Wilk quoted from an article by Dr. Ball in a medical journal, “‘The whole past life of the patient, his diseases and accidents, his schooling, environment, and character, and the entire history of his antecedents should be examined’.”
“Yes!” Dr. Ball readily agreed. “In a case for treatment. But this is not necessary, if one seeks only to determine their legal sanity.”
Wilk smiled. “We too consider them legally sane. We are here to ask for mitigation on the grounds of a medical condition of mental abnormality which probably could not be observed in a rapid examination. Did you make any notes on that occasion, Dr. Ball?”
A few. Dr. Ball brought out a folded sheet of paper; he deciphered and read aloud a scrawled word, “Zuganglich”.
“What does that mean?”
“It is a term used in psychiatry, for ‘accessible’. We first determine whether the patient can be reached in normal communication, or whether, as it is popularly put, he is too far gone.”
“And they were not too far gone?”
“Not at all. Completely Zuganglich.” Edgar Feldscher smiled.
Wilk asked, “You have other notes?” Yes, but the rest of his notes he had to confess he couldn’t make out. Dr. Ball chuckled, joining the general laughter.
Then, coming to the fantasies, hadn’t the doctor written somewhere that dreams and fantasies were the clues to the condition of the mind?
Why, yes, the professor agreed, with a new air of interest. But persistent fantasies wouldn’t indicate a disorder unless of course they reached the delusional stage.
“That is the stage where fantasy becomes confused with fact?”
Yes, when a fantasy was accepted as reality, as actually happening, there was delusion.
A young man, a college graduate, playing cops-and-robbers in the street, following his uncle to his door, wasn’t he acting out a fantasy and making it real?
The professor smiled. “It could appear so,” he said. “But you would have to know just how far he was lost in his little game.”
Wilk swung now to another form of derangement. An obsession, an obsessive belief – didn’t that reach up to the state of a delusion? For example, there were people who believed absolutely in religious visions and predictions, believed themselves to be saints and messiahs.
“Oh, yes,” Dr. Ball agreed, “there are people who are confined to insane asylums because of such delusions.”
“Now, couldn’t the same thing be the result of a philosophical belief?”
“If one believed strongly enough.” But Wilk didn’t ask the expected, linking question. Instead he asked whether there were states of mind, short of mental disorder or insanity, that would alert one for watching and that would even call for treatment.
Yes, yes, indeed, Dr. Ball said.
Their pleasant discussion was over. Dr. Ball’s real conclusions, if one thought about them seriously, were precisely those of the defence.
It was the second of the State’s alienists who brought out, in Wilk, a kind of savage brutality that we had until then associated only with Horn.
The witness was Dr. Stauffer, pudgy, self-assured. A familiar figure in the courts, Tom told me. “Makes his living testifying for the State.” Yet his record was impressive enough; he had been head of the department of psychology at the University of Illinois; he had been in charge of the psychiatric laboratory at the State Hospital for the Insane.
There seemed scarcely any point to his lengthy recital, until Dr. Stauffer came to Artie’s description of the ride with the body. “He told how they got to a blind road near a Russian Orthodox cemetery. He related that there they stripped the body from the waist down, took off the pants, shoes, and stockings. Now, there is a little matter here I would like to speak of just before you and the attorneys, if I may, Judge.”
The group of lawyers huddled around the judge’s bench. The doctor sanctimoniously lowered his voice. “It was because of this circumstance of undressing the boy just from the waist down.” He had made that the occasion to ask a great many questions along the line of sexual perversion and homosexual practices.
It was clear that he had got nothing out of the boys. He had raised the question of abuse, undoubtedly with Horn’s approval, purely for the effect of suggestion. Wilk’s face had become dark, clotted.
Stauffer continued with his description of the burial, piling on the details. “Straus stated that the body was stiff and the eyes were glazed. They let the body down easily into the culvert so that it would make no splash…”
He had asked Artie Straus if at any time he could have withdrawn, “and he stated that he always hated a quitter, that he had no use for a coward. Mr. Steiner made practically the same answer.”
Categorically, the doctor testified that each defendant was sane, in excellent possession of his faculties, including the faculty of judgment.
Horn asked him then whether he was familiar with the “new psychology”. Certainly, said Dr. Stauffer, he was entirely familiar with it, but he did not believe in it at all. Why, if the defence was successful here, every criminal would start studying dream books!
Through the laughter, Wilk advanced upon Dr. Stauffer, head down. He halted at some distance, as if to avoid contamination.
How long was it since Dr. Stauffer had been in the actual practice of medicine, where he might be trying to help someone?
Horn objected.
The question amended, Dr. Stauffer replied that he had not for ten years been in practice, being occupied with teaching and research.
“In fact, you have been almost fully occupied testifying for the courts?”
Stauffer admitted that he was in considerable demand by the State.
“And what is your usual fee?” Wilk wrung out of him that it was fifty dollars per day. “And what are you receiving in this case?” It was “the same as all the others, two hundred and fifty.”
Wasn’t it a fact that he had refused to testify unless he received this raise?
Horn was livid. Angrily, Stauffer replied, “Why shouldn’t I get the same as the others?”
Just as angrily, and just as hopelessly put in the wrong, he declared that he didn’t need more than two hours to make an examination. And as for the examination taking place in a crowded room, no matter!
“You heard Dr. Ball state that the conditions and the time limit permitted only the beginning of an examination. Do you disagree?”
Dr. Stauffer shrugged. He had every respect for Dr. Ball, but his own experience with criminals was far more extensive, so he could see through them more readily. “Nobody from the defence had got to them as yet, to tell them what not to say!”
“Exactly!” Wilk roared. “They were without defence, without help, and for two hours you could do as you pleased with them.”
“Two minutes would be enough to see through those smart alecks!”
Wilk picked up a text book. Had Dr. Stauffer studied in Germany?
Yes.
Did he recognize Dr. Bleuler as an authority on nervous disorders?
Dr. Stauffer granted that Dr. Bleuler was a man of high reputation.
Wilk read, “‘A negative finding without prolonged observation never proves a patient to be normal.’” Did Dr. Stauffer agree with that statement?
Stauffer snorted. As a matter of fact, he had observed the criminals right here in court, day after day. They were perfectly oriented.
Wilk read another passage from Bleuler. “‘To suppose that people are well mentally because they are oriented in time, space, and presence is just as naïve as to suppose a person is well mentally because he is not a raving maniac.’”
If they were mentally sick, Dr. Stauffer retorted, then they certainly had a good time with their supposed illness, sitting there laughing.
And didn’t that demonstrate their emotional deficiency?
“No,” said Stauffer. “It shows they’re heartless killers, that’s all.”