A New York jury has brought in a verdict of
murder in the second degree against Frank II. Walworth, who will be con- demned to imprisonment for life, and in a few months pardoned. He had killed his father for writing abusive and threatening letters to his mother. It was natural, of course, for the jury to take the provocation into account, but Walworth's counsel managed matters in a very odd way. He declared his client a victim of hereditary insanity, asserted that the murdered Wal- worth was insane, and proved his position by the shocking character of his letters, some of which were certainly never written by anyone in possession of his senses. But in proving this, he proved also that the parricide had acted without any provocation at all, had, in fact, murdered a dangerous lunatic to avoid the trouble of putting him into an asylum. The jury, how- ever, did not see this, considered young Walworth a sane person who had gone a little too far in defending his mother, and let him off with the second penalty.
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