by David Wilson
Chapter 6
“The movies we love and admire are to some extent a function of who we are when we see them.”
Mary Schmich
Asa Keyes was not impressed by the expert witnesses presented by the defense. He believed the jury was equally skeptical. His approach to cross-examination was to ridicule the experts’ conclusions and to clearly show his contempt for their opinions in the way he asked his questions.
The defense’s effort to label William Edward Hickman as someone who suffered from dementia praecox was a risky tactic, because the concept itself was not fully accepted within the medical profession. It was generally described as cognitive disintegration, usually starting in late childhood. This disintegration generally involved loss of memory, and the inability to act on goal-related behavior. The unpopularity of the diagnosis was based on clinical observations that associated the condition with the patient’s belief they were possessed by spirits. The first in-depth study of dementia praecox was completed by Carl Jung as his doctoral thesis. In the study he explained as many symptoms as he could, but left the door open to the possibility of some type of external spirit influence. This aspect of the condition eventually led to the medical profession dismissing it as an acceptable diagnosis. Eventually the condition was relabeled as schizophrenia. During the Hickman trial, the medical profession was in the midst of a debate on the legitimacy of the condition as a true symptom of mental illness.
The district attorney presented eight expert witnesses who reflected his contempt for the diagnosis and who questioned the medical validity of the condition. Doctor after doctor appeared to reinforce what the jury was already feeling: the case for mental illness was based on Hickman’s desperate attempt to avoid taking responsibility for his crimes.
As the trial approached its end, both sides prepared to give their closing arguments. The judge ruled the co-counsels would be allotted time for a summation of the case. Each lawyer would try and persuade the jury members of the evidentiary points that favored their side of the case.
Mr. Murray went first with his summation of the prosecution’s case. He spoke methodically, introducing both facts and arguments that Asa Keyes could build on during his summation. Newspapers reported that the tall, handsome lawyer transfixed the jurors in a logical review of the testimony by summarizing the issues put forward by the state’s key witnesses. The lawyer presented the prosecution’s objections to the mental illness defense without sarcasm.
With his objective presentation, Mr. Murray set the stage for his boss to deliver a knockout punch emphasizing the emotional issues that were so abundant in the Hickman case. Mr. Walsh’s presentation to the jury, on the other hand, was not well-received by the newspapermen in the audience. They saw his presentation as neither clear nor precise. He often used a conspicuous display of verbiage to make a simple point and he also spoke on issues of good and evil in such abstract, convoluted terms that many of the newspapermen in the audience found it impossible to summarize the ideas in their columns. He even misrepresented evidence, which could have backfired if the prosecution felt it had been necessary to object. Walsh claimed Mr. Hickman stayed in his apartment all day after he murdered Marion Parker, when the evidence showed he had gone out to mail the ransom notes and to watch a movie.
On the other hand, Mr. Cantillon had a commanding presence when he spoke to the court. He regaled the jury for over an hour with an overview of two weeks’ of testimony. District Attorney Keyes sat back in his chair, watching and weighing the reactions of jury members to what was being said by the defense team.
Now, as to the statement of the issue of this case, the issue, as you all understand it, is simply this: whether or not this defendant is sane or insane. There is nothing else in the case. It is an extremely difficult matter to adjudicate upon, I know, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, due to the fact that the machinations of the human mind and the vagaries of the human mind are things that are very difficult to trace, but regardless of how difficult it is, or how unscientific the investigation must be, it is the only investigation that we have at present time; it is the only investigation that the law has given us; it is the only investigation that the legislature has provided for us; we must assume the burden here and now of determining whether or not the defendant, William Edward Hickman, at the time of the commission of these offenses alleged in the indictment, was sane or insane.
Now, the law is an inquisition relative to the sanity or insanity of the defendant, like the law in all of its other phases, attempts to be very correct. It attempts to draw a fine line; it attempts to set up a standard and a rule, and the rule that it has set up in this particular case is known as the “right and wrong test.” It is a rule which has been invoked for two or three hundred years, and regardless of what criticisms may be placed upon it, no one has introduced and no one has suggested a rule which would be better in its application, so, consequently, regardless of what you or I or anybody else may think of the rule relative to the right and wrong test, it is the rule that is incumbent upon us to measure the sanity or insanity of this boy.
There is nothing about the rule itself that is difficult to understand. It is in the application of this particular rule that we find difficulty arises because, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, to follow the effect of disease upon the human mind is something that is extremely difficult for you or for me to trace and, from the evidence as it has been presented here, we know it is something that is extremely difficult for even men of science, who have devoted their entire lives to the subject, to trace with any certainty, so we enter upon this proposition and we discuss this evidence, and we consider it, and we must be just about it, and we must accord to the defendant the mercy, and only the mercy, that the law accords to him, and that is the right to a calm and impartial deliberation upon these facts to determine whether or not at the time this act was committed he knew the difference between right and wrong.
It is true that the burden of proof in this case is upon the defendant. He must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that at the time he committed these acts as charged in the indictment that he was an insane person. That rule places him in a position that, under any other plea known to the law the burden of proof is upon the state, but this has reversed the order of things, this new law which is the forerunner, possibly, of many changes to come, has reversed the order of things, and has placed the burden of proving his insanity upon the defendant himself. It is an extremely difficult thing sometimes to assume this burden of proof, due to the fact that the resources of a defendant certainly are not in any measure comparable with those of the state of California. It is an extremely difficult thing to carry this burden of proof and to establish it by a preponderance of evidence when there is no money, where there are no friends, when there is no assistance in the case.
After discussing the details of the law Cantillon went on to say:
I feel that if you follow that instruction there is only one conclusion that you can come to, there is only one reasonable conclusion that you can reach, there is only one consistent conclusion that you can reach, and that is that William Edward Hickman is insane.
Insanity is a strange, a peculiar thing. I don’t know how to define it. It is like many other workings of the mind, it is difficult to define, because the organ that attempts to define it is the one that is also attempting to define its own condition; so it makes it an extremely difficult thing to do; but there is a type of insanity, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that we have attempted to establish here, a type of insanity that I think we are absolutely justified in advancing here, and that is the type of delusional insanity, where a delusion or a stimulation of the imagination, either through mental stress or thought the ravages of the diseased or imaginable parts of the mind is so stimulated so as to cause the imagination itself to create delusions that absolutely control the mind and, through the mind, controls every other organ of the body. That is a fine hairline between and orderly mind and a deranged mind. One
faculty out of order, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, may destroy and may disturb every other part of the mind, so that a man, while he would have the remainder of his faculties intact, would be so deranged that he could not and would not, because of this controlling delusion, understand the difference between right and wrong.
At this point in the closing argument the judge ordered a recess. When the court session resumed, Cantillon argued that William Edward Hickman inherited his insanity from this grandmother who, fifteen years earlier, had been committed to what was then known as a mental institution. Cantillon used his client’s grandmother’s condition as the basis for establishing the existence of mental illness in the Hickman family.
Therefore, we have established the insanity of the grandmother; we have established epilepsy in a first cousin; we have conclusively established insanity in the mother; and you know the testimony about the grandfather and I do not intend to dwell on him a great deal. I do not think the man was insane, but I think he would come under the head of what Doctor Bowers calls neuropathic, that is, subject to some organic nervous disorder. The testimony in the case given by two or three witnesses from the depositions and from Alfred Hickman on the stand and Mr. Hickman on the stand showed that he was a man who was extremely eccentric, who could not control his temper, at one time given over to reading the Bible and at another time flying into rages and tearing everything into pieces. I don’t know what that means. It means that there is neuropathic stock; there is an epileptic; and two persons, one insane in the last two generations of this boy’s immediate family; and then this second cousin who was epileptic.
So it is conclusive, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, at the time of his birth, some nineteen or twenty years ago, at the time of his birth, when he came into this world, he was predisposed towards insanity and predisposed towards this particular insanity, dementia praecox.
Cantillon concluded his summation by addressing the issue of the possibility Hickman was faking his mental illness.
There has been some suggestion here that this boy has been coached into these delusions. I believe that Doctor Reynolds had the temerity to make that statement. I don’t know. I don’t think he has been coached. I know I have not done it myself. I am confident that none of my associates have done it. I know that Doctor Shelton would not do it. I know that we did not attempt to coach Mrs. Hickman on any questions of insanity. I will say that. I will say that we did not coach the grandmother. She was dead, I guess, before I was born. We did not coach any of these ancestors. And, speaking for myself, I know that I would not know how to coach anyone upon the subject of insanity.
After challenging the testimony presented by the experts from the prosecution Cantillon paused for a long time and then faced the jury. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think we have established that this was the act, not of a criminal, but of a madman. He is not a criminal, ladies and gentlemen; he is insane. I thank you.”
Chapter 7
“You know what your problem is; it’s that you haven’t seen enough movies. All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.”
Steve Martin—Grand Canyon (1991)
Mary Pickford was the original diva of the motion-picture industry. Several years before the kidnap and murder of Marion Parker there had been a failed attempt to kidnap Mary Pickford. The failed attempt was the subject of numerous newspaper editorials complaining about the moral decay of life in America. The Hickman case rekindled the sentiment, and the reporters who covered the trial frequently made comparisons between the two crimes. The idea being promoted by the media was this: if Mary Pickford was not safe, no one was safe. The tabloids covered this event from every angle, raising another issue, which actors still have to deal with today—to what extent do actors and famous people have private lives, and what issues should not be open to public scrutiny?
During the Hickman trial Pickford was involved in a dispute with the director D. W. Griffith. He offered her a part in one of his films and she responded by saying: “I’m sorry Mr. Griffith, but that part calls for bare legs and feet.” It was not just the idea that Miss Pickford did not want to expose her bare legs to the camera that made her statement memorable. She was expressing in simple terms the crux of an argument that was dividing the motion-picture industry. The question was what was art and what was not. The question was highlighted by the fact that Congress believed they had a moral obligation to answer the question for the public, and the right to use censorship to support their point of view.
Louis B. Mayer fought the issue of censorship his entire career. For over three decades he engaged in one protracted disagreement after another with producers, directors, and stars over the issue of what was art for art’s sake, and what was not acceptable for distribution by a major studio. Throughout the Hickman trial, Mayer maintained public silence. The issue of theater owners refusing to show newsreels that included clips about the Marion Parker murder case remained unresolved.
At the same time, Mr. Mayer was involved in one of the biggest disagreements in the early years of MGM. He was embroiled in an argument with a diva named Lillian Gish. To attract the actress to his studio, Mr. Mayer had agreed to pay her nearly a million dollars for a series of six films. He also allowed something few actors at the time could even have imagined was possible. He allowed her to select the parts she would play and to select both the director and co-stars.
After completing her first film without conflict, Mr. Mayer and the star disagreed on the second proposed film. Lillian Gish wanted to make an adaptation of Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. It was reported that Mr. Mayer was dumfounded by the choice. He could not understand how a cultured lady like Miss Gish would even suggest a movie in which she would play a single woman in a family way. Mr. Mayer argued that the difference between a book and a movie is that the sophistication of the reader can be measured by their reading level, whereas a film’s value and the viewer’s degree of understanding depends on how vividly the studio presents the story.
Mr. Mayer also wanted the audience to feel sympathetic towards the actors and actresses on contract with his studio. Miss Gish saw the role of Hester in The Scarlett Letter not as a good or evil character, but as a female character in conflict. There were reports Mr. Mayer did not know the plot of Hawthorne’s book. Both of his own daughters stated they had never seen their father read a book.
The reason Mr. Mayer was opposed to the film was because he believed it would increase the possibility of government censorship of the film industry. Lillian Gish successfully argued that the introduction of evil into a plot is sometimes essential to the story. In the finished film, Miss Gish played the part so successfully the audience had little difficulty distinguishing between who was truly good and who was evil. Critics loved the adaptation. The general audience hated the movie and the part Miss Gish played in it. Mr. Mayer hated the film even more when it failed to make a profit.
The lesson Mr. Mayer learned from the dispute altered his view on censorship. While quietly dropping the issue of theater owners failing to show the newsreels of the Hickman trial, he made the following statement in support of the Hays Code:
The first class needs little care in handling, as sins and crimes of this class naturally are unattractive. The audience instinctively condemns them and is repelled. Hence the one objective must be to avoid the hardening of the audiences, especially of those who are young and impressionable, to the thoughts and the facts of crime. People can become accustomed even to murder, cruelty, brutality, and repellent crimes. In general, the practice of using a general theater and limiting the patronage during the showing of a certain film to adults only is not completely satisfactory and is only partially effective. However, mature minds may easily understand and accept without harm subject matter in plots which does younger people positive harm.
Chapter 8
“It is pretty easy to fool an audience with a little crepe hair and a dialect.”
W. C. Fields
Accord
ing to reporters covering the Hickman case, the district attorney stood confidently before the jury on the morning of his summation, looking individually at each panel member without saying a word. As a savvy prosecutor he knew the jury was looking to him for clarity on the main issues of the trial. One by one, he knew he needed to draw the jury of twelve men and women to his way of thinking. He would use only the evidence already addressed in the trial to prove Hickman had been sane at the time he committed the crime.
Tension was abnormally high inside the courtroom. Mr. Keyes started his presentation with a subdued introduction. It was, by all reports, a strong performance using flawless and unencumbered logic. Mr. Keyes’s delivery was slow and methodical through most of his argument. It wasn’t until the ending of his argument, when he spoke of everyone’s right to be skeptical of Hickman’s insanity plea, that he unleashed a combative style of presenting the facts. Here his tone of voice became more and more incredulous as he accused Hickman of trying to distort the truth.
I am not going to go into the horrible details of this crime, as counsel indicated to you that I might. I have no wish or desire to do that. When we started out to try this case, during the course of the trial I anticipated that it would be necessary for me, and I expected to have to prove to you and display before you some of the gruesome details. Counsel for the defendant has anticipated my move and beat me to the punch, as they say in the street, and prove those things himself.