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theses

Using a variety of court cases as evidence, this study focuses on several competing, and often unresolved, models of responsibility for crimes related to intoxication that emerged in nineteenth century America. Drunkenness truly was “no excuse” for crime in the early years of the nineteenth century; however, changes in the fields of medicine, the law, and society created the circumstances under which such a defense became more viable, and certainly more prevalent, if only intermittently successful, by mid-century. American courts began, in the 1820s, to accord an expanded exculpatory value to intoxication due to several factors: 1. The medicalization of alcohol use from delirium tremens to dipsomania to inebriety created categories of mental illness from which to argue for limited or even absent responsibility under the law. 2. American law, beginning in 1794, allowed for a greater recognition of the issue of intent in crimes, in particular, creating statutory degrees of violent crimes that were dependent on establishing appropriate mens rea. Evidence of intoxication could be used to disprove intent and thus lower the charge to second degree. 3. The cautionary tale of a good man ruined by the effects of alcohol was an important tool used by the early temperance movement as it sought to curb the pernicious effects of drinking in a nation rife with alcohol. In much of the temperance literature, “demon rum” and the “rum-seller” often joined the drunkard as accomplices in crime. Somewhat ironically, the demonization of alcohol and those who sold it allowed for a narrative that mitigated the actions of the drunkard himself. By the post-bellum period, a backlash, led by medical professionals and buttressed by an influential temperance movement, materialized, but the groundwork had been laid for considering what today is more likely to be called a defense of “diminished capacity.”

ETD_5326

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Michele Rotunda

doi:10.7282/T3PG1Q23

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.