Chap. 45.—An ACT to amend and re-enact section 1045 of the Code of Virginia, as
last amended by an act approved March 19, 1920, relating to insane and feeble-
minded persons. [S B 14]

Approved February 24, 1932

1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That section
ten hundred and forty-five of the Code of Virginia, as last amended by
an act approved March nineteenth, nineteen hundred and twenty, be
amended and re-enacted so as to read as follows: |

Section 1045. When any person, confined in the department for
the criminal insane at the proper hospital and charged with crime
subject to be tried therefor, or convicted for crime, shall be restored
to sanity the superintendent shall give notice thereof to the clerk of
the court by whose order he was confined, and deliver him in obedience
to the proper precept ; provided, no person who has been convicted for
a crime punishable by death shall be so delivered until the said super-
intendent and the superintendent of one of the other State hospitals
for the insane or colonies for feeble-minded, to be designated by the
commissioner of State hospitals, concur in the opinion that the said
person has been restored to sanity. When any person charged with or
indicted for any offense which may be punishable by death, has been
adjudged insane, both at the time of the offense and at the time when,
but for such insanity, he would have been tried, shall be ordered by the
court to be committed to the department for the criminal insane at the
proper hospital, such person shall not be discharged therefrom until
the superintendent of that hospital and the superintendents of two of
the other hospitals or colonies, designated by the commissioner of State
hospitals, shall be satisfied, after thorough examination, that such per-
son has been restored to sanity and muy be discharged without danger
to others, and provided that such discharge is given upon the consent
and advice of the commissioner of State hospitals and the special
board of directors of the hospital in which such person is confined ;
provided, however, that no person shall, in any case enumerated in this
act, be denied the right of a trial by jury as to his sanity or mentality,
if he or she shall so elect.

This section shall be so construed as to apply to a feeble-minded, as
well as to an insane person, and in its application to a feeble-minded
person, the term, “adjudged insane,” shall mean adjudged “feeble-
minded,” and word “insanity,” shall mean “feeble-mindedness,” and
the term “restored to sanity” shall mean such improvement of mental
condition that such feeble-minded person could be discharged without
danger to himself or others.