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Source: Norwich Aurora (Norwich, CT) Volume: XXXVI Issue: 20 Page: 2
Dated: Wednesday, May 18, 1870
INSANITY PLEA
     An exchange says:
     "Gov. Alcorn, of Mississippi, has sent a special message to the State Legislature in regard to the plea of insanity in trials for murder, manslaughter, and assaults with intent to kill. He recommends that in all cases in which that plea is interposed, the question shall be tried in equity, the prisoner to be held in custody meanwhile, without bail, to await the decree. If the decree shall be that the prisoner is sane, he shall then be tried, as such, for the crime committed; but if he shall order him to be confined in a lunatic asylum, and in that portion thereof designated for the 'dangerous insane.' In the case of assault with intent to kill, this confinement shall be for the term of one year; in case of manslaughter for the term of three years, and in a case of murder for a period of five years."
     This, as can be seen at once, does not meet the case. A man may be insane when he commits the act of murder, as it is claimed McFarland was; and the jury endorsed that claim by their verdict. But no one claims that McFarland is insane now. So with the perpetrator of any other murder, where the claim of insanity is set up. The insanity is at the time of the commission of the act; when under trial, the man is, or is supposed to be, sane. If he were not, his trial would be a farce; for who ever heard of trying a notoriously insane man for a crime?
     It is meant that the point shall be first determined whether the murderer was sane at the time of the murder, and, if he was, that he shall be tried, and, if convicted, punished, no one can object to that, provided the man continues sane up to the time of his trial and punishment. But this Mississippi Governor proposes the punish a man who was insane at the time of the murder, but who may be sane now, by sending him to a lunatic asylum, to be confined among "the dangerous insane," - a course of treatment, one would suppose, very well calculated to make a man insane if he was not so before.

Source: Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA) Page: 2
Dated: Feb. 7, 1930
Tramp Murderer Is Found to Be Escape Lunatic
Finger Prints Definitely Identify Man - Jackson Police Say He Is 'Dangerous.'
By Associated Press
     Paducah, Ky., Feb. 6 - Police authorities of Jackson, Miss., informed Fulton county officers today that the identity of Roy Springer, a trump, who killed Frank Barrett, Fulton merchant, and seriously wounded Bulley Huddleston, chief of police of Fulton, had been established through finger prints as that of a man whom Jackson officers had taken to a Mississippi insane asylum last week.
     In a telephone conversation with Sheriff Goalder Johnson, Fulton county, the Jackson chief of police said that two of his men last week took a man by the name of Roy Springler, who answered the description furnished by the Kentucky officers, to the asylum but that the institution refused to receive him and that they left him standing in the corridor. That was the last they saw of him.
     The Mississippi official told Sheriff Johnson that they were dealing with a highly dangerous man. He said that Springer had been picked up on the streets of Jackson and had been taken to the asylum from which institution he was alleged to have escaped. He had been in the asylum on several previous occasions, the Jackson chief said, having been sent up from Tupelo, Miss.
     The condition of Chief Huddleston, whose throat was cut by the tramp at Fulton, Tuesday, showed improvement this afternoon.

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