the chairman of the committee from this district nominates in his stead George E. Pritchard of Utica. I have a letter from Mr. Ralph A. Kellogg, who was nominated as a member of the committee from the eighth district on the Committee on Grievances, and he requests that someone else be substituted in his place as he is unable to serve on that committee. I would therefore suggest the name of Carlton E. Ladd in his place. This report has been printed and sent around to the members of the Association. As the election of officers will take place to-morrow I submit the report and move that it be accepted. The President: You have heard the motion that the report of the committee be accepted, is there anything to be said upon the motion? The motion was duly carried. (For Report see Election of Officers.) The President: We will now hear the report of the committee on the commitment and discharge of the criminal insane. Mr. John Brooks Leavitt, of New York, presented the report as follows: REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON THE COMMITMENT AND DISCHARGE OF THE CRIMINAL INSANE To the New York State Bar Association: The Committee on the Commitment and Discharge of the Criminal Insane, begs to submit its fourth annual report. Pursuant to the resolution passed at the last annual meeting of the Association, its report to that meeting has been circulated among various bar associations, medical societies and persons interested in the subject throughout the country, and it, as is believed, has served to keep alive interest in the attempt of this Committee to formulate some measure of remedial legislation, which will be recognized as wise, efficient, and yet sufficiently conservative, on the one hand, to protect the public against criminal acts by the insane, and on the other, to protect those unfortunates from unjust treatment by the public. With that end in view, and desirous of summoning to its aid the best thought of reputable medical experts on this subject, your Committee has addressed to leading alienists and other medical gentlemen throughout the State, a communication, a copy of which is hereto annexed; and has propounded to them a series of interrogatories, a copy of which is hereto annexed. It has been hoped that the Committee would have been able to receive and tabulate their replies in time to submit the results of its inquiries at the approaching annual meeting of this Association. But this attempt to obtain such a consensus of opinion from the experts did not occur to your Committee in time to do so. About one hundred and fifty experts have been thus approached, and a goodly number of highly instructive answers have already been received. It is thought preferable to withhold them until replies from all have been returned, a careful digest made thereof, and the framing of the proposed bill considered with fuller deliberation than is now possible. Your Committee has from the first believed that upon so important a subject, its progress should be slow, so that it may be sure. It therefore requests that it be continued for another year, when it hopes to be able to make its final report. Dated, January 13, 1913. JOHN BROOKS LEAVITT, First District. NEW YORK STATE BAR ASSOCIATION COMMITTEE ON THE COMMITMENT AND DISCHARGE OF THE CRIMINAL INSANE January 2, 1913 To Alienists throughout the State of New York: Gentlemen.— Some four years ago the New York State Bar Association appointed the undersigned as a Committee to consider the subject of the commitment and discharge of the criminal insane. Since then the Committee has been engaged in the consideration of this difficult subject. Its aim has been to formulate a bill, which if enacted will do away with certain abuses in the administration of our criminal law, which tend to bring it into disrepute. Our Committee has made three annual reports, which we herewith enclose, and ask you to examine in the same spirit that we have endeavored to act, namely, to discharge our minds of all entangling professional prepossessions and to try and reach the best solution of the problem of how to do away with evils attending the present administration of criminal justice in respect of the insane, without in turn creating fresh mischiefs. In the popular mind the abuses have mainly come about by reason of what is called expert testimony in respect of insanity, and so in the past the remedy has been sought by suggesting regulations of expert testimony. In our judgment this is a step in the wrong direction. The hypothetical question may have been abused in the past and the opinion of some medical experts may have been influenced by the size of the fee, or other considerations. We express no opinion on that subject one way or the other. That is a question for your profession to take up by such disciplinary methods as it shall deem best. The fundamental point is that the question of a man's sanity is mainly a medical question and must in the nature of things turn on medical opinion. All attempts looking to the influence of medical opinion by regulation of law, or by unregulated public opinion, must be futile. The theory on which expert opinion is admissible on questions of insanity, whether alleged on a direct charge in insanity proceedings, or as a defense to an indictment for crime, is founded on reason and common sense and is too firmly imbedded in our law to be uprooted. As the defense of insanity necessarily admits the doing of the act charged in the indictment, and as the doing of the act is equally harmful to the community, whether committed by a sane or insane man, it has seemed to us that the welfare of society, which is society's only ground for punishment, requires that the choice of insanity as a defense should really be a choice between restraint in a jail or an asylum, rather than as now between a jail and liberty. In that case the inducement by corrupting largesse for favorable expert opinion, would be taken away, and if so, any existing abuses growing out of expert testimony would disappear. Our Committee is, therefore, at present directing its mind toward this sole question, the expediency of substituting in place of the present verdict "not guilty by reason of insanity," the form of verdict, which has obtained in England for the last thirty years, "guilty but insane." In this connection it is interesting to note the use of the phrase "criminal insane." Under the theory that an insane man cannot commit crime, the phrase "criminal insane" is a contradiction in terms. On the other hand, the fact that it has grown into such general use as a classification for the small percentage of insane persons, who have criminal tendencies, shows that the differentiation between the criminal and non-criminal insane should be recognized in the administration of criminal justice in a different way than it is now. If a man does not know the differences between right and wrong, he can have no wrongful intent. If he has no wrongful intent, he cannot be guilty of crime. Thus have Judges for many years been charging juries. And so, although juries are satisfied that the accused was guilty of the act charged, with intent to do it, and had some notion of right and wrong, yet being equally persuaded by the evidence that the accused was at the moment not fully accountable for his actions, they have been forced to render verdicts of acquittal. Thus he is allowed to go out again into the community and put at the peril of his unbridled will the lives of other citizens. Not wishing to urge for adoption any half-baked measure, we have hitherto contented ourselves in our reports with stating the problem and setting forth the reasons in |