Commonwealth v. Ragone

Opinion by

Mr. Justice Maxey,

There are twenty-three assignments of error before us but the central or planetary error to which all the others are merely satellitesimal is that a youth admittedly insane was forced to go through the travesty of a trial. The “trial” of one in the mental condition of the defendant irresistibly invites that characterization.

On or about June 23, 1933, William Reilly, a boy nine years of age, was murdered in Delaware County. He had been stabbed several times in the abdomen with an ice pick. Richard Ragone, the appellant, who was at the time four months under…