People v. Sherwood

The defendant stands convicted of murder in the first degree. On the date of the homicide she was twenty-seven years of age. The victim was her own infant son aged two years and three months. On August 20, 1935, under circumstances hereinafter to be stated, she put the child in his carriage, walked three and one-half miles from her lodging place to a secluded spot off the main highway, and, in a small pool of water eight inches deep, held his head under water until he was drowned.

The sole defense was that at the time of the crime she was laboring under such a defect of reason as not to know…