Imbeciles

by Adam Cohen

  Strode gave his bill—formally titled An Act to Provide for the Sexual Sterilization of Inmates of State Institutions in Certain Cases—to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Courts, Marshall Booker, to introduce in February 1924. Dr. Priddy and Dr. DeJarnette both testified in favor of it. Governor Trinkle also used his influence in the legislature in support of the bill.

  Whether or not there was a change in popular opinion, as Dr. Priddy had said, there had clearly been a change in legislative opinion. Strode’s bill became law on March 20, 1924, after passing the state senate unanimously, and the House of Delegates by a vote of 75–2. Dr. Priddy’s and Dr. DeJarnette’s years of persistence had paid off. “This proves Abraham Lincoln’s theory that ‘nothing is ever settled until it is settled right,’” Dr. DeJarnette would later say.

  Even though eugenic sterilization was now the law in Virginia, no sterilizations were being scheduled. The State Hospital Board accepted Strode’s advice, and it decided that none would be carried out until the law could be reviewed by the courts. Proceeding as Strode advised required that a challenge be brought to the new law’s constitutionality. It was unlikely opponents of the law would emerge to do this on their own. There was no organized opposition in Virginia to eugenic sterilization, and there were no national advocacy groups working against such laws. Nor was there reason to expect any of the inmates in Virginia’s state hospitals would be as assertive about their rights as the Mallorys had been. It would be up to the new law’s supporters to put together a test case—and one that they could win.

  • • •

  Dr. Priddy became the architect of the case challenging the constitutionality of the law he had just worked years to enact. In taking on the assignment, he was thrusting himself onto a larger stage. When he began, Dr. Priddy was only seeking the legal authority to carry out sterilizations at his own institution without the risk of being sued. Now he was putting together a case that could go as far as the United States Supreme Court. Dr. Priddy, who had been born in rural Lunenburg County and educated in a four-room schoolhouse, might be helping to establish eugenic policy for the whole nation—and, given the role the United States played in setting eugenic policy, for the world.

  True to his methodical nature, Dr. Priddy moved deliberately through a checklist of necessary steps. He began by obtaining the approval of the colony’s Special Board of Directors and the State Hospital Board, and he persuaded the hospital board to finance the litigation. Dr. Priddy had to retain a lawyer, but there was no real doubt about who that would be. Strode had been critical to founding the colony, and he had done its legal work for years. Dr. Priddy and Strode were also friends of long standing. And Strode knew more about Virginia’s sterilization law than anyone.

  The next big task was choosing someone to sterilize and to put at the center of the case. Dr. Priddy and his allies had a large pool to choose from. The law applied to all inmates of the state’s five mental hospitals who were afflicted with “hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy.” Based on the statutory criteria, there were thousands who qualified.

  It mattered a great deal, however, who was chosen. As Strode had explained, eugenic sterilization laws were meeting with considerable resistance in courts across the country, and it was far from certain that the Virginia law would survive. The law’s supporters needed a subject who would make the best possible case for their side—someone a court would decide was well deserving of eugenic sterilization. Dr. Priddy had hundreds of his own inmates to choose from: male and female, young and old, epileptic and feebleminded.

  It did not take him long, however, to set his sights on Carrie, who had been at the colony for less than two months. There were many reasons she was ideal. To begin with, she presented a strong record of feeblemindedness, and Dr. Priddy had the medical records to prove it. Carrie had been legally designated as feebleminded by a Commission of Feeblemindedness, after a hearing conducted by a judge and two doctors. The colony had then made its own assessment that Carrie was a moron. If called on to testify, Dr. Priddy could personally vouch for her mental defects.

  Dr. Priddy also had what he believed was strong evidence of mental deficiency in her family. Not only had her mother been declared a moron, but his own staff had done the diagnosis, and again Dr. Priddy could personally testify to it. He also knew about eight more Bucks and Harlowes at the colony, all from Albemarle County, and more inmates with those names from nearby counties. Dr. Priddy was not certain of Carrie’s relation to these people, but he believed they created a picture of a family with hereditary feeblemindedness.

  As an unwed mother, Carrie also embodied the nightmare vision the eugenicists were promoting of feebleminded women—that they were oversexed and excessively fertile. Having already given birth once before the age of eighteen, the eugenicists could argue, there was no telling how many more feebleminded children she would bring into the world if she was not sterilized.

  Carrie’s youth was also an advantage. With so many childbearing years ahead of her, Carrie would have to be locked up at the colony for years if she was not sterilized. That would be costly for the taxpayers and it would be burdensome for Carrie, who would be denied her liberty far longer than a woman toward the end of her reproductive years.

  After settling on Carrie for the test case, Dr. Priddy began taking the steps the law required to sterilize her. He petitioned the circuit court in Amherst County, the county in which the colony was located, to appoint a legal guardian. On July 21, 1924, the court named Robert G. Shelton, a local lawyer. Shelton was authorized to bring a challenge to the law on Carrie’s behalf, and the court decreed that he be compensated at the rate of $5 a day, not to exceed a total of $15.

  Shelton would prove to be Carrie’s guardian in name only. The requirement that a guardian be appointed was supposed to ensure that an adult with full mental capacity would vigorously protect Carrie’s interests in the upcoming proceedings, but that was not how it worked out. Shelton, who was likely well known to Dr. Priddy and Strode, became an active participant in the test case the two men were putting together. He would hire a good friend of Dr. Priddy and Strode’s to represent Carrie, and he would stand by as Carrie’s interests—her ability to have children and her bodily integrity—were sacrificed to the eugenic cause.

  With the guardian appointed, the next step was for Dr. Priddy to formally request authorization to sterilize Carrie. The law required him to submit a petition to the colony’s Special Board of Directors “stating the facts of the case and the grounds of his opinion” that sterilization was warranted. The board was then required to hold a hearing to receive testimony and consider evidence. The law specified that the inmate had to be given advance notice and had a right to be present.

  On July 24, Dr. Priddy petitioned the colony’s board for permission to perform a salpingectomy on Carrie. Tracking the language of the new law, he said he believed it was in society’s interest and her interest that she “should be sexually sterilized, she being afflicted with feeble-mindedness.” It was in society’s interest because if she reproduced, “by reason of the laws of heredity” she would “in all probability . . . transmit to her offspring some form of mental defectiveness.” It was in Carrie’s interest because she could then be released to “enjoy the liberty and blessings of outdoor life.” Dr. Priddy also said, without explaining how he knew it, that Carrie “desires” that the sterilization “be performed.”

  The colony’s Special Board of Directors set a hearing for September 10, 1924. Carrie, her mother, and her guardian were notified of the date and time, as the law required, and invited to attend. The colony was scrupulous about following the law’s procedural protections, which were designed to protect the rights of the person being considered for sterilization. There was only one problem: Carrie had no idea what was going on.

  • • •

  On September 10, the colony hosted
Virginia’s first eugenic sterilization hearing. The Special Board of Directors convened and sat in judgment. Dr. Priddy attended as petitioner, represented by his counsel, Strode. Carrie was present, accompanied by her guardian, Shelton.

  The chairman of the colony’s board swore in Dr. Priddy and the testimony began. Under questioning by Strode, Dr. Priddy recited his qualifications, including his years at Southwestern State Hospital. During his tenure as superintendent of the colony, he said, he had observed and treated more than six hundred mentally defective female inmates.

  Strode quickly moved to the heart of the matter. What was it about Carrie Buck’s situation, he asked Dr. Priddy, that led him to the “opinion that it would be better both for her and for society” if she were sterilized? Dr. Priddy said Carrie had been under his care and observation since she arrived at the colony on June 4. He had administered the Binet-Simon test, he said, and had “ascertained that she is feebleminded of the lowest grade Moron class.” While her chronological age was eighteen, Dr. Priddy said, her mental age was just nine. Dr. Priddy also testified that Carrie was a “moral delinquent,” apparently a reference to her having given birth out of wedlock.

  Dr. Priddy’s claim that Carrie had tested as “the lowest grade Moron class” was one of a number of false or misleading statements he made at the hearing. In the “History and Clinical Notes” he prepared when she arrived, Dr. Priddy stated that Carrie was a “Middle grade Moron,” not the “lowest grade,” as he now testified. He did not inform the board of his previous evaluation.

  Dr. Priddy also failed to provide the board with information in the colony’s records that contradicted the claim that Carrie was mentally defective. He did not mention that she had successfully reached the sixth grade, a fact that he had recorded in the “History and Clinical Notes” just a few months earlier, when Carrie arrived. Nor did he tell the board that Carrie’s “practical knowledge and general information” were “about up to that of her class and opportunity,” which he had also written in his notes on Carrie’s arrival, before she was at the center of his test case.

  As Strode continued his questioning, Dr. Priddy made his case that Carrie belonged to a line of mentally and morally defective people. He testified that Carrie was, according to the sworn depositions that were part of her commitment papers, “of unknown paternity.” He said that Carrie’s mother, Emma, had been a “feebleminded patient” at the colony for several years, and “of low mental grade.” And he told the board that “according to the depositions” that had been used in committing Carrie to the colony, she had “one illegitimate mentally defective child.”

  Once again, Dr. Priddy’s testimony contained critical falsehoods. Saying that Carrie’s paternity was “unknown” cast further aspersions on the family—but it was not true. The depositions of John and Alice Dobbs at the time of Carrie’s commitment stated that Carrie’s father was “Frank Buck.” In his “History and Clinical Notes,” Dr. Priddy had recorded on Carrie’s admission that her father was “Frank Buck,” who had been “accidentally killed.” Dr. Priddy did not tell the board this, or explain why his account of her parentage had changed.

  Dr. Priddy’s testimony about Carrie’s daughter, Vivian, was particularly egregious. By presenting her as feebleminded, it strengthened the colony’s case that Carrie was part of a defective line and had to be sterilized to prevent more feebleminded offspring. The testimony, however, was false. At the time of Carrie’s commitment hearing, on January 23, 1924, Vivian had not yet been born, so there could have been no depositions attesting that she was mentally defective. When Dr. Priddy testified at the sterilization hearing, Vivian was less than six months old, and no one had attempted to test her for mental defects.

  Dr. Priddy then delivered his main appeal to the board: that it would be best for both society and Carrie if she was “protected against child-bearing by sterilization.” When Strode asked for his expert recommendation, Dr. Priddy said unequivocally: “I am of the firm belief and opinion that to prevent Carrie Buck bearing offspring is a duty to her and society.” Without the operation she would have to remain in the custody of an institution for the next thirty years. If she was sterilized, he testified, “she could leave the institution, enjoy her liberty and life and become self-sustaining.”

  When Strode was done, Shelton offered a brief, spiritless cross-examination. He did not challenge any of Dr. Priddy’s inaccuracies: the misstating of his client’s level of mental disability, the failure to mention her academic success, the false statement that her paternity was unknown, or the outrageous statement about her daughter. He made no attempt to introduce Carrie’s colony files, or even Dr. Priddy’s “History and Clinical Notes” on Carrie, which were at odds with much of his testimony.

  Shelton’s few questions were instead so poorly composed that they allowed Dr. Priddy to strengthen the colony’s case. Shelton asked what assurances could be given that the operation would not be dangerous. Dr. Priddy was able to respond that “salpingectomy is as harmless as any surgical operation can be” and that he had performed or assisted in eighty to one hundred sterilizations of women who needed their tubes removed due to pelvic disease with no ill effect.

  Shelton asked if there was a course of training Carrie could be given, instead of sterilization, that would allow her to be released from the colony without harming society or herself. Dr. Priddy was able to respond that it would be “an impossibility” since her “self-control and moral conception” were “organically lacking.” Shelton let the answer stand uncontested.

  Carrie’s sterilization hearing ended with a single question posed directly to her. “Do you care to say anything about having this operation performed on you?” Strode asked, pointedly not saying what “this operation” was. “No, sir,” Carrie responded. “I have not, it is up to my people.”

  It was poignant response. It suggested that Carrie thought she had “people” looking out for her. She may have believed Dr. Priddy and the other staff at the colony had her best interests at heart, even though they were trying to forcibly sterilize her. She might have thought Shelton was fighting for her, though his performance at the hearing suggested otherwise. Despite Carrie’s apparent confusion about the situation, neither Shelton nor Strode followed up to clarify what she was thinking.

  No one made any effort to determine that Carrie understood that the operation being contemplated would make it impossible for her to have children—not Strode, not Shelton, not Dr. Priddy, and not the members of the Special Board of Directors. The one question put to her at the hearing appeared to be intentionally phrased to avoid informing her of what was being done to her. Nonetheless, the official record the colony created after the hearing stated that “this girl” was “desirous of taking advantage of the Sterilization Law.”

  The Special Board of Directors rendered its decision on September 30. It determined that “by the laws of heredity” Carrie was “the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring.” The board also found that Carrie could be sterilized without harming her health, and that performing the operation would promote her welfare and the general welfare of society. The board granted Dr. Priddy’s petition, and ordered him to have Carrie sterilized by salpingectomy.

  As the new law required, the board gave Carrie thirty days to appeal its order. The law’s supporters wanted Carrie to appeal, so they would have their test case. The decision about whether to appeal, however, lay not with Dr. Priddy and Strode—who had prevailed before the board—but with Carrie and Shelton. If Carrie really was “desirous of taking advantage of the Sterilization Law,” as the colony claimed, there would be no reason for Shelton to appeal. But Shelton did appeal the board’s ruling, in a motion filed on October 3, 1924, with the Amherst County Circuit Court.

  In filing the appeal, Shelton was creating a test case—exactly what Dr. Priddy and Strode wanted. In a letter to an expert witness, Dr. Priddy was open about the collusion. Carr
ie’s “guardian at our request is taking an appeal from the action of the Board,” he wrote, “in order that we may test the constitutionality through our State Courts, even to the Supreme Court of the United States.”

  In his appeal, Shelton objected to the board’s decision to sterilize Carrie as not supported by the evidence. More significantly for the purpose of the test case, Shelton also objected that Virginia’s new eugenic sterilization law was unconstitutional. The appeal claimed that the statute did not provide due process of law, denied inmates of state institutions equal protection of the law, and imposed cruel and unusual punishment. While the appeal was pending, the sterilization order was automatically stayed.

  Shelton hired Irving Whitehead, a lawyer with deep roots in Amherst County, to handle the appeal. The choice of Whitehead was another indication that Dr. Priddy and Strode were likely making all of the major decisions in the case—both for their side and for Carrie’s. Whitehead had extraordinarily close personal and professional connections to the colony and to the people trying to sterilize Carrie, and it would soon become clear that he was working for them, not for his nominal client.

  Whitehead’s most long-standing ties were to Strode, and they went back to childhood. The two men had been boyhood friends growing up on neighboring farms in Amherst County, and their bond continued into adulthood, when they practiced law in the same swath of west-central Virginia. Whitehead and Strode were both involved in founding the colony—in its early years Whitehead served on the Special Board of Directors while Strode handled its legal work.

  Whitehead became close to Dr. Priddy through his association with the colony. He served on the colony’s board when it selected Dr. Priddy to be the first superintendent, and the two men worked together on colony business, including taking a joint trip to Indiana to investigate its eugenic sterilization program. In April the colony had recognized Whitehead’s role in its history by co-naming a new facility for male inmates, the Dew-Whitehead Building, in his honor. Whitehead had moved to Baltimore to take a position with a bank, but he remained in contact with Dr. Priddy.