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Supreme Court — Part 17
Page 73
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aed
1
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606—SEPARATE
ILLINOIS v. ALLEN 7
I would not try to provide in this case the guidelines
for those two strikingly different types of cases. The
case presented here is the classical criminal case without
any political or subversive overtones. It involves a
defendant who was a siek person and who may or may
not have been insane in the classical sense* but who
apparently had a diseased mind. And, as I have said,
the record is so stale that it is now much too late to find
out what the true facts really were.
5In a 1956 pretrial sanity hearing, Allen was found to be
incompetent to stand trial. Approximately a year later, however,
on October 19, 1957, in a second competency hearing, he was
declared sane and competent to stand trial.
Allen’s sister and brother testified in Allen’s behalf at the trial.
They recited instances of Allen’s unusual past behavior anc stated
that he was confined ta a mental institution in 1953, although no
reason for this latter confinement was given, A doctor called by the-
prosecution testified that he had examined Allen shortly after the
eommission of the crime which took place on August 12, 1956, and
on other subsequent occasions, and that, in his opinion, Allen was
sane at the time of each examination. This evidence was admitted
on the question of Allen’s sanity at the time of the offense. The
jury found him sane at that time and the Tlinois Supreme Court
affirmed that finding. See People v. Allen, 37 Il. 2d 167.
At the time of Allen’s trial in 1957, the tests in Illincis for the
defendant’s sanity at the time of the criminal act were the
M’Naghten Rules supplemented by the so-called “irresistible impulse
test." People v. Carpenter, 11 Ill. 2d 60, 142 N. E. 2d 11. The:
tests for determining a defendant's sanity at the time of trial were
. that “(hJe should be capable of understanding the nature and object
of the proceedings against him, his own condition in reference
to such proceedings, and have sufficient mind to conduct his defense
in a rational and reasonable manner,” and, further, that “he should
be capable of co-operating with his counsel to the end that any
available defenses may be interposed.” People v. Burson, 11 TW.
2d 360, 369, — N.E. 2d —, —.
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