by David Wilson
Why? He didn’t fool me. I don’t believe he fooled you. He wanted to prove to you that this crime was so horrible and gruesome that it might cause you to believe that no man in his sane mind could have committed it. Now those gruesome details are in the past. They are before you as evidence, and you can remember them just as well as I can. So I am not going to touch on them. I am not going to try to arouse your feelings against this defendant, because I state to you, ladies and gentlemen, thank God, that we live in America, and in America the laws of this great land say that every man or woman or child accused of crime is entitled to his day in court. He is entitled to be tried by his peers, by his fellowman. He is entitled to his defense. He is entitled to have reasonable time to prepare for his defense. He is entitled to go before a jury of his peers, and he is entitled to show every single thing that may bear on his innocence, and the people are entitled to show every single thing before that same jury that may bear upon his guilt.
The district attorney stood up from behind the long table in front of the judge and moved towards the jury box. He was impeccably dressed and appeared to be considering his words carefully. His initial comments were related to his views on the nobility of American law. He supported Hickman’s right to have a vigorous defense and complimented the ability of his attorneys. Raising his voice slightly Asa Keyes made it clear the issue was not guilt or innocence because the defendant admitted his guilt. The issue was simply whether or not William Edward Hickman was sane at the time he committed the crimes of kidnap and murder. The district attorney was mindful of the fact it was the first time the issue was raised in a California court under newly drafted legislation defining the legal implications of an insanity plea. He went on to assure the jury if he honestly believed Hickman or any defendant was insane he would encourage the jury to accept the insanity plea. Asa Keyes was adamant he believed the man who kidnapped and murdered Marion Parker was completely sane and deserved to be punished for his crime.
But, from the very first, from the time I first set eyes on that man up in the jail in Pendleton, Oregon, I did not believe, and I do not believe now that that man was insane at the time he committed that kidnapping and murder, or that he is any more insane at this present moment than anyone else in this room. Therefore, in my own heart feeling about this defendant as I do, I have no hesitancy and no compunction in asking this jury to bring in a verdict in this case that at the time this man committed this crime he was sane.
Now, then, that brings the issue right down to that one thing. You have been told that many times. I want you to bear it in mind, because you have no more to do with the finding of a verdict of guilty against this defendant for the commission of this crime, or not guilty of the commission of this crime, than you have with trying to stop Colonel Lindbergh from flying to the United States from where he is today. Your sole issue to determine here, ladies and gentlemen is this: was the defendant, on the 17th day of December 1927, at the time he killed little Marion Parker, as has been described in the evidence in this case, sane or insane. That is the issue. Plain and simple, isn’t it?
Asa Keyes lowered his voice and complimented the jury for being attentive to a complex legal situation. Then he addressed the core issue of medical testimony.
Now, then, you know two gentlemen have been called here by the defendant to testify that in their opinion this man not only was insane then, but is insane now. They tell you that they made a through physical examination, and also subjected him to certain mental tests. I refer to Doctor Shelton and to Doctor Skoog. It would hardly seem proper on my part to stand here and try to take anything from the standing of these two gentlemen who have been called their standing in the community here or Doctor Skoog’s standing in the community in Kansas City. I know nothing about either one of them. I never heard of Doctor Shelton before he took the stand in this case. I never heard of Doctor Skoog until he came out here and took the stand in this case. Knowing nothing about them, knowing nothing about their reputation or ability, I will not say one word against them. But I have the right, ladies and gentlemen, to direct your attention to one or two things as I have observed them from the witness stand.
You know Doctor Shelton, in his anxiety to prove to you that this defendant is insane and was insane at the time he committed this murder, took two-thirds of a whole afternoon in telling you the things that this defendant did not have. You remember that he took the time of this court and jury to go into every phase of dementia praecox that he knew of, and from the way he testified I judged he had pored over the same books that he said he was reading the night before, and committed a major part of them to memory. And he told you on cross-examination that the principle symptom of dementia praecox of the paranoid form was that this defendant had in his judgment that principal symptom or symptoms were mental delusions, were delusions and hallucinations. And Doctor Skoog said the same thing. Just bear in mind, I am going to come to that a little later. Now, Doctor Skoog came out here and first saw the defendant on the 26th of January. We started this trial on the 25th, I believe. That was the day after this case started that Doctor Skoog got here, and he gave the defendant examinations on the 26th and 27th, and he recited to you or read to you from his notes, and gave you in evidence here, some of the tests which he said he subjected this man to, this man Hickman.
Remember now that Hickman was arrested on the 22nd of December, and on the 24th of December, when the officers of the law from Los Angeles went to Pendleton to bring him back here, he started in with his insanity dodge. And I call it his insanity dodge advisedly, because I am convinced from this evidence that it is nothing more or less than a dodge on the part of this man in an effort to dodge the law. Remember this boy has intelligence. Remember that this boy is quite a smart young chap. He has intelligence, and his intelligence has not been impaired by mental disease of any kind, or any other kind of disease. He is just as smart now as he was when he took second place in that oratorical contest back there in the high school in Kansas City. He is just as smart now as he was when he graduated from high school in Kansas City with high honors. And he knew, ladies and gentlemen, when he was caught up there in Pendleton, Oregon, he knew that the only way he could escape the gallows or the penitentiary or the punishment which the law provides in the State of California was by the plea of insanity.
So I say to you that in my judgment, from that day to this, this defendant has made it his plan and his scheme to play this defense of insanity. And every single thing that he could do from the time when he was caught in Pendleton up to this time, everything that he could do to try to fool the doctors, to try to fool the judge, to try to fool the district attorney, and last and most important of all, to try to fool this jury, that man has been doing.
So then Doctor Skoog put him through his test. May I have Doctor Skoog’s testimony for a minute? Of all the asinine tests that I ever heard of Doctor Skoog testified to them here on the stand. Remember now, this man had been talking to alienist after alienist. He knew the game. He knew what they were after. He knew when he was going to be subject to mental tests for somebody to come up here to testify he was sane or insane.
The district attorney received permission from the judge to read part of the doctor’s testimony.
The witness said the reason that he murdered Marion Parker instead of his mother was this: In everything he is the only one of the type. Now he says that he is greater than Jesus Christ; he has a greater message for the world than Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ had a message for the poor, but he has a message for everybody. And he said that if he had killed his mother, that that would just be a common, ordinary crime, that there had been lots of people that had killed their mother, but there had never yet been anyone who kidnapped a girl, taken her away, cut her to pieces, and threw her dismembered parts away; in other words, that that was done to bring the attention of the world to him. That is what Skoog says the defendant told him, that he killed this girl and cut her up and committed this crime the way he did for the pur
pose of bringing the attention of the world to him.
Do you believe that, ladies and gentlemen? Have you any idea that the man who committed this crime had any such thought in mind at the time he took the parts of the body out to the father and grabbed $1500 out of his hand, with a gun pointed to him, and did what he did subsequent to that very moment? Did he stand up there and say, “I have been directed by a divine providence to commit this crime”? Did he say, “I committed this crime so the eyes of the world would be directed to me and be on me”? No, he did not do that.
What did he do? Why, he did just as every criminal that I have ever known to do who had the opportunity to do it. He took the $1500 and put it in his pocket. He held up a man at the point of a gun, didn’t he, on the evening of the next day after which he had obtained this money, and he stole his automobile didn’t he, and took what little money he had, and he did not even then, after he had committed that crime, with that thing on his mind and conscience, he did not even then ride down the street or go to the police station, or go anywhere else and say to the world, “I have committed this deed because I have been directed by divine providence to do it.” And he did not go out and proclaim to the world that I have committed this crime; here I am; I am insane, and I want the eyes of the world to be upon me for the commission of this crime.
No, he did not do that; oh, no. He did just what any other criminal would have done under the same circumstance after having committed this crime. Why, he made his escape, of course; when he held up this Mr. Peck when he took his automobile, he was planning to escape and asked Peck’s testimony, how much oil and gas the car had, how much oil, when did the oil have to be changed. He was figuring then on getting away, not of having the eyes of the world directed upon him, ladies and gentlemen, as he told Doctor Skoog was his motive for committing this crime; not that the eyes of the world might be directed upon him, but to seek cover, so that not a single eye, not a single eye of a human being on the face of the earth could see him or know him.
The district attorney took a moment to regain his composure while he placed the transcript of the testimony back on the prosecution table.
Doctor Skoog is the only human being who has testified in this case that this defendant ever, at any time, had any hallucinations. You know, those are hallucinations when you imagine that you hear voices telling you to do something. Those are hallucinations. Not a single word of testimony in this case, other than that of Doctor Skoog, who tells you that the defendant, on the 26th or 27th of January, told him that he had hallucinations. Not one word. Don’t you think, ladies and gentlemen, if this defendant Hickman had really been having hallucinations, that voice had ever told him anything, or had ever talked to him, or even directed him to do anything in his whole life, down to the time he committed this awful murder, don’t you believe there would have been some people here to whom he had communicated those thoughts, to tell you about them?
Asa Keyes was equally dismissive of the testimony of the only defense witness, Doctor Shelton. He turned his attention to the issue of the value of the prosecution witnesses.
As against those two doctors we have produced here men who have resided in this community, some of them for many years; men who have gained national reputations as alienists and psychiatrists; men whose honor and reputation cannot be questioned by anyone; Doctor Reynolds, Doctor Schorr, Doctor Parkin, Doctor Mikels, Doctor Bowers, Doctor Orbison, and Doctor Williams, many of them at this very moment members of the Psychiatric Board of the County of Los Angeles; many of them who are seated out there day after day, week after week, month after month, diagnosing the cases of people who come before the Lunacy Commission charged with being insane.
You have heard the qualifications from each one of them as it was given to you from the witness stand. Do you believe that those gentlemen know anything about this thing that we are trying to find out about in this case, called insanity? Do you think they know anything about it? Why, here I have had Williams, Doctor Williams; pardon me for calling him Williams; he is a very estimable gentlemen. I have known him for years. He has testified on the stand, as he said, in cases both for me and against me, and when I say me I mean the People, represented by me as a prosecutor in a particular case. I have heard his testify in many a case, and I have tried to break his testimony down by cross-examination, and I knew what these young fellows were going up against when they tackled that fellow.
Why, he knows more in a minute about insanity than Walsh or I will ever know if we studied it from now until doomsday; and I am telling you, ladies and gentlemen, when I put that man and the rest of these gentlemen on the witness stand here I vouched for their integrity, and I am willing to stand by it until judgment day. Not only that; I vouched for their judgment. All of these men say that they have examined this defendant and they cannot find even the slightest evidence of dementia praecox, paranoid form, dementia praecox of any other form, or any kind of insanity in this man.
Now, the defendant, through his counsel, has built up here a beautiful picture of all the symptoms of dementia praecox, paranoid form. He has asked every doctor on cross-examination, and he asked his own medical men on direct examination, about all the symptoms of dementia praecox. That is all right. Let him ask them about the symptoms. There are many symptoms and the diagnosis of the disease, I believe, according to the testimony of the doctors, cannot be mistaken. I think Doctor Schorr testified to that, that you cannot mistake the diagnosis of a dementia praecox, paranoid form. Certainly there are symptoms. The trouble is with the defendant, ladies and gentlemen; he had built up a wonderful form here. You know, it reminds me of one of these forms I used to see in my wife’s dressing room. I don’t know who in the world made it for her, and it did not look any more like her than it does like me, but she used to hang dresses over it. These symptoms they bring in here remind me something of that. You can build a wonderful structure about paranoid dementia praecox, and she could build on that form a most beautiful gown if she were building it for herself, or making it for herself it would probably fit, but if she tried to make it for the little baby in the house it would not fit at all.
After summarizing the testimony of the prosecution witnessed, the district attorney did a review of the defendants personal history and concluded:
This man is not insane, ladies and gentlemen; he is not insane; he is bad; he is rotten to the core. Why do I say that? I say it for this reason: That we find that after he left this high school, after he left the parental roof, he commenced to commit very grave and serious crimes, and he was getting away with it. He was committing burglaries, grand theft, and robberies at the point of a gun. You know that is the history of every criminal, when he once starts it seems he never stops until Old Man Law in the shape of the sheriff, constable, or policeman grabs him by the collar, pulls him in, and puts him where he belongs. It is so easy, you know, after the first step is taken, it is so easy to go on, and it is such an easy way to make money, they think… they think!
That is what this man thought. He did not want to work; he did not want to apply himself to any such labor, but he chose the easier way, which leads to destruction. He tread that path, ladies and gentlemen, from that time until he was caught in Pendleton, Oregon, or near Pendleton, last December.
Now, during all of that time, during all of that time when he was committing these robberies and these burglaries and these larcenies, do we find any evidence in this case, has there been anything produced before you and, mind you, it would have been had it been available, to bring to you or to indicate to you that this man ever claimed to anybody that he was being guided by a divine providence in the commission of these crimes? No, you don’t find one word. On the other hand, we have young Welby Hunt, who was his boon companion for about twelve months, and he was with him at the time Mr. Thoms, the druggist, was murdered over there on the east side, and murdered by this boy and Welby Hunt in the commission of a holdup. Why, he says they went in there to get money, that they wanted money, ju
st another crime, easy to commit with a big gun on his person, with young Welby Hunt armed the same way. They go in there and rob Old Man Thoms’s drug store, and in the commission of the robbery, a policeman who happened to be there commenced to shoot and the defendant and young Welby Hunt commenced to shoot, and Mr. Thoms was killed. Before they went in there, or after they got out, did this man Hickman utter one word to Welby Hunt that a divine providence was telling him to go into that drug store and rob it? Did he say one word to Welby Hunt that a divine providence told him to kill and slay a defenseless man in the protection of his prosperity? Did he say one word to Old Man Gurdane, the chief of police of Pendleton, Oregon, after he was caught, that a divine providence had told him to commit the murder on which we are now trying him?
You know that he did not, because Gurdane says that the Fox, when caught, like Old Man Adam of old, when he was caught in the Garden of Eden, blamed another. He did not even have the nerve and the temerity at the time to tell Gurdane that he had committed the murder. No, he said, “Oh, I kidnapped her, yes but a man named Cramer cut her up; I did not cut her up.” Don’t you see, ladies and gentlemen, don’t you gather from what these doctors tell you about this dementia praecox, paranoid form, that a man who is really afflicted with that, that a man who really had it, that a man who really committed a crime guided and influenced and directed by his insane delusion tell you all?
At this point the district attorney described the circumstances following Hickman’s arrest and made the point he did not initially make any reference to insanity.
Now, we have at first, as the evidence shows, he said, I want to plead guilty. I am going before the judge and plead guilty. I want a copy of this my confession myself to put before the judge, and I want also to make another statement to go before the judge, to tell him why I did it, to tell him why I did it.