The Calcutta Weekly Notes Law Notes and Notes of Cases of the Calcutta High Court and of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the English Law Courts Monday December 19 1927

On the 16th of November last the Lord Chief Justice of England delivered before the Medical Society of London a very welreasoned address on the legal and medical view of insanity a report of which is pulished in the Times of the 17th November last. [...] In order to establish a defence on the ground of insanity it must be clearly proved that at the time of the committing of the act the person accused was labouring under such a defect of reason from disease of the mind that he did not know the nature and quality of the act he was doing or if he did know it that he did not know he was doing what was wrong. [...] This third requirement with its two alternatives might serve to illustrate the difference between the standpoint of the physician and the standpoint of the criminal 1 w. For the purposes of the physician examining a person in order to ascertain whether he was insane it might be enough to find that the patient was suffering from disease of the mind and was in consequence labouring under a defe [...] merit of the court laid it down that a Judge should warn the jury that it was not generally but always dangerous to convict a person on the uncorroborated evidence of an accomplice and it was held that it was a misdirection to direct the jury that they ought to convict if they were quite certain that the accomplice is telling the truth. [...] In Hos in Rex v. Baskerville Lord Reading in the course of his judgment stated : "There is no doubt that the uncorro berated evidence of an accomplice is admissible in law bubl it has long been a rule of practice at common law for the Judge to warn the jury of the danger of convicting a prisoner on the uncorroborated testimony of an accoplice or accomplices and in the discretion of the Judg