, the counsel and friends of this unfortunate prisoner saw you take your seats in the jury-box, many of you declaring that you had formed opinions against him. You were admitted, nevertheless, to sit in the case, because we had confidence in the truth and justice of our defence, and in your purity and integrity. You were selected from the great body of your fellows, because we believed you could rise above prejudice and rumor, and, laying aside preconceived opinions and unfavorable impressions, hear the cause patiently and render a verdict therein, in pursuance of the oaths you have taken, according to evidence. Your position is most fearfully respon sible. You hold in your hands the mighty issues of life and death, and must answer to mankind, to your own consciences, and to a just God above us, of the deliverance you here make. Upon the happening of this unfortunate occurrence the people of this community manifested a feeling worthy of themselves and of their law-abiding character; worthy of their par entage, their New England origin. They saw that human life had been taken by an act of violence, and they moved with becoming alacrity to secure investigation according to law. The numerous and highly respectable friends of this stricken man find their slender means arrayed against the strength of the most powerful State in the confederacy; yet they fear not, for they have heard you pledge your oaths before God and man to give a verdict according to evidence, uninfluenced by other considerations. The prosecution against an individual charged with crime is conducted at the public expense. A public prosecutor is provided in every county, who is paid from the local treasury, and in cases when the Governor shall believe the cause of public justice requires it, he may send the Attorney-General of the State to conduct the trial in person. In this case, although the District Attorney is himself a lawyer of ripe years and extensive knowledge, and has presided over courts where he now stands at the bar; although two distinguished local counsellors are found associated with him to quicken his vigilance and supply contingencies, yet all this is not deemed sufficient for the pursuit of this man, and those having it in charge have passed by the first law officer of the State, and invoked and procured one of a more enlarged experience to aid in attempting to procure a conviction. Of all this we do not complain, unusual as it would seem to be, but assert again our entire ability, against all this preparation, to show from the evidence that this prisoner is not guilty. Here, in this community, was this sanguinary deed committed; here was its perpetrator arrested and presented for trial; here arose that feeling which has caused this effort to bring to condign punishment, and here will a verdict of acquittal be hailed with gratification and éclat by every one who respects the administration of justice, when they see that such result is in harmony with the spirit of the law. But a few years since a man named Lawrence attempted to take the life of General Jackson, then President of the United States, while attending the funeral of a member of Congress at the Capitol. This illustrious man, at that time, it will be well recollected, was sustained by warmer friends and assailed by more vindictive enemies than any other indi vidual of the age. The public questions under discussion, too, lent a virus to partisan fury; and the agitations of the political ocean literally cast up their mire and dirt. The attempt of Lawrence evinced all the characteristics of deliberate preparation. The pistols, balls, powder, and caps, had been purchased with murderous precaution; the weapons had been carefully loaded, and each was snapped at the heart of the venerable man. It was an act well calculated to arouse his friends, and they more than insinuated that their opponents had stimulated Lawrence to murder, and scouted the idea of insanity which was claimed for his apology. Lawrence was arrested and thrown into prison; but, in process of time, he stood at the bar before a jury for trial. Learned and experienced men pronounced him to have been insane, and he was acquitted by reason of his insanity. The same multitude who had believed him guilty, and had tossed and raved against him at the time of his arrest, were hushed into respectful silence when the majesty of the law, in the language of the Saviour of men, said, Peace, be still. So it will be here; and those who most loudly demanded trial and investigation, demand that the guilty alone shall be convicted. Those who would pervert the tribunals of justice to the purposes of judicial murder, by procuring a conviction without evidence, are, for the honor of human nature, very few. There are few ravens, indeed, who croak for human blood; few vultures who whet their bloody beaks and dirty talons that they may tear the quivering vitals of a neighbor and a brother; few hungry hounds who howl impatiently to dispute over the mangled remains of the murdered. The great masses know and feel that the same law which condemns the guilty vindicates the innocent; it plucks down the high and raises up the lowly, and when our boasted system shall, with all its theories of equality and justice in practice, condemn without a hearing and convict without or against evidence, let us consign our constitution and laws to the dungeon where we confine and chain the criminal, drape them up with mourning, and cover them with dust and sackcloth. Like the early despots of the East, let us dip our hands in gore and stamp them upon the parchment which proclaims the abominable edict; like the sanguinary code of Draco, let our laws be written in human blood. You have learned as well from the opening of the counsel. for the prosecution as from that of my learned and eloquent associate for the prisoner,* that the defence is insanity, and you have heard the peculiar symptoms of the insane described by the latter, and enforced and illustrated by many authors of celebrity. You have, too, learned that an acquittal, by reason of insanity, does not restore the prisoner to liberty, but commits him to the walls of a lunatic asylum for confinement and humane treatment. And is it not enough that this young man, stricken of heaven by this afflictive malady, should be torn from a beloved and once happy home and all he held most dear; his domestic hearth be left cold and desolate, while his prospects, just budding into life, gave promise of hapРу fruition-be torn from a beloved and affectionate wife before her young affections had learned to nestle to his heart? In proving hereditary insanity to have existed in this family, we called an aged man, who, with the eloquence of grief, declared that they were an afflicted family; and when he spoke of the infirmity which rested upon the mother, who, in his infancy, taught him holy words in prayer, and wept over the recollection of her goodness, it seemed to me a bright and beautiful oasis in the great desert of human existence. Insanity may well be regarded as the greatest calamity which afflicts our nature; and if there is one cup more deeply drugged than another with bitterness, and which of all others we should prostrate ourselves before our Maker and pray to have pass from us, it is a deprivation of our reason. This was most feelingly portrayed by that bright and beautiful child of purity and song, who came among us to warble a few sweet notes, and then to disappear like a star that twinkles for a moment upon the horizon's verge, and goes out forever-Lucretia Maria Davison. In some lines, touchingly beautiful with the simplicity of truth, she attempted to describe the fear she entertained of this fell enemy of man; but the delirium seized upon her brain before they were completed, in the middle of a sentence, and they were thus published in her brief memoirs She says: * MR. CAMP. . "There is a something which I dread, It steals along with withering tread, It was at an early day the humane practice to smother those afflicted with hydrophobia between feather beds, and that was mercy too, compared with the treatment of the insane. They were cruelly beaten and chastised for a supposed perversity of temper, confined in loathsome and gloomy dungeons and "shut from the common air and common use of their own limbs; fed on refuse food, laden with chains, and treated like ferocious and venomous beasts. The annals of criminal justice can present no instances of cruelty such as were extended to those being bereft of reason, nor the prison walls of Galtz nor Magdeburgh or Chillon tell of deeper physical suffering than the insane experienced; and we have but to refer to the commissions which have been read upon this very trial to show, that a few years since, in one of the States of this Union, distinguished for the refinement and intelligence of its people, a delicate, unmarried female, who was insane, had a cage prepared for her as for a wild animal at a show! But, thanks to the cause of philanthropy and science, in 1792, Pinel, that benefactor and philosopher, in charge of an insane Asylum in Paris, triumphed over ignorance and bigotry and brutal violence, and struck off the manacles from the swollen limbs of its inmates, and restored them to light and life, and treated them like human beings. From that moment science and humanity have contributed to meliorate their condition; but there is reason to believe that there are great and interesting truths yet unadmitted and unascertained in the mysterious operations of the mind. It has been often asserted, and oftener repeated, that the plea of insanity is used as a shield for crime, and is interposed as a matter of course, when there is no other defence. This has become a common saying and a common jest with prejudice and ignorance, and those who have no better answer to a serious fact. It will do well for an argument at the corner of the |