Commonwealth v. Gould

*673Abrams, J.

On July 17, 1978, the defendant fatally stabbed his former girl friend. After a witness to the attack intervened and told the defendant to stop, he mumbled, “I attacked her. She was impure . . . [ijmpure, impure.” For more than five years preceding the fatal stabbing the defendant had suffered from constant, fixed delusions in which he believed that he had a divine mission on earth and that he was required to kill his girl friend because she was “impure.” After a trial at which criminal responsibility was the sole issue, the jury convicted the defendant of murder in the first…