24 SEPTEMBER 1954, Page 29

THIS was the case whose oddest legal point was the

appearance in the dock of a man already committed to Broadmoor Institu- tion as 'unfit to plead' when charged with the murder of two earlier victims. During a brief escape from Broadmoor he repeated tho id';ntical crime—the strangulation of a young girl. The trial was disrupted on the second day through a juryman's indiscretion and had to be re-started; there were par- ticularly t wtuous arguments on the permis- sibility of certain additional evidence and there was a more varied and voluminous body of medical evidence than in any previous case turning on the McNaghten Rules. These features give the case its unique place in. criminological annals; the editing here conforms to the standards established in earlier volumes of the series.

A. V. C.