Rex v. Arnold  

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Rex v. Arnold (1724) was a British trial in which a certain Judge Robert Tracy formally recognized the legal standard that became known as the wild beast test.

The accused of the trial was Edward Arnold, who had shot and wounded Lord Onslow. Arnold was laboring under the insane delusion that Onslow was the source of all his problems and that Onslow had bewitched him and was using imps to torture him. Arnold was sentenced to death but Lord Onslow secured a reprieve to life in prison.

The dictum most frequently quoted from this trial is "for one to be exempt from punishment in such a case, it must be a man that is totally deprived of his understanding and does not know what he is doing, no more than an infant, than a brute or a wild beast."

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The Wild Beast Test. — But in the next important trial after Lord Hale wrote, Mr. Justice Tracy laid down a more severe test. On the trial of Arnold, ' in 1724, for shooting at Lord Onslow, Mr. Chief Justice Tracy said to the jury: "This is the evidence on both sides. Now, I have laid it before you; and you must consider of it; and the shooting my Lord Onslow, which is the fact for which this prisoner is indicted, is proved beyond all manner of contradiction; but whether this shooting was malicious, that depends upon the sanity of the man.

That he shot, and that wilfully is proved; but whether maliciously, that is the thing ; that is the question ; whether this man hath the use of his reason and his senses? If he was under the visitation of God 'and could not distinguish be- tween good and ei'il, and did not know what he did, though he committed the greatest offence, yet he could not be guilty of any offence against any law what soever; for guilt arises from the mind, and the wicked will and intention of the man. If a man be deprived of his reason, and consequently of his intention, he cannot be guilty; and if that be'the case, though he had actually killed my Lord Onslow, he is exempted from punishment ; punishment is intended for example and to deter other persons from wicked designs; but the punishment of a madman, a person that hath no design, can have no example. This is one side. On the other side, we must be very cautious ; it is not every frantic and idle humor of a man that will exempt him from justice, and the punishment of the law. When a man is guilty of a great offence, it must be very plain and clear, before a man is allowed such an exemption; therefore, it is not every kind of frantic humor or something unaccountable in a man's actions that points him out to be such a madman as is to be exempted from punishment; it must he a man that is totally deprived of his understanding and memory, and doth not know what he is doing, no more than an infant, than a brute, or a wild beast, such a one is never the object of punishment; therefore, I must leave it to your consideration, whether the condition this man was in, as it is represented to you on one side, or the other, doth show a man who knew what he was doing, and was able to distinguish whether he was doing good or evil, and understood what he did; and it is to be observed, they admit he was a lunatic, and not an idiot. A man that is an idiot, that is born so, never recovers, but a lunatic may, and hath his intervals ; and they admit he was a lunatic. You are to consider what he was at this day, when he committed this fact. There you have a great many circumstances about the powder and the shot, his going backward and forward, and if you believe he was sensible, and had the use of his reason and understood what he did, then he is not within the exemptions of the law, but is as subject to punishment as any other person." The prisoner was convicted under this test and sentenced to death, but was afterwards reprieved at the request of Lord Onslow. --"Defences to crime. The adjudged cases in the American and English reports wherein the different defenses to crimes are contained"

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