The Witch Hunter

A Choctaw man in Indian Territory was tried in a federal court for murdering a woman. He had killed two other people the same day. He believed in witches, drawing on his reading of Scripture, thought the woman was a witch, and believed he had a right to kill witches. His defence was insanity: that this belief was an insane delusion. The trial judge told the jury that if his belief came from a diseased brain he was not responsible and must be acquitted, but if it was merely an erroneous conclusion from his religious reading he was responsible. The prosecution maintained he was responsible for his acts. The defence argued on appeal that the judge's instructions confused the real defence of insane delusion and wrongly treated his belief as a mere mistaken religious opinion.