EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES, in legal practice, those circumstances, in connec tion either with the position of the prisoner or with the act alone, which are taken into con sideration by the court in mitigation of the punishment. The previous good character of the person convicted may always be proved as a arcusnstance giving him some claim to leniency of punishment. Besides character, there are other circumstances, the presence of which in a case sometimes serves to mitigate the sentence, sometimes to take the act done out of the category of crime altogether. One is youth. Thus, no act done by any person under seven years of age is a cnnie. Defective mental power in the person convicted will always be considered in determining the sever ity of his sentence. Such disease of mind as prevents a man from knowing that the act he does is wrong will excuse him from the consequences of an act otherwise criminal. Drunkenness, when voluntary, is not held an extenuating circumstance, but if a man is made drunk by the f raudulent administration of drugs, and while under their influence kills another, not knowing what he does, the act is not a crime. It is a good excuse for persons charged with crime that they have been com pelled by others by threats of death or great violence to do the criminal act; and the acts of a married woman in presence of her husband are presumed to be done under his coe'rcion, and so, unless the presumption is rebutted, will be excused. Ignorance of the law is no excuse
for an offense. Nor, in general, will ignorance of facts be a good excuse, though in particular circumstances it might form a valid defense. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen states, in lan guage purposely vague,. to represent the vague ness of the law, a pnnciple under which the stress of necessity is held to excuse acts other wise criminal: °An act which would other wise be a crime may in some cases be excused if the person accused can show that it was done only in order to avoid consequences which could not otherwise be avoided, and which, if they had been followed, would have inflicted on hitn or on others whom he was bound to protect inevitable and irreparable evil, that no more was done than was reasonably necessary for that purpose, and that the evil inflicted by it was not disproportionate to the evil avoided.°