CRIMINAL CASES SIMPLIFIED.

CHAPTER I.

THE CAPACITY TO COMMIT CRIME.

LIABILITY OF INFANTS.

REX v. YORK.

[Fost. 70; 1 Lead. Cr. Cas. 11.]

William York, a boy ten years of age, was charged with the murder of a little girl five years old. The children were orphans supported by the parish. The man of the house where they lived left them in bed when he went to work in the morning; on his return in the evening the girl was missing. Being asked where she was, the boy said that she had dressed herself and gone out. Fearing that she had fallen into a stream near by, a strict search was made and her dead body terribly mutilated found in a dung heap. The

boy at first denied everything, but afterwards confessed that he had killed her and hid her body; that the devil put him up to it.

The question arose whether so young a boy could be punished, and the court determined that he could, "there being so many circumstances in the case which are undoubtedly tokens of what is called a mischievous discretion."

An infant under seven years of age cannot commit a crime. The law presumes that he has not sufficient mental capacity for such a purpose, and although this may in some instances work an absurdity for there may be some children more precocious at seven than others at eight years of age-yet, for the sake of convenience, the law refuses to try persons under the age of seven years, for any acts they may commit. And between the ages of seven and fourteen, the law still presumes the infant to lack discretion enough to know he is committing a crime. But here there is this difference, that the law may be shown to be mistaken. In the case of an infant under seven, a court will not listen to any evidence that he was capable; in the case of an infant over seven, but under fourteen, a court will hear proof on the subject, and, if it appears that the infant understood he was doing wrong, a court will punish him. Many instances of convictions of this kind are to be found in the books-capital convictions too, some of them. A boy named Dean, not quite nine years old, was hanged for arson in England in 1629. He was probably the youngest criminal that ever came into Jack Ketch's way. A ten year old boy called Spigund was hanged, and a thirteen year old girl, Alice de Waldborough, burned for murder. William York was not hanged; the King being in need of sailors about that time, allowed him to make himself a target for French marines. James Guild was probably the youngest criminal ever executed in the United States. He was hanged in New Jersey in 1828, for a murder committed when he was twelve years and a half old. State v. Guild, 5 Halst. 163; 18 Am. Dec. 404.

After attaining the age of fourteen, a person is not exempt from criminal responsibility on account of being of tender years. In the civil law it is different; there, in order to contract, a man must have attained his majority, i.e., the age of twenty-one years.