Medical expert testimony in the Kelley murder trial / by Walter Channing.

  • Channing, Walter, 1786-1876.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical expert testimony in the Kelley murder trial / by Walter Channing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    town of Berwick across the river. Three days afterwards he was arrested in Montreal and made a frank and full confession of the crime. The cashier of the bank was an old and somewhat feeble man, seventy years of age, respected and esteemed by those who knew him, and his brutal murder aroused the indignation of the com- munity and a strong feeling of hostility toward the murderer. During the summer following the crime, experts were en- gaged by the counsel for the prisoner to examine into his mental condition, which led to the employment of others by the State for a similar purpose. This procedure was rendered peculiarly necessary in the case under discussion, as the law of New Hamp- shire specifies that where insanity is set up as a defense to an indictment, the jury must be^sagshed beyond a reasona!)!? doubt that the killing was not produced by mental disease?^ 'The experts selected by the State were Drs.'iuiward Cowles, George F. Jelley and the writer, and they made several prolonged examinations of the prisoner in the county jail at Dover. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been desirable to have visited him singly, as well as in a body, thus seeing him under the most varied conditions. The prisoner's counsel, however, preferred usually to be present themselves with one or all three of their own experts. This resulted in a combination investigation, which, while it eliminated the disadvantage of a possible personal bias on the part of the investigator, did away with the accuracy and exactness resulting from a close and con- tinuous investigation along one single line. Often a man in the presence of a dozen other men is quite unlike the person wholly alone with one other man. In a multitude of counsellors there is sometimes safety for him who is seeking to escape the conse- quences of their counsel, as well as for him who seeks to gain advantage from it. The situation with Kelley then was this when the experts for the State first saw him: he had previously seen his counsel and some of the experts employed by them a number of times, and had acquired a familiarity with their system of probing and sounding him for evidences for and against mental unsoundness. While he could form no idea of their precise purpose, it was possible for him to gain a facility in responding, and it happened