Anatomy of a Murder (49 page)

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Authors: Robert Traver

BOOK: Anatomy of a Murder
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When, after the noon recess, Max Battisfore had notified me it was time, he lingered in the conference room until the Lieutenant and Laura had walked on ahead toward the courtroom. He spoke rapidly. “Look, Polly,” he blurted, “something's cooking, I don't know what, but I just found out from Sulo Kangas that our friend Dancer's been interviewing my prisoners since yesterday. Sees 'em alone in Mitch's office, one at a time. Of course I suppose I couldn't have stopped him but I thought I'd let you know.”
“Thanks, Max. Do you know what it's all about?”
“Not exactly, but I naturally figure it's about this case. You can expect just about anything from that little guy. And you can bet it won't be good. I gotta go.”
“Thanks for the tip, Max. I'll be expecting anything.” I closed my eyes and sighed and grabbed up my brief case and lurched out the door. What was the relentless Mr. Dancer up to now?
 
“Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye!” Max bawled out, and the crowd, conditioned now to the ceremony of the gavel, arose like a raggedly obedient congregation and then slowly ebbed back into a thrall of silence. The waiting Judge looked down at the People's table. “Any rebuttal?” he said quietly.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Claude Dancer said, popping to his feet. “The People will call Dr. W. Harcourt Gregory,” whereupon the People's psychiatrist unwound his considerable height and strolled languidly stoop-shouldered to the stand, was earnestly sworn by Clovis Pidgeon, and sat coolly facing the body of the crowded and hushed courtroom. It was a mildly enervating experience just to look at him. Claude Dancer advanced slowly toward the witness, smiling as though to say: “Here, ladies and gentlemen, here at last is a psychiatrist that looks like a psychiatrist.”
“Your name, please?” he purred.
“W. Harcourt Gregory,” the witness replied in a precise and high-pitched voice, fleetingly fingering the ends of his mustache.
“What is your occupation?”
“Doctor of medicine.”
“Have you specialized in any particular field of medicine?”
“I have.”
“In what field?”
“Psychiatry.”
“For how long?”
“Approximately twenty-five years.”
“Will you please outline for us, Doctor, your medical and psychiatric training and experience?”
Dr. Gregory thereupon, like Dr. Smith, got himself through college and medical school, various graduate and post-graduate courses (including some impressive-sounding hitches in Paris and Vienna), and thence, evidently as fast as he could, unto the salaried staffs of various public mental institutions.
“And what, if any, is your present position, Doctor?”
“Medical superintendent of the Pentland State Hospital in lower Michigan.”
“And what kind of patients are treated there?”
“Those regarded as insane or feeble-minded.”
“And are you associated with any national psychiatric groups?”
The witness cleared his throat. “I am a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology,” he replied with the softness of great pride.
Claude Dancer then raised a paper that looked suspiciously like his copy of our hypothetical question and began to read it. As he read on my suspicions were confirmed: the clever little man was shooting
o
ur
precise hypothetical question at his psychiatrist, word for word. “Now, Doctor, assuming all the facts stated herein to be true, have you an opinion based upon reasonable psychiatric certainty as to whether or not it is probable that the hypothetical man was in a condition of emotional disorganization so as to be temporarily insane?”
“I have.”
“What is that opinion?”
“That the information given regarding the hypothetical lieutenant is clearly not sufficient to warrant a diagnosis of insanity.”
“Have you an opinion based upon a reasonable psychiatric certainty as to whether or not that hypothetical man under the facts stated in the hypothetical question was suffering from dissociative reaction?”
“I have.”
“What is your opinion?”
“I do not believe he was suffering from a dissociative reaction,” he said, thus calmly attempting to slay our main defense of irresistible impulse.
“What is your reason for that opinion?”
“A dissociative reaction is a severe type of psychoneurosis. Psychoneurosis is a condition of long standing. I feel certain that the hypothetical lieutenant would have shown either one or repeated upsets of a dissociative nature during the time or times of his combat service. None has been postulated.”
Under the further adroit questioning of Claude Dancer the witness proceeded to attempt to demolish our case. Yes, the hypothetical lieutenant could distinguish right from wrong; yes, he could understand and comprehend the nature and consequences of his acts; yes, the lieutenant was in possession of his faculties and was not dominated by his unconscious mind. I glanced sidewise at our young psychiatrist, who had hung his head. Claude Dancer pushed on.
“Now, Doctor, if those instances in the question as set forth stating that the hypothetical lieutenant had no memory of certain events were eliminated and it was substituted that he did have a memory of those events would that change your opinion?”
“No, sir; rather it would accentuate my opinion.”
“If in addition to the facts as stated in the hypothetical question it were assumed that the hypothetical lieutenant returned home and as stated in the question told his wife that he had shot the tavern proprietor, then went to the home of a deputized caretaker which was about thirty feet from his trailer, and told him that he had shot a man and that he wanted this deputy to take him into custody, and that a few hours later this same hypothetical lieutenant reported to a detective sergeant of the state police the details of an alleged sexual attack that had been previously related to him by his wife and stated that he considered it from all angles and made efforts to make sure that his wife was giving him true facts and that he had decided that a man who did that to his wife should not live, and then described how he had gone to the tavern, shot the proprietor, and returned home and turned himself in to the deputy who lived just thirty feet from the trailer,—assuming those additional facts, Doctor, would that change your opinion?”
“No. It would serve only to confirm that he was not legally or medically insane.”
Claude Dancer looked back at me, beaming. “Your witness,” he said. I glanced back at young Dr. Smith, who still sat with his head bowed and his hand over his eyes. His direst fears had been realized.
I arose and slowly advanced to destroy this man if I could. A grim thought suddenly assailed me. Though I had never held many illusions to the contrary, I was now struck solidly in the gut with the
notion of what a snarling jungle a trial really was; with the fact that despite all the obeisant “Your honors” and “may it please the courts,” despite all the rules and objections and soft illusion of decorum, a trial was after all a savage and primitive battle for survival itself.
“Doctor,” I began softly, “so you're a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology?”
“I am, sir,” he said proudly, delicately fingering his luxuriant mustache.
“Since your colleague Dr. Smith belongs to the same outfit might he not, were he disposed, also refer to himself as a diplomate?” I went on. I had swiftly to square
that.
Stiffly: “I assume so.”
Twitting softly, in an ascendant questioning voice: “Perhaps, Doctor, perhaps there is a shyer and more modest class of diplomates in your club?”
“Objection. Objection … .”
“Sustained,” the Judge swiftly ruled.
“How long have you been on the staffs of various public mental institutions, Doctor?”
The doctor pondered. “Twenty-one years,” he answered.
“And you head the staff of one now?”
. “That is correct.”
“Isn't it a fact, then, Doctor,” I pushed on, “that during most of your professional career, working as you have in public mental institutions, you have dealt largely with people who had already been adjudged insane by others?” (I had, if I could, to try to take some of the curse off his advantage in experience and years over our young psychiatrist. )
“Well, yes,” he admitted, because he had to; he had already clearly so testified.
“And a major portion of your work and experience then has been in determining when and if those patients had recovered or been restored to
sanity,
rather than in determining if they were insane, the form of that insanity, or how they became so?”
“Yes, sir, that and in trying to cure them.”
“And isn't it further true that all of the public mental institutions you have been connected with, including the one where you presently work, have had and now have long waiting lists of the mentally ill seeking admittance?”
I had struck a responsive chord. “It certainly is true, sir,” he said, nodding his thin head with a languid sort of emphasis. “The lack of proper facilities to accommodate our mentally ill, and the consequent dire overcrowding of existing facilities, is a disgrace to the state and the nation.”
My man was coming nicely. “And as a consequence of that overcrowding isn't it also true that only those persons with the most objectively advanced symptoms of insanity, those most socially difficult to handle or permit to remain at large, are precisely the ones most likely to be admitted to our asylums, including yours?”
He still did not quite see the drift. “Very true,” he agreed. “We naturally get only the most advanced cases.”
“So that it would further be true then, Doctor, would it not, that those psychiatrists who work in such public mental institutions would rarely if ever get to study or observe the more subtle and subjective types of mental illnesses?”
He saw the wind drift now but he was committed beyond all retreat. “Well,” he said, frowning, “yes, I suppose that is so.”
“There is no supposing about it, is there, Doctor?”
“Well, no, sir.”
“And that would include persons allegedly suffering from dissociative reaction, would it not?”
Resignedly now: “Yes. They would rarely be committed to a public mental institution.”
It was time now to get down to particulars. “Now, Doctor,” I asked, “when did you first lay eyes on the real and not the hypothetical Lieutenant Manion?”
“On Thursday morning of this week.”
I paused and pondered. “Let's see—up to now that's roughly two and one-half court days, is it not?”
Loftily patient: “It is, sir.”
“And did you see him at all outside of the courtroom during that time?”
“I did not.”
“Then may I assume, Doctor, that you did not conduct any personal examination of him?”
Dryly: “Rather obviously I did not, sir.”
“Nor did you conduct on him
any
of the various tests and whatnot that have been mentioned here by Mr. Dancer or by your colleague?”
“I did not.”
“Now you were present, Doctor, were you not, when Prosecutor Dancer cross-examined Dr. Smith this forenoon?”
“I was.” Again his fingers strayed to his mustache, of which he seemed inordinately fond.
“And did you hear Mr. Dancer question Dr. Smith rather extensively upon his failure”—I paused and consulted my notes—“upon his failure to give a Wechsler-Bellevue test, a Szondi test, a Bender-Gestalt test, a Rorschach psychodiagnostic examination, a thematic apperception test, various personality screening tests”—I paused, dutifully panting, elaborately out of breath—“and possibly one or two others which in the rush may have escaped me?”
Aggrieved: “Of course I heard it. I was sitting right here.”
“Yes, of course, it comes back to me now that you were here. And am I correct in assuming, Doctor, that Mr. Dancer got all this impressive-sounding lingo from you?”
Drawing back, offended: “Lingo?”
“Excuse me, Doctor—psychiatric terminology.”
Grieved over my flailing of the obvious: “Why, yes—yes of course I told him. Many otherwise highly competent
medical
doctors wouldn't be apt to know those terms.”
Crafty Claude Dancer saw the way the wind was blowing and he began stealthily to stalk me as I pressed on. “Then am I further correct in assuming, Doctor, that if you had had the opportunity to test and examine the defendant in this case you would have done the things and given the tests your colleague failed to do and give?”

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