“I see. I see.” Kelley gestured toward the defense table. “Well, Doctor, is Massie sane now?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Ah,” Kelley said, as if relieved. “Just a one-killing man, then. That’s all, Doctor.”
Darrow’s second expert, Dr. Williams, tall, lean, stoic, his gray Van Dyke lending him a Freudish air of authority, basically concurred with Orbison, though he added a chemical slant to their shared diagnosis.
“The protracted worry Lt. Massie endured, the rumors on the street that troubled and frustrated him so, might bring out an actively irrational condition, resulting in pouring a secretion into the blood. Strong emotions can have an important effect on the suprarenal glands.”
Darrow gestured toward the defense table. “Has Lt. Massie regained his sanity?”
“Quite fully.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Your witness, Mr. Kelley.”
Kelley strode forward. “Would you say it is possible that Massie might be telling a lie—that is, malingering in his testimony?”
“I suppose it’s possible.”
“Isn’t it
Williams frowned and turned toward the judge. “Your Honor, must I answer so disrespectful a question?”
“Withdrawn, Your Honor,” Kelley said with a disgusted sigh. “No further questions.”
Darrow rested his case, and Kelley—who had moments before sarcastically derided expert psychiatric testimony—called his own alienist, Dr. Joseph Bowers of Stanford University, by way of rebuttal. Bowers had testified for the prosecution in the Judd case; old home week.
The bearded, middle-aged, scholarly Bowers spoke for over an hour, showing off an encyclopedic grasp of the trial testimony thus far, detailing his study of Tommie’s background, declaring, “Nothing in Lt. Massie’s record indicates he was subject to states of delirium or memory loss—in my opinion, he was quite sane at the time of the killing.”
Kelley was nodding. “What else has led you to this diagnosis, Doctor?”
Bowers had a habit of turning to face the jury as he gave his answers; with his air of professorial expertise, this was quite effective. “Well, I can’t actually provide a diagnosis,” he said, “because the defense has denied me access to the defendant.”
Darrow growled, “I object to the witness’s manner. Why doesn’t he face forward in the chair like any other witness? If he’s going to address the jury, he might as well get up and make a speech to them. This is not the impartial attitude that—”
Bowers exploded; perhaps it was an uncontrollable impulse. “Do you mean to insinuate that I am not honest, sir? Well, I resent it!”
Darrow, hunkering over the table like a grizzly bear over a garbage can, grumbled: “Resent it, then.”
“Please continue, Doctor,” Kelley said, playing the voice of reason.
“Lt. Massie and these other three individuals,” Bowers said, “knowing the consequences, took deliberate steps toward self-protection. They acted in a spirit of vengeance characteristic of persons who feel they’ve not obtained justice by legal means. Such individuals measure their acts, and consider the nature of and consequences of those acts. The steps of this plan were securing an automobile, wearing gloves and goggles, carrying guns, taking steps for disposal of the body, and so on.”
Kelley was nodding. “Thank you, Doctor. That’s all.”
Darrow, remaining seated, asked only one question: “Doctor, may I assume you’re being handsomely paid for coming down here and giving your testimony?”
“I expect to be paid,” Bowers said testily.
“That is all.”
Kelley, on his way back to his table, turned and said, “Prosecution rests, Your Honor.”
“Summations begin tomorrow,” Judge Davis said, and banged with his new gavel. “Court is adjourned.”
And the next day summations did begin, but it was the second team up first, with Leisure making the case for the unwritten law (“You gentlemen of the jury must decide whether a man whose wife has been ravished, and who kills the man who did it, must spend his life behind dark prison walls, all because the shock proved too great for his mind”), and Kelley’s tall young assistant Barry Ulrich lashing out against lynch law (“You cannot make Hawaii safe against rape by licensing murder!”).
So it was on the following day, with police radio cars parked in front of the Judiciary Building, machine gun- toting patrolmen posted to stave off rumored native uprisings, in a courtroom strung with wire and microphones to broadcast to the mainland what might be the Great Defender’s last great oratory, the gallery packed even tighter than usual with Admiral Stirling and Walter Dillingham and other luminaries noticeably present, that Clarence Darrow rose from his chair behind the defense table where room had been made for his friend Dr. Porter, his wife Ruby, as well as Thalia Massie, seated holding hands with her husband, and shambled toward the jury. His suit was dark, baggy. His gray hair streamed haphazardly down his forehead. Fans hummed overhead. Palms rustled. Birds called. Traffic coursed by.
“Gentlemen, this case illustrates the working of human destiny more than any other case I’ve handled. It illustrates the effect of sorrow and mishap on human minds and lives, it shows us how weak and powerless human beings are in the hands of relentless powers.”
He stood before the jury box as he spoke, his bony frame planted.
“Eight months ago Mrs. Fortescue was in Washington, well respected. Eight months ago Thomas Massie had
