The Guiteau Experts.

 Dear Liberty:

In your No. 12 there was an article attempting to discredit expert testimony as a means of determining the sanity of a homicide claiming to have been insane, on general principles, and with reference to the Guiteau case in particular. Having been assured that the writer was serious, and not merely showing off (1), I have read and pondered the article not less than six times, and the more I study it, the more clearly I see the assumptions to be as groundless as the reasoning is fallacious.

Since the publication, the verdict has been rendered by a jury more intelligent apparently than juries average, and what has transpired from them tends to show that they would have come to precisely the same conclusion without the expert testimony (2). The first misleading assumption is that all depends upon “the government experts,” when the truth is that the defence were as free to summon expert as the “people” were, and they did so call them, but failed to put some of them on the stand when it was found that they could not testify that they believed Guiteau insane at the time of the murder (3). The question is frantically asked: “Are we to hang a man on mere opinion’s simply because a certain number of superintendents of lunatic asylums believe him sane?” This is sheer assumption. We are to hang a man who deliberately kills his fellow man, if he is found guilty by a jury of his peers, after a fair trial, both the prisoner and the people having brought to the aid of the jury the judgments of those men who know what is known, much or little, of the manifestations which prove the mind to be so affected as to be unable to distinguish right from wrong or know the consequents of actions.

To reject expert testimony on the ground that experts do not or “cannot so communicate the grounds of their opinions as to enable other men to judge of their truth or error” would be absurd in regard to any question involving special training and long experience for its solution, but in a case confessedly the most difficult of all to decide the absurdity becomes gigantic (4). Would a jury of “ordinary men,” unsided by expert testimony, be likely to come to a just decision, if an insane man of little character had killed with great deliberation a popular and beloved public servant? Are we to hang a man in this country on the mere opinion of twelve ordinary men, who “never saw, handled, or examined a human mind, and can only guess at the causes of its mysterious and erratic operations?” (5) So long as murder is punished by hanging after conviction by a jury, assassins must be hanged either with or without expert testimony.

If I had had the misfortune to kill a man in a fit or insanity, I should much prefer to have my condition determined by experts rather than by men utterly ignorant of the insane manifestations of the human mind. If I were only playing insane, I should prefer, with Choate for my lawyer, to dispense with expert testimony, and I think most sane men looking coolly at it will agree with me (6).

I will not occupy your precious space with following up all the assumptions, because they are all of one family. Ex uno disce omnes. But I must examine the utterly unfounded assumption that Guiteau’s act has no explanation, and that “he had no rational prospect of gaining anything by Garfield’s death.” Murderers seldom have any reasonable prospect of gaining anything by the death of their victim, and if no one were to be punished for crime if it could be shown that his expectations of gain were not rational, very few criminals would ever be punished (7).

Guiteau is a man of inordinate vanity and ambition. When he was at Oneida, a traveling phrenologist examined his head and pronounced all his organs large and some very large. (This fact I have from one who was present.) This declaration seemed to aggravate his intolerable egotism and to stimulate his already unbalanced ambition. He considered himself a great lawyer, a theologian second to none, a religions teacher to supplement Christ, and a politician deserving the presidency. He sought a very modest place for such a man, a foreign mission. It was refused, perhaps with scant courtesy, His vanity was wounded, and his is not the first case of wounded self-love leading to crime. He believed there was danger of the disruption of the Republican party, even of civil war. The “removal” of Garfield would save the country and party, would bring his friend Arthur into the chair, and himself prominently before the country. The service rendered would be so great that the party brought into power would protect him from the consequences of his act and reward him handsomely. His own words show this to have been his belief. His vanity and ambition both were to be gratified (8). These motives and expectations, though not reasonable, were reasoned (9), and show no more insanity than always exists when a man deliberately violates the rights of others in hopes to benefit himself.

So long as such men as Guiteau exist, it will not do to allow a man to kill with impunity because he is an eminently pious person and sincerely believes himself to have a mission from God to set things straight at whatever cost to others (10). My own belief is that the fairest way to decide the question of insanity in criminal cases would be by a court of experts with a presiding judge to be selected for their experience, ability, and character, and to be impartial,— not called by one side and the other. The prisoner might be allowed a certain number of peremptory challenges; the question of sanity to be determined before trial by Jury (11).

To sum up the Guiteau case, leaving out the expert testimony, Guiteau’s own evidence, amply corroborated shows that he knew what he was doing,— namely, violating the law; why he was doing it,— namely, to save his party and the country by “removing” Garfield and making Arthur president; and the consequences,— namely, that he would be arrested and tried for murder (12).

Basis.

[(1) The article referred to appeared in our editorial columns. All of Liberty’s editorials are serious,— that is, except where sarcasm is evident, we mean what we say. “Basis,” as a subscriber, should know this. In insinuating that he needed, assurance to convince him of it, he did not realize that he was offering us an insult which he would afterwards regret.

(2) On the contrary, newspaper interviews reported some of the jurors as asserting that they were finally convinced of the prisoner’s sanity by the expert testimony put in by the prosecution.

(3) It is equally true that the prosecution failed to put upon the stand some of the experts which it had called when it was found that they could not testify that they believed Guiteau sane at the time of the murder.

(4) Absurd or not, it is loss dangerous than to make a human life dependent upon such ex cathedra utterances as are always purchasable in the expert market. Offer all the expert testimony you will, if it way be judged on its merits, but not a word that is not subject to question in the juror’s mind. No juror is justified in taking any man’s say-so in matters of opinion; he must require satisfactory explanation and demonstration of the same, or else disregard it entirely.

(5) Yes, if we are to hang him at all; provided always that it be understood with these twelve men that they are to give the prisoner the benefit of every reasonable doubt, not alone on the question of guilt, but on the question of sanity as well. For of these men it may at least be said that they are as exempt from the influence of corruption as precaution can make them.

(6) The editor of Liberty, on the other hand, would prefer, in any case, to entrust his destiny to the unanimous voice of twelve average mortals chosen by lot. But the matter is not one that can be settled by individual preferences.

(7) Of the violations of law that occur probably nine-tenths never come to public knowledge at all; of the remaining tenth only a certain proportion of the parties guilty of them are ever arrested; and of the latter fraction not all are convicted. If, then, the expectations of criminals are so often realized, how can “Basis” say that they are very seldom rational?

(8) It makes no difference whether his vanity and ambition were to be incidentally gratified or not. The weight of the evidence goes to show that Guiteau was actuated chiefly by patriotic motives and by a love of what seemed to him true and right. That he could frame and act upon so utterly irrational a theory as “Basis” outlines is the strongest proof of his insanity. “Basis” sustains our position better than we can ourselves.

(9) So are those of thousands of inmates of lunatic asylums. It is not claimed that Guiteau is an idiot.

(10) Certainly it will not. Prevent him, then, by all necessary means. But pray don’t cherish the groundless theory that hanging him will prevent other cranks from following Guiteau’s example. There are innumerable respects in which men with “missions” differ, but in one they all agree: they cannot be deterred from attempting to fulfil them by tear of personal injury or even of death.

(11) This is foreign to our argument. We were attacking the present system, not suggesting a new one. “Basis’s” proposition may be wise or unwise; we do not undertake to say.

(12) The question is not whether Guiteau knew all these things, but whether, viewed in connection with his past life, his estimate of the consequences of his act, as outlined by “Basis” in a previous paragraph, was not so altogether out of all reason as to establish the fact of his insanity and render him an unfit subject for the action of the criminal law. The affirmative answer to this question grows louder every day. The New York Graphic begins a recent leader with these words: “The majority of the people of the United States believe that Guiteau is a crazy man;” and at a late meeting of the New York Medico-Legal Society, held on the evening of March 1, all the physicians who spoke, including Doctors W. A. Hammond, George M. Beard, Ralph L. Parsons, E. C. Spitzka, Landon Gray, and others, agreed hat Guiteau is insane, and all but two agreed that he ought no to be hanged. “Basis” should read what these men have to say. Here are some samples:

Dr. Hammond. — On such a statement of facts [the statement embodied in the district attorney’s hypothetical question] and with a knowledge of the manner in which the prisoner conducted himself while being tried for his life, his abuse of his friends who were endeavoring to save him, his praise of judge and jury and opposing counsel at one time, and his fierce denunciation of them at another, his speech in his defence, his entire lack of appreciation of the circumstances surrounding him, his evident misapprehension of prominent persons in his behalf and of his eventual triumph, and the many other indications with which you are all familiar, especially his conduct after sentence was pronounced — I have no hesitation in asserting that Guiteau is the subject of reasoning mania, and hence a lunatic. There is not an asylum under the charge of any one of the medical experts for the prosecution that does not contain patients less insane than he.

Dr. Parsons. — It is said that these cases should be punished for the sake of example, but the sane are not influenced by such examples, and the few insane who might be cognizant of it would not be affected unless the punishment were brought directly to their knowledge. The motive leading to the evil act is incomprehensible to the patient himself. He cannot compare himself with others. But society should be protected. An adequate remedy is proposed - that a special verdict should be given in criminal trials of persons of unsound mind, stating the fact of insanity, and that such a person shall then be permanently confined in a proper house of detention for the insane. But it is not in accordance with my views of justice or public policy to punish the insane like sane criminals.

Dr. Spitzka. — I learned several thing in the Guiteau trial. I learned that a doctor who declines a summons can be forced by an attachment to leave his practice and travel 300 miles for and insufficient fee. I was also under the impression that an expert was a man of profound learning, but I have learned a simple recipe for making experts: Take a doctor whose practice has nothing to do with mental diseases; put him into the limited express for Washington with a lawyer who will coach him all the way; let him meet another lawyer there who will rehearse with him a series of questions and answers; and the expect can go upon the stand and swear there is no such thing as moral insanity. . . . . . I examined Guiteau carefully and found him full of delusions. He wanted a German mission, knowing nothing of the country or language, a French mission, with equal ignorance, and he was sure of success. His egoism and assurance are wonderful. When he mounts the scaffold, it will be in the firm belief and expectation that God Almighty will descend from heaven and cut the rope. . . . . . The most correct term for this case is the German one meaning original insanity. Guiteau was born as much o a lunatic as he is now, and there are the profound defects in his mental make-up of the group of lunatics to which he belongs. His family history is tainted. . . . . . This is a question not of retribution upon a disgusting and revolting wretch, but whether the example will frighten other lunatics. I say no. There have never been so many attempted assassinations of prominent men as in the few months immediately following the fatal 2nd of July. Three days after, McNamara tried to kill Mr. Blaine; three months afterward, a lunatic with a shot-gun attempted to shoot Governor Cornell; and not long ago a man armed with a “divine commission” and a revolver went to Washington to kill President Arthur. He was recognized as insane because he didn’t succeed. Guiteau did, and is therefore sane. This is a question also of national polity. We should have justice, and I ask if a republic cannot do what a monarchy did when Lord Erskine defended Hatfield.

Dr. Beard. — But what ought to be done with this man? His execution would be the greatest disgrace that ever befell this country, speaking from a scientific point of view. Even during his trial there were insane murderers who were not even tried, and others acquitted, with less evidence in their favor. Stickney in Colorado has just been acquitted on this ground, although there was no talk of insanity before, because he had friends and influence. But, as a principle, the hanging of Guiteau would be a return to the barbarism of the Middle Ages. At the time of the trial politicians got together in caucuses and swore he was sane. They knew, if they acknowledged he wasn’t sane, he would have to be acquitted. I was at one of these caucuses, and I know how the things were managed there, but I left it as soon as possible. We can only hang a crazy man by saying he is sane; so they swore his sanity straight through. All the evidence of hit insanity was beautifully marshalled in line, and then adduced to show that he was sane. The whole thing was analogous to the Salem witchcraft trials. There, also, the old dogma about knowing right from wrong prevailed. Insane murderers usually do know right from wrong, and it is because a murder is a terrible act that the insane man commits it. If we carry out the doctrine of condemning every man who knows right from wrong, there is no safety under the law. It will be like the hogcleaning machine in Chicago. The hog can’t stop after he once gets in until he emerges, scalded and cleaned, on the other side. So, if we start with the dogma of knowing right from wrong which Judge Cox announces, there is no stopping; trial must lead to conviction, and trial under such a dogma is conviction.

These man stand at the head of the medical profession. They are real experts in mental diseases, and express their views in language intelligible to the ordinary mind. But the prosecution excluded Dr. Beard from the stand by a technicality, and sought to make light of Dr. Spitzka’s testimony by sneering at him as a “horse-doctor.” We repeat, let “Basis” read these men. After he has done so, he may begin to realize that his is the singular view of this matter, and that Liberty, for once, is with the majority, unless, indeed, he should suspect that these men, too, are not “serious,” but “merely showing off.” — Editor Liberty.]