Not Just Evil: Murder, Hollywood, and California's First Insanity Plea

by David Wilson

  It is the judgment and sentence of this court that for the crime of kidnapping, the offense described in count one of the indictment, that you William Edward Hickman, be confined in the state prison of the state of California, at San Quentin, for the term prescribed by law, which term will be fixed by the Board of Prison Director.

  Testimony was received by the court for the purpose of ascertaining and determining the degree of the crime charged in count two of the indictment to wit, murder. The court, after due consideration determines and finds that the degree of the crime in count two of the indictment is murder of the first degree without extenuating or mitigating circumstances, and that for the crime of murder, the offense described in count two of the indictment, you shall suffer the penalty of death. Therefore, it is the judgment and sentence of this court, William Edward Hickman, that for the crime of which you have been convicted to wit, murder in the first degree, that you be delivered by the sheriff of Los Angeles County to San Quentin, to the warden of the state prison of the state of California at San Quentin, to be by him executed and put to death on Friday, the twenty-seventh day of April, nineteen hundred and twenty-eight, in the manner provided by the laws of the state of California. And may God have mercy on your soul.

  Hickman’s sentence of death left the judge no choice but to remand him to the only prison in California authorized to perform an execution. Hickman would spend his last days on earth in the 275-acre property known as San Quentin: a maximum-security prison located in the San Francisco Bay. Originally built in 1852, it was the oldest prison in California and at the time of Hickman’s verdict all executions in the state were done by hanging.

  Before Hickman’s neck could be broken by the pressure of a hangman’s rope, the sentence needed to be reviewed by a higher authority. The appeals process dealt with legal issues involved in the administration of the trial and not on the evidence given during trial. What the appeals court was looking for were prejudicial errors on the part of the judge, the prosecution, or the defense team.

  When the State Supreme Court received the defense team’s arguments for a mistrial they systematically reviewed twenty legal challenges before allowing the verdict to stand. There was nothing left for Hickman’s attorneys to do but request that the governor of California step in and save Hickman from the death sentence. Neither Mr. Walsh nor Mr. Cantillon were optimistic about their chances. The horrible publicity the Hickman’s case generated would have meant political suicide for the governor if he showed any mercy.

  The defense attorneys made their request sent to the governor just weeks before Hickman’s scheduled execution.

  My Dear Governor Young:

  On behalf of my client Mrs. Eva M. Hickman, of Kansas City, Missouri, mother of William Edward Hickman, who is under sentence to be executed in the State Penitentiary, at San Quentin, California, upon Friday October 19, 1928, I desire to respectfully petition you as follows: As Governor of the State of California, I ask you to command your great prerogative of clemency invested in you by the law of the State of California, and commute the death sentence heretofore imposed upon William Edward Hickman, to that of a sentence for the balance of his natural life, in the State’s Prison at San Quentin.

  If you will not accede to this request, I then beseech you upon the broad grounds of human justice to take the necessary steps to appoint a board or commission, of your own choosing from the ranks of the medical profession in the State of California or elsewhere of persons learned in the science and practice of psychiatry to immediately inquire and make investigation into the mental condition of William Edward Hickman and report to you before you as Governor of the State of California permit the forfeiture of the life of this unfortunate lad.

  In this connection, regardless of the judgment of the courts of California, I positively assert to you that William Edward Hickman is an insane person. Too that he was for a long period prior to the time he so justly outraged the public conscience of California by his wholly incomprehensible deed, afflicted with that, the greatest of scourges know to the human family. He is unquestionably possessed of an insanity that is progressive in nature and one that all of the medical authorities agree proceeds in an insidious manner to a complete ravaging of the mental facilities, and finally to a total dementia. No unprejudiced person conversant with the facts surrounding this demented boy can say that he is type of person contemplated to be the victim of the capital punishment laws of the State of California.

  Your Excellency will not gainsay the proposition that no sane person should be hanged. No intelligent person with a genuine appreciation of the real moral values of human life would advocate such a procedure. I therefore, consider that it will highly become your Excellency, as it will comport with the great dignity of your high office to adopt this request to make certain that a great stigma will not become fasten upon the fair name of California, that in the exaction of the supreme penalty from William Edward Hickman, will grow in the succeeding years to be an abhorrent and malodorous crime.

  This boy is but twenty years of age—an age at which the great State of California, by its law, holds a person incapable of contract, or of disposing of their property, and many other kindred acts, and yet incongruously enough that very same law will impute to this boy sufficient mental capacity (conceding for the moment that he be perfectly rational) to admit of him performing acts that will work a forfeiture of his liberty, aye, even of his life.

  Your Excellency is not without precedent in making a humane disposition of this case. In the great Commonwealth of Illinois, a case of monstrous circumstances involving boys of tender years was disposed of in a humane and righteous manner because of their youth, questionable mental capacity, and because of other circumstances. I make bold to assert that if William Edward Hickman is permitted to die, at your hand, in the face of the record and disposition of that case, it will in no uncertain measure be tantamount to both a state and national disgrace.

  In conclusion, permit me to indulge the ardent hope that Your Excellency may be guided by an all-wise and provident God, in the discharge of this the most scared of your duties.

  Respectfully submitted,

  Jerome Walsh

  Surprisingly Governor Young received hundreds of letters from concerned citizens asking him for clemency toward William Edward Hickman. He also received several thousand letters from people across the nation who demanded Hickman be hanged on schedule. The governor of California responded by saying he was not impressed or persuaded by any letter campaign and yet because of all the publicity surrounding the case he felt compelled to make a public statement. The statement put to rest any hope that Mr. Walsh, Mr. Cantillon, or Hickman’s mother had for clemency.

  I will treat the Hickman case as any other that might come before me. I take the position in all matters such as this that the judge and jury and other officials who were in charge of the trial are in a better position to judge what action be taken than I, and as my duty to state dictates I will always sustain them unless some unforeseen circumstances arise to prove an innocent man is to be punished. Unless something new that would tend to establish the innocence of Hickman can be produced, I will not consider executive clemency. It is my fixed policy to presume that the courts and juries have ample means of determining the guilt or innocence of accused persons. The notoriety of the Hickman case does not differentiate it from any other case.

  Hickman’s supporters were critical of the governor for making his decision without resolving the issue of what part mental illness had played in the commission of this hideous crime. One supporter actually praised Hickman’s behavior based on her new libertarian philosophy called Objectivism. Ayn Rand, the Russian born author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, used Hickman’s own words to describe her point of view: “What is good for me is right.” She went on to describe his sociopathic behavior as “the best and strongest expression of a real man’s psychology I have heard.”

  Ayn Rand’s opinion on Hickman and his cri
minal activity was so extreme she lost some credibility among the growing number of people who embraced her philosophy of self-determination. She did not wavier in her support and continued to speak favorably about Edward Hickman and his behavior as if it were something noble in concept. In case someone got the impression she was only speaking philosophically about Hickman’s hideous criminal behavior, she clarified her position in her published journal. “Hickman is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness, the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people.”

  Entering San Quentin prison, Mr. Hickman was treated like any other inmate. He was photographed, made to wash his body, and then received a standard haircut before being assigned his cell on death row. Along with the other convicted felons who arrived at San Quentin on that day, Mr. Hickman was given a number and became Inmate 45041.

  He spent his last days talking with Dr. Leo Stanley, the chief surgeon of the prison. The doctor reported that Hickman’s face was somber and his behavior was that of someone on a crusade. As the day of Mr. Hickman’s execution neared Dr. Stanley continued to document their encounters with the intent of writing a book dealing with the general criminal population of San Quentin. Each time the two met, the doctor asked Mr. Hickman a series of open-ended questions, trying to determine if Mr. Hickman’s behavioral indicators changed in any way. In response to one of his questions Mr. Hickman gave the following response: “The little girl’s father made the mistake. He trusted me. That was silly of him. He should have telephoned the police the minute he knew she was kidnapped, in spite of my note warning him not to, because no crook plays fair, and I am a master crook.”

  The doctor also made notes of several occasions when Hickman spoke with contempt for both Mr. Parker and his daughter Marion. Dr. Stanley reached the professional conclusion that Mr. Hickman believed everything he was saying to be true. The doctor also concluded Mr. Hickman was delusional, and possessed an unlimited capacity for self-deception. Dr. Stanley even wondered if Mr. Hickman had heard any of the evidence in his own trial. The prisoner still did not realize Mr. Parker had brought in the police at the very beginning. Based on their conversation it was clear to the doctor that Mr. Hickman believed he had controlled the kidnapping process from beginning to end. He believed he was the one who had pulled the strings that made everyone involved act the way they did.

  Without any factual evidence to back up Mr. Hickman’s bizarre behavior, the prison doctor began to see Mr. Hickman’s responses as purely narcissistic, a behavior which allowed Mr. Hickman to find refuge from the reality of his life. The doctor also felt Mr. Hickman was no longer internalizing his pent-up anger and was perhaps for the first time revealing the man behind his convoluted effort to appear insane.

  When asked by Dr. Stanley why he had murdered the young lady, Mr. Hickman changed his response from his pre-trial testimony.

  “It was this duel force,” Mr. Hickman was adamant, “I think, the impulse to harm anyone I cared for, and the desire to execute a master crime, that made me kill her.”

  Dr. Stanley reported that he asked his next question question looking for some kind of remorse on Hickman’s part. “Are you sorry for what you did?”

  The answer came without ambiguity. “No, I felt no pity for the father. I felt no remorse at all. I just felt I was executing a masterstroke. As for the little girl, she is better off than I am. At least she is out of this world of turmoil and strife. I no longer believe in a heaven or hell, but I know we shall have everlasting life.” During this short outburst, Dr. Stanley said Mr. Hickman showed himself lacking any regard for the welfare of others. Everything about the kidnapping and murder was about him and him alone.

  Chapter 10

  “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

  Tom Hanks—Forrest Gump (1994)

  As the year of 1927 came to an end, the authorities in the province of Montreal, Canada, were still unable to name a suspect in the fire that took the lives of seventy-seven children at the Laurier Palace Theater. The grieving parents continued to speculate, hoping the government would keep the case open until they discovered the truth behind the tragedy. Their optimism was starting to fade. Without any new witnesses or evidences, the case quickly fell from national attention. As the public outrage died down, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police closed the investigation, and it was never reopened.

  The ongoing concern of the Catholic Church about the influence of movies on children led to the creation of the Legion of Decency in 1934. Those who supported the Legion took a pledge in church to boycott morally objectionable movies. As part of the pledge they agreed to avoid theaters with a reputation for showing films banned by the Legion. Initially the Legion had a strong influence on film production, and producers kept their criteria in mind as they made films directed towards large audiences.

  Within a decade after its creation the influence of the Legion diminished. In 1957 Pope Pius XII issued an encyclical called Miranda Prorsus, calling for the Legion of Decency to stop banning films and to concentrate on promoting films that promoted Christian values. In response to the Pope’s directive the list of banned films eventually morphed into a rating system. By the 1960s the Legion of Decency found its influence on Hollywood to be negligible.

  In 1975 the Legion of Decency was shut down and replaced by what is called the Bishops’ Catholic rating system. Currently the Bishops’ list appears to be random and has little influence on the current production of films.

  Following the Hickman trial the film industry created its own rules called the Motion Picture Production Code, formalized in 1930. The code provided specific guidelines for subjects like religion, sexuality, and violence. The rules were commonly referred to as the Hays Code, named after the former Postmaster General Will H. Hays, who became the president of the Picture Producers and Distributors of America. He was responsible for creating and enforcing moral codes used to guide the production of films. As the man in charge of the distribution of films for studios, he was in a position to determine which films would be available and which films would be unavailable to theater owners.

  Hays hired Joseph Ignatius Breen to work as a troubleshooter for the Code Commission. He was initially hired as a go-between for the Commission and the Catholic film censors. Breen eventually took on the role of code enforcer. Louis B. Mayer was not supportive of Breen’s appointment, because the man had no hesitation in expressing his anti-Semitic views. After World War II Breen expressed concern that Jewish filmmakers would offend German Americans by making anti-Hitler films. His method of enforcement was his ability to impose a $25,000 fine on studios that released films without the Commission’s seal of approval.

  Breen’s role was affected in the fifties by the emergence of a foreign film market with independent distribution. The code was also threatened by the competition from television. The final challenge to the code came from the Supreme Court decision to ban filmmakers from owning theaters. With such a crack in the strong hold major studios once held on the industry, independent producers like Howard Hughes and Otto Preminger completely ignored the guidelines created by the code. These guidelines were created by the industry and were not legally binding. Since studios no longer had leverage as theater owners to enforce the code, the rules were no longer considered part of the filmmaking process. The influence of moral considerations was replaced by target group marketing surveys designed to cater to public taste.

  During the sixties the pretense of using moral guidelines for the creation of films was dropped. This opened the floodgates for the creation of films based on subject matter that was previously considered inappropriate. At the same time, parents were starting to notice the influence of television advertising on their children. In 1952 ads for Mr. Potato Head generated $4,000,000 in profit for Hasbro in its first year of production. It was an unprecedented nu
mber for children’s toys, and created the first red flag for parents concerned about the influence of media on childhood development. In response, the Children’s Television workshop was created in 1968, to address the use of media for educational purposes.

  More recently this concern has shifted from the influence of television to the influence of computer-generated media. The debate on this influence continues. The core issue is whether or not over-indulgence in electronically based forms of stimulation diminishes a child’s ability to effectively engage in critical self-evaluation, or if it creates a tendency to live in a delusional world created by fantasy. The exact same question raised at the trial of William Edward Hickman.

  • • •

  Within days of Mr. Hickman’s conversation with Dr. Stanley, in which he denounced Mr. Parker and Marion’s part in the kidnapping, his fragmented psyche allowed him to find God with the help of Father William Fleming, the chaplain at San Quentin. As a converted Catholic, Mr. Hickman began a writing campaign, trying to contact everyone he had ever wronged. He wrote to those he robbed or took advantage of, asking his victims for their forgiveness. One of these letters went to Mrs. Thoms, the wife of the drugstore owner Hickman had killed in his first robbery attempt in California. It read:

  Dear friend,

  I do not wish to hurt your feelings at this time and I am most sorry for having caused you any past grief. You know that I am facing death. I am a wretched sinner but I believe in the salvation of Jesus Christ, our Lord. I want to try to reconcile any differences between myself and others so far as I am able. Please do not be bitter against me. You trust in God and he will bless you if you do not hate anyone. Of course, you have a very good cause to be indignant against crime. However, I hope you will not hinder your harmony with God by bitterness.