OF THE TRIAL OF ABNER ROGERS, JR. INDICTED FOR THE MURDER OF CHARLES LINCOLN, JR. LATE WARDEN OF THE MASSACHUSETTS STATE PRISON ; BEFORE THE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS; HOLDEN AT BOSTON, ON TUESDAY, JANUARY 30, 1844. BY GEORGE TYLER BIGELOW AND GEORGE BEMIS, ESQRS., PUBLIC LIBRARY 955876A ASTOR, LENOX AND I Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, By CHARLES C. LITTLE AND JAMES BROWN, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. NOTE BY THE REPORTERS. THE interest taken in the subject of insanity as a defence to criminal prosecutions, it is thought, renders the present trial sufficiently important to deserve a full and accurate report. Accordingly the best exertions (in the absence of a short-hand verbatim report,) have been made, to exhibit a full development of the case in its legal and medico-scientific bearings. The testimony, as afforded by our own copious minutes of the trial, has been carefully compared with the notes taken by the Chief Justice, (obligingly afforded for the purpose) and a statement of the law as propounded by the Bench, has been obtained from the same source. The State's Attorney has also favored us with his opening and closing remarks, so far as he could write them out from memory after the trial. As a case involving the issue of feigned or real insanity, we believe the present the most interesting on record, certainly in English or American jurisprudence. As one of transient duration, also, (supposing nothing further is heard of it,) it deserves, perhaps, to be noted for the benefit of medical science. |
