Valentine Shortis Insanity Defense

The insanity defence is one of the most controversial topics in the legal system, used by many criminal defendants as an excuse for their unlawful activities. In fact, the Canadian legal system has experienced this in the case of Valentine Shortis, an Irish Immigrant who was convicted of killing two men, injuring one and attempted murder on March 1, 1895. Charged with murder and sentenced to death, Valentine’s Lawyer St. Pierre argued that he suffered from insanity, such as his inability to distinguish right from wrong. There was evidence from Shortis's friends, family, and neighbours who claimed that Shortis was arrogant and mischievous person. According to Friedland, the crown (Macmaster) stated that “he did many eccentric, rash and even

One of Shortis’s friends (McVicar) claimed that Valentine spoke about robbing the mill many times. It’s apparent that Valentine's intention was to conspire and contrive a plan with McVicar to rob the mill. In fact, the case revealed that Valentine had some financial problems and his parents refused to send money to him (p. 5). Here we see that Shortis had an intent to rob the mill and obtaining money was his motive. Since he had an intent and motive to rob the mill, he was considered not legally

49). He then shot and killed Loy, who was about to call a doctor for help. Still, Valentine's lawyers claimed that he was “labouring under natural imbecility”(p. 86) and “he did not know the quality of the act and of knowing that such act was wrong” (p. 109). The fact that Valentine went back to Wilson’s body and shot him countless times to ensure that he was dead, proved he was not feeble-minded. As stated in the book, Shortis lit a fire in attempted to smoke Arthur and Lowe from the vault (p. 6). This indicates that Valentine knew what he was doing and willfully tried to murder these men too. The fact that he kept going back and forth from the vault to Wilson, each time giving him an opportunity to reflect on his actions, further proved that he was sane during the crime.

There was a moment in the book when Valentine said to Smith “shoot me, or lend me your revolver and I will”(p. 44). This quotation proved that Shortis knew he had done something wrong, thus, surrendering. Why did Valentine surrender if he had no knowledge of his actions and why did he ask for the revolver in the first place when a chisel was hidden in his coat. Here, Valentine made a desperate attempt to make Smith defenceless. If he had given up the gun, he too would have died. The simple statement of Valentine telling Smith to kill him, showed that