Richards, 1873, Conn.
The reader may feel that little after all would be gained, but he will observe that at any rate such a test, however imperfect, would permit juries to do lawfully that which they now do by violating their oaths.
The writer believes that the best concrete test yet formulated and applied by any court is that laid down in Parsons vs.

The State of Alabama (81 Ala., 577): "1.

Was the defendant at the time of the commission of the alleged crime, as matter of fact, afflicted with a disease of the mind, so as to be either idiotic, or otherwise insane?
"2.

If such be the case, did he know right from wrong as applied to the particular act in question?
If he did not have such knowledge, he is not legally responsible.
"3.

If he did have such knowledge, he may nevertheless not be legally responsible if the two following conditions concur: "(1) If, by reason of the duress of such mental disease, he had so far lost the power to choose between the right and wrong, and to avoid doing the act in question, as that his free agency was at the time destroyed.
"(2) And if, at the same time, the alleged crime was so connected with such mental disease, in the relation of cause and effect, as to have been the product of it solely." But whatever modification in the present test of criminal responsibility is adopted, there must come an equally, if not even more important, reform in the procedure in insanity cases, which to-day is as cumbersome and out of date as the law itself.