At the May Term, A. D. 1828, of the Circuit Court of the United States, Alexander Drew, commander of the whaling ship John Jay, was indicted and tried for the murder of his second mate, Charles F. Clark, while upon the high seas. It appeared in evidence that previously to the voyage, during which the fatal act took place, Drew had sustained a fair character, and was much respected in the town of Nantucket, where he belonged. It was proved that he was a man of humane and benevolent disposition, but that for several months he had been addicted to the use of ardent spirits, and for weeks during the voyage had drunk to excess; that he made a resolution to reform, and suddenly abstaining from drinking, he was seized with the delirium tremens, and that while under the influence of the disease he made an attack upon Clark, and gave him the stab of which he afterwards died.

The first witness who testified in the case was George Galloway, the cooper on board the ship. He stated that he joined the ship in the Pacific Ocean; that he found Capt. Drew to be an amiable man, kind to his crew and attentive to his business, but that he often indulged to excess in spirituous liquors. During the latter part of August, 1827, he had been in the habit of drinking very freely; that they spoke a ship from which Capt. Drew obtained a keg of liquor, and after he returned to his own vessel he drunk until he became stupified; that soon after he recovered a little from his intoxication, and ordered the keg with its contents to be thrown overboard, and it was accordingly done. There being now no more liquor on board of the ship, and none to be procured, Capt. Drew, in two or three days, discovered signs of derangement. He could not sleep, had no appetite, thought the crew had conspired to kill him, expressed great fears of an Indian who belonged to the ship, called him by name when he was not present, begged he would not kill him, saying to himself he would not drink any more rum. Sometimes he would sing obscene songs and sometimes hymns, would be found alternately praying and swearing. In the night of the 31st of August, Drew came on deck and attempted to jump overboard, and when the witness caught hold of him he sunk down trembling, and appeared to be very weak. His appearance the next morning the witness described to be that of a foolish person. At seven o'clock in the morning of the first of September, the witness, Capt. Drew, Clark, and others, were at breakfast in

the cabin, when Drew suddenly left the table and appeared to conceal something under his jacket which was on the transom in another part of the cabin. He immediately turned round to Mr. Clark and requested him to go upon deck; the reply of Clark was, 'When I have done my breakfast, sir.' Drew said 'Go upon deck, or I will help you,' and immediately took from the transom a knife which had been covered over by his jacket, and before another word was spoken by either, he stabbed Clark in the right side of his breast. Clark was rising from his chair at the time the knife struck him, and immediately fell upon the floor. He afterwards rose up and went upon deck alone. As the witness left the cabin, Drew cocked his pistol, pointed it at him, and snapped it, but it missed fire. Capt. Drew followed them upon deck, and addressing the chief mate, said Mr. Coffin, in twenty-four hours from this, the ship shall go ashore.' He was then seized, bound hand and foot, and a guard was stationed over him. His whole demeanor, for some time after, was that of an insane person. He would frequently call upon persons who were not on board, and who never had connexion with the ship. Some weeks after, when Drew first appeared to be in his right mind, he was informed of the death of Clark and its cause, he replied that he knew nothing about it, that when he awoke he found himself handcuffed, and that it all appeared to him like a dream. There had not been for months any quarrel or high words between Clark and Capt. Drew.

The second witness was Moses Coffin, the first mate of the ship. Coffin stated that Capt. Drew had been in the habit of drinking, and that it was by the order of Drew that the keg of spirits was thrown overboard. He recounted numerous instances in addition to those before stated, of frivolous complaints made by Drew, of his countermanding his orders, of his fear of being left alone, and his conversation with imaginary beings by whom he supposed himself surrounded, all going to prove physical weakness and alienation of mind. Though familiar with his habits, the witness had not, before this affair, supposed him insane. With regard to Clark, the witness dressed his wound and took care of him. Two physicians at a Spanish port, which they reached soon after, gave it as their opinion that it was not dangerous, and that it would be well in a few days; but Clark himself had said, in describing his complaint to witness, that the wound caused an internal flow of blood. It healed externally before Clark expired.

At this stage of the proceeding, the Court asked the District Attorney if he expected to change the posture of the case. He admitted that unless upon the facts stated, the court were of opinion that this insanity, brought on by the antecedent drunkenness, constituted no defence for the act, he could not expect success in the prosecution. After some consultation, the opinion of the court was delivered as follows:

STORY, J. We are of opinion that the indictment upon these admitted facts cannot be maintained. The prisoner was unquestionably insane at the time of committing the offence. And the question made at the bar is, whether insanity whose remote cause is habitual drunkenness, is or is not an excuse in a court of law for a homicide committed by the party, while so insane, but not at the time intoxicated or under the influence of liquor. We are clearly of opinion that insanity is a competent excuse in such a case. In general, insanity is an excuse for the commission of any crime, because the party has not the possession of his reason, which includes responsibility. An exception is when the crime is committed by a party while in a fit of intoxication, the law not permitting a man to avail himself of the excuse of his own gross sin and misconduct to shelter himself from the legal consequences of such crime. But the crime must take place and be the immediate result of the fit of intoxication, and while it lasts, and not as in this case a remote consequence, superinduced by the antecedent exhaustion of the party, arising from gross and habitual drunkenness. However criminal, in a moral point of view, such an indulgence is, and however justly a party may be responsible for his acts arising from it to Almighty God, human tribunals. are generally restricted from punishing them, since they are not the acts of a reasonable being. Had the crime been committed while Drew was in a fit of intoxication he would have been liable to be convicted of murder. As he was not then intoxicated, but merely insane from an abstinence from liquor, he cannot be pronounced guilty of the offence. The law looks to the immediate and not to the remote cause, to the actual state of the party, and not to the cause which remotely produced it. Many species of insanity arise remotely from what, in a moral view, is a criminal neglect or fault of the party, as from religious melancholy, undue exposure, extravagant pride, ambition, &c. &c., yet such insanity has always been deemed a sufficient excuse for any crime done under its influence.

The jury without retiring from their seats, returned a verdict of not guilty. The case was conducted for the government by George Blake, Esq. District Attorney; for the prisoner, by Daniel Davis and Francis Bassett, Esquires.

An account of a trial before the Supreme Court of the state of Ohio, has just come into our hands, which, though different in some of its features, bears a strong resemblance to the case of Drew. In this case the point of law did not come directly before the court for a final decision. Whether the accused was at the time he committed the homicide, capable of discriminating between right and wrong, was a question, from all the circumstances of the case to be left to the jury, and they having returned a verdict of guilty, the court upon a motion. for a new trial did not think proper to interfere and disturb the verdict. The opinion of the court, however, so far as it can be gathered from incidental remarks made at the argument of counsel for a new trial, would seem to be at variance with the decision of the Circuit Court in the case of Drew. They say that they were not called upon to give an opinion, whether Mania potu would, under any circumstances, be an excuse for the commission of a crime, but they feel no unwillingness to express their opinion, that if the insanity was the offspring of intemperance and the prisoner knew that intoxication would produce it, he could not plead it as an apology.' This intimation from the court, and the result of the trial, seem to have produced considerable excitement in that quarter of the country, and have drawn to the subject the attention of Dr. Drake, a distinguished medical professor, who, in the Western Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences,' has stated the case and accompanied it with an elaborate discussion of the question 'whether Mania a potu, either temporary or protracted, be an excuse for crime.' He comes to the conclusion, the correctness of which we cannot doubt,' that insanity of this kind ought in law to be an immunity from punishment.' His statement of the case is as follows:

'John Birdsell, of the village of Harrison, in the western part of this county, on the 3d inst. was arraigned before the Supreme Court of Ohio, for homicide. Present on the bench, Judges Pease and Sherman. In the indictment it was laid, that the defendant, on Thursday evening, 5th of March, 1829, murdered his wife, by cutting through her neck from side to side, with a narrow axe, at a single blow, which severed the spinal column,

and caused instant death. The proof of the fact was perfect and uncontroverted. The defence set up was Mania a potu. Having recorded the principal facts, and also been furnished with the notes of the prosecutor and one of the advocates, I propose to lay before the reader such portions of them as have a relation to the subject of Medical Jurisprudence.

"The defendant was to appearance about fifty years of age, and had been married nineteen or twenty years to a second wife, by whom he had several children, one of whom was a witness in the case. It appeared from the testimony, that for several years he had been subject to occasional fits of intoxication, which in the latter part of the time had been followed by Mania a potu, which generally lasted for several days, and went off spontaneously. In these paroxysms he had the physical and 'moral symptoms which usually characterize that malady. The former were, great tremors of the hands, a pale face, red eyes, and sometimes a copious perspiration even when exposed half-naked to a cold atmosphere. The moral phenomena were, disordered perceptions of sight and hearing, so that he often insisted, that he saw himself surrounded by snakes and other reptiles, or by armed men who sought to kill him; or supposed he heard strange sounds of trumpets, or vocal music, or conversation of which he was the subject, and the object of which was mischief to himself. He was thus filled with apprehension for his safety, and sometimes ran about the village at night, as if attempting to escape from bad persons who were pursuing him. On a certain night, he made so much clamor as to excite the idea of several men engaged in a riot. At another time, in his own house, he concealed himself between the feather and the straw bed, where he was almost suffocated. On another occasion, he was found, after dark, standing in the street without shoes or hat, and had described around him a circle in the dust, and declared, that if any one entered it, that person would kill him. At other times he would peep from his window, and point his gun, as for defence, against imaginary persons, who were approaching to seize him. Again, he would fancy that two armies were engaged in battle, and that he must join one of them. In all his paroxysms he had so great a degree of watchfulness, as to sleep little or none for several nights in succession. But his prevailing maniacal conception was, that his wife was in a combination with three of his neighbors, one of whom was his son by a former wife, and that they had conspired against his life. Of these men, when they were not in his presence, he was afraid. In the paroxysms he was accustomed to charge his wife (unfoundedly in the opinion of witnesses) with a criminal intimacy with these persons. He even threatened to kill her if she did not desist, and had been heard to utter this threat, when he was thought by one of the witnesses to be rational.