Anatomy of a Murder

by Robert Traver

  “What is your reason for that opinion?”

  “A dissociative reaction is a severe type of psychoneurosis. Psychoneurosis is a condition of long standing. I feel certain that the hypothetical lieutenant would have shown either one or repeated upsets of a dissociative nature during the time or times of his combat service. None has been postulated.”

  Under the further adroit questioning of Claude Dancer the witness proceeded to attempt to demolish our case. Yes, the hypothetical lieutenant could distinguish right from wrong; yes, he could understand and comprehend the nature and consequences of his acts; yes, the lieutenant was in possession of his faculties and was not dominated by his unconscious mind. I glanced sidewise at our young psychiatrist, who had hung his head. Claude Dancer pushed on.

  “Now, Doctor, if those instances in the question as set forth stating that the hypothetical lieutenant had no memory of certain events were eliminated and it was substituted that he did have a memory of those events would that change your opinion?”

  “No, sir; rather it would accentuate my opinion.”

  “If in addition to the facts as stated in the hypothetical question it were assumed that the hypothetical lieutenant returned home and as stated in the question told his wife that he had shot the tavern proprietor, then went to the home of a deputized caretaker which was about thirty feet from his trailer, and told him that he had shot a man and that he wanted this deputy to take him into custody, and that a few hours later this same hypothetical lieutenant reported to a detective sergeant of the state police the details of an alleged sexual attack that had been previously related to him by his wife and stated that he considered it from all angles and made efforts to make sure that his wife was giving him true facts and that he had decided that a man who did that to his wife should not live, and then described how he had gone to the tavern, shot the proprietor, and returned home and turned himself in to the deputy who lived just thirty feet from the trailer,—assuming those additional facts, Doctor, would that change your opinion?”

  “No. It would serve only to confirm that he was not legally or medically insane.”

  Claude Dancer looked back at me, beaming. “Your witness,” he said. I glanced back at young Dr. Smith, who still sat with his head bowed and his hand over his eyes. His direst fears had been realized.

  I arose and slowly advanced to destroy this man if I could. A grim thought suddenly assailed me. Though I had never held many illusions to the contrary, I was now struck solidly in the gut with the notion of what a snarling jungle a trial really was; with the fact that despite all the obeisant “Your honors” and “may it please the courts,” despite all the rules and objections and soft illusion of decorum, a trial was after all a savage and primitive battle for survival itself.

  “Doctor,” I began softly, “so you’re a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology?”

  “I am, sir,” he said proudly, delicately fingering his luxuriant mustache.

  “Since your colleague Dr. Smith belongs to the same outfit might he not, were he disposed, also refer to himself as a diplomate?” I went on. I had swiftly to square that.

  Stiffly: “I assume so.”

  Twitting softly, in an ascendant questioning voice: “Perhaps, Doctor, perhaps there is a shyer and more modest class of diplomates in your club?”

  “Objection. Objection … .”

  “Sustained,” the Judge swiftly ruled.

  “How long have you been on the staffs of various public mental institutions, Doctor?”

  The doctor pondered. “Twenty-one years,” he answered.

  “And you head the staff of one now?”

  . “That is correct.”

  “Isn’t it a fact, then, Doctor,” I pushed on, “that during most of your professional career, working as you have in public mental institutions, you have dealt largely with people who had already been adjudged insane by others?” (I had, if I could, to try to take some of the curse off his advantage in experience and years over our young psychiatrist. )

  “Well, yes,” he admitted, because he had to; he had already clearly so testified.

  “And a major portion of your work and experience then has been in determining when and if those patients had recovered or been restored to sanity, rather than in determining if they were insane, the form of that insanity, or how they became so?”

  “Yes, sir, that and in trying to cure them.”

  “And isn’t it further true that all of the public mental institutions you have been connected with, including the one where you presently work, have had and now have long waiting lists of the mentally ill seeking admittance?”

  I had struck a responsive chord. “It certainly is true, sir,” he said, nodding his thin head with a languid sort of emphasis. “The lack of proper facilities to accommodate our mentally ill, and the consequent dire overcrowding of existing facilities, is a disgrace to the state and the nation.”

  My man was coming nicely. “And as a consequence of that overcrowding isn’t it also true that only those persons with the most objectively advanced symptoms of insanity, those most socially difficult to handle or permit to remain at large, are precisely the ones most likely to be admitted to our asylums, including yours?”

  He still did not quite see the drift. “Very true,” he agreed. “We naturally get only the most advanced cases.”

  “So that it would further be true then, Doctor, would it not, that those psychiatrists who work in such public mental institutions would rarely if ever get to study or observe the more subtle and subjective types of mental illnesses?”

  He saw the wind drift now but he was committed beyond all retreat. “Well,” he said, frowning, “yes, I suppose that is so.”

  “There is no supposing about it, is there, Doctor?”

  “Well, no, sir.”

  “And that would include persons allegedly suffering from dissociative reaction, would it not?”

  Resignedly now: “Yes. They would rarely be committed to a public mental institution.”

  It was time now to get down to particulars. “Now, Doctor,” I asked, “when did you first lay eyes on the real and not the hypothetical Lieutenant Manion?”

  “On Thursday morning of this week.”

  I paused and pondered. “Let’s see—up to now that’s roughly two and one-half court days, is it not?”

  Loftily patient: “It is, sir.”

  “And did you see him at all outside of the courtroom during that time?”

  “I did not.”

  “Then may I assume, Doctor, that you did not conduct any personal examination of him?”

  Dryly: “Rather obviously I did not, sir.”

  “Nor did you conduct on him any of the various tests and whatnot that have been mentioned here by Mr. Dancer or by your colleague?”

  “I did not.”

  “Now you were present, Doctor, were you not, when Prosecutor Dancer cross-examined Dr. Smith this forenoon?”

  “I was.” Again his fingers strayed to his mustache, of which he seemed inordinately fond.

  “And did you hear Mr. Dancer question Dr. Smith rather extensively upon his failure”—I paused and consulted my notes—“upon his failure to give a Wechsler-Bellevue test, a Szondi test, a Bender-Gestalt test, a Rorschach psychodiagnostic examination, a thematic apperception test, various personality screening tests”—I paused, dutifully panting, elaborately out of breath—“and possibly one or two others which in the rush may have escaped me?”

  Aggrieved: “Of course I heard it. I was sitting right here.”

  “Yes, of course, it comes back to me now that you were here. And am I correct in assuming, Doctor, that Mr. Dancer got all this impressive-sounding lingo from you?”

  Drawing back, offended: “Lingo?”

  “Excuse me, Doctor—psychiatric terminology.”

  Grieved over my flailing of the obvious: “Why, yes—yes of course I told him. Many otherwise highly competent medical doctors wouldn’t be
apt to know those terms.”

  Crafty Claude Dancer saw the way the wind was blowing and he began stealthily to stalk me as I pressed on. “Then am I further correct in assuming, Doctor, that if you had had the opportunity to test and examine the defendant in this case you would have done the things and given the tests your colleague failed to do and give?”

  Emphatically: “I certainly would have. In my opinion the necessity for them was clearly indicated.”

  “I see,” I pushed on, nailing him down. “So that your main complaint, then, over the findings of Dr. Smith is that he failed to give the proper psychiatric tests available to him?”

  The awaited objection came. “No, no, Your Honor. This witness has made no complaint. Question assumes something not in evidence. The witness—”

  “The objection is overruled,” the Judge quickly ruled. “Proceed.”

  “Yes,” the witness replied, compressing his lips.

  “So that it would be fair to say that your criticism of Doctor Smith’s findings, Doctor, would largely be one of the methods he employed?” I pressed, pinning him down further.

  “It would,” the witness answered reprovingly, glancing darkly toward Dr. Smith and deftly combing his mustache between his fingers.

  I paused to let all this sink in. I was aware that the world of psychoanalysis was split into almost as many squirming schools and theories and methods and warring cliques and splinter groups as the artists on the Left Bank. But I was not aware that any of these schools preferred no theories or no methods to any of those they quarreled with, and I went baying along the scent.

  “Doctor,” I said, “do you assume and want this jury to believe that no personal screening or observation or examination or tests of the Lieutenant whatever were better than the methods employed by Dr. Smith?”

  The drift of things was impinging upon the witness, and he drew himself up tall in his chair. “I did not say that,” he replied stiffly.

  “I know you did not actually say it, Doctor; but you have plainly inferred it and that is why I am asking you now. Were no tests at all better than those given? Was it better to screen or not to screen?”

  A light was beginning to dawn. “What do you mean?” the witness parried uneasily.

  “I mean this, Doctor,” I said, spelling it out. “Do you mean to testify here that the newly announced Gregory system of no tests or no examination whatever is better than Dr. Smith’s test or even the tests Mr. Dancer so glibly inquired about?”

  The full import of my question now struck the witness broadside. He shifted and glanced at Claude Dancer. “I would not say that” He frowned. “Are you trying, sir, to make a joke out of my profession?”

  I drew closer to the witness and observed that there were large drops of perspiration on his long chin. “Joke, Doctor?” I said softly. “I making a joke out of your profession?” It was time to lower the boom. “Look, Doctor, I asked you a simple question and I’d like a simple answer: are no psychiatric tests or personal observation and examination ever better than where such an examination or tests are given? Is that what you want this jury to believe?”

  “Objection, Your Honor—”

  “The objection is overruled.”

  The witness was fairly trapped. “No,” he replied, and it seemed to me that even his mustache wilted ever so little. He stroked the sweat off his chin with his hand and damped his hand in his limp handkerchief.

  “No, what?” I dug away.

  “No, it would have been better to have personally observed and tested the subject.”

  “So as a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology you no longer claim or wish to infer here that your failure to examine and observe the Lieutenant would afford you the necessary. scientific detachment so that it would be a positive advantage not to have examined him?”

  “I have already answered that.”

  “Will you please answer it again?” I pressed harshly.

  Curtly: “My answer was and is ‘no.’”

  “So that it was and is a disadvantage not to have examined him?” I hammered away relentlessly.

  There was a long hushed pause. “Yes,” he finally said, fairly hissing the sibilant, and I noted the jurors glancing quickly at each other.

  “Did you make any request or was any request made on your behalf to examine Lieutenant Manion?” (This question was as shabby as anything Amos Crocker could have dreamed up in his finest hour: we would cheerfully have beheaded anyone who tried to examine our man.)

  “No request was made.”

  My voice rose. “And yet you would dare come in here and pit your professional opinion against that of a reputable colleague who had actually examined him?”

  “Objection, Your Honor. I—”

  “Objection sustained.”

  My next question, like the last, was largely rhetorical, intended more for the jury than for the witness. “Perhaps, Doctor,” I said, “since you were not inconvenienced by having ever even seen him—perhaps you would care to venture an off-the-cuff opinion on the psychiatric state of the dead man himself?”

  “Objection! Clearly improper.”

  “Sustained.”

  I paused, noting a grin on the faces of several jurors. “Now, Doctor, let us forget all about hypothetical questions and hypothetical lieutenants and get to the real man”—I pointed—“sitting over there under a real charge of first degree murder. I ask you if you agree with your fellow diplomate, Dr. Smith, that the man is presently sane?”

  “I do. It is obvious to a child.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. Now I ask you if you have an opinion as to whether the real Lieutenant was suffering from insanity at the time of the shooting? Now please forget any shadowy or fictional lieutenants.”

  “I object. That would not be proper,” Mr. Dancer said.

  “I asked your expert, Mr. Dancer, if he had an opinion?”

  The witness remained silent, his face twisted into a sort of dark saurian frown. “Do you have an opinion or not?” the Judge pressed with a rare show of impatience. “Answer yes or no.”

  The witness tugged nervously at his mustache and seemed to slide lower in his seat. “I have an opinion,” he answered, taking the final plunge.

  “Good,” I said. “Will you please state it?”

  “Just a moment,” the Judge broke in, turning toward the witness. “I want you fully to realize, Doctor, what you may be about to venture. Now if you have a real opinion I will permit you to state it. But I don’t want any guess. And you must be prepared to back your opinion up. I want you to be sure you understand the situation exactly before we get into it. Are you still prepared to offer an opinion?”

  The Doctor was hopelessly committed now. “I am,” he said, sitting bolt upright and again wiping his sweat-beaded chin.

  “What is your opinion?” I asked.

  The unhappy doctor clasped the arms of the witness chair and went sled length. “My opinion is that the real Lieutenant Manion was not insane at the time of the shooting,” he replied.

  Softly: “And upon what psychiatric bases do you ground that opinion, Doctor?”

  “From what I have seen and heard here.”

  “You mean to venture an opinion on the sanity of this man that night without the benefit of any personal observation or tests or history whatever?” I shot at him.

  The answer was now inevitable. “Yes, sir.”

  I paused for nearly a minute. “Doctor,” I said slowly, “is that the normal and accepted psychiatric practice for a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology?”

  “I object to that,” Mr. Dancer quickly cut in. “Counsel asked a question and got the answer and now he doesn’t like it.”

  “I’ll show you how much I like it, Mr. Dancer.”

  “The objection is overruled,” the Judge said shortly. “Answer the question.”

  The Doctor seemed to sink even lower in his seat, his fingers gripping and gripping the chair rails. “No,
it is not normal psychiatric practice to make a psychiatric diagnosis without the complete history and personal examination of the individual,” he said, patting his wet chin.

  I stood looking at the man for several moments. “No further questions,” I said. “Your witness, Mr. Dancer.”

  “No further questions,” Mr. Dancer quickly said.

  “Call your next rebuttal witness,” the Judge said to Claude Dancer.

  chapter 26

  Claude Dancer arose with his air of invincible aplomb and portentously cleared his throat. He made me think of a Japanese wrestler as he hunched his shoulders, preening his coat collar tight against the nape of his squat muscular neck. “May it please Your Honor,” he said quietly, “at this time the People wish to move to endorse the name of Duane Miller on the information as a rebuttal witness. His identity and testimony have just come to our attention. I respectfully so move, Your Honor.”

  Judge Weaver blinked in surprise and looked down over his glasses at me. “Any comment, Mr. Biegler?” he said.

  “This is it,” I thought wildly, scrambling to my feet. “This is the little surprise package we’ve been waiting for.” Duane Miller? Duane Miller? Who the hell was he? What could he rebut? What was back of this sudden last-minute move?

  “Mr. Biegler?” the Judge prodded gently.

  “Counsel inquires who the new witness may be,” I said lamely, my mind racing. I knew that I could not successfully object to the addition of a good-faith rebuttal witness whose identity was previously unknown to the People; yet I could not bring myself to consent blindly without some sort of clue. The Judge looked inquiringly at Claude Dancer.

  “The name is Duane Miller,” the little man repeated loudly, affectionately mouthing the name with irritating articulation. “Presently an inmate of the county jail. Iron Cliffs County jail, Iron Bay, Michigan.”

  “Thanks, Dancer,” I grated harshly at him. “I once heard of the place.”

  “Back to you, Mr. Biegler,” the Judge hastily cut in.

  “This witness is being called to rebut what?” I said, sparring for time—both time and inspiration.