Meyer Levin - Compulsion

“I have sometimes thought we were dreaming here, when the learned doctors got on the stand, who had been employed to say just how crazy these two fellows were. ‘Just make them crazy enough so they won’t hang, and don’t make them crazy enough to make it necessary to put this up to twelve men, because twelve men are not going to be fooled by your twaddle. Just make them insane enough so that it will make a mitigating circumstance that we can submit to the court!’” Knowing he had touched them there, Horn grinned at the defence table.

“Why, one of the defence alienists had talked of Judd’s ornithological writings. I asked him, ‘Did you read them?’ ‘No.’ ‘You were employed to examine his mind, were you not?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What did you do?’ ‘I examined his urine.’”

The laughter came.

Horn picked up, now, his copy of the thick Storrs-Allwin report. “In the discharge of my duty, and in an effort to protect the people of Cook County, I have to do a lot of disagreeable things, so I decided I would read this report.

“It has grown to be quite a famous report.” He held it gingerly. “If they were to be discharged today, through some technicality in the law, their present so-called mental disturbances would all disappear very rapidly. If the glasses had never been found, if the state’s attorney had not fastened the crime upon these defendants, Judah Steiner, Junior, would be over in Paris or some other of the gay capitals of Europe, indulging his unnatural lust with the five thousand dollars he had wrung from Charles Kessler.”

He opened the report. “The doctor did not think this report would ever get into the hands of the State’s Attorney.” He stopped at a page as if at random and referred to the nursemaid – the nurse, he said, who knew more about Artie Straus up until the time he was fourteen than any living person. “They tried to create the impression that she was insane and that Artie caught his insanity from her, the same as catching measles. Let us see what Dr. Allwin says about her. ’she is very reserved, quiet and strict, her memory is good. She is a woman of attractive appearance, modestly and carefully dressed.’ Why didn’t they produce her as a witness? Here’s why: ’she denied that he ever had any fears or any disorders in his sleep’! And if anybody would know about the daydreams or the night dreams of Artie Straus, I submit this woman would know about it!”

As for Artie’s addiction to detective stories. “Well, there are a whole lot of us in the same fix. I remember crawling under the bed to read Nick Carter. And when I was a student at Yale I paid more attention to Raffles than I did to real property. I think that is the experience of most normal, healthy-minded young people.

“Now, they claim that the only reason that Artie committed this slight delinquency of murdering little Paulie Kessler was because all his life he craved for thrills.” Snorting, Horn read, “‘He never appeared to crave a thrill or excitement, but was rather quiet in his conduct. After Miss Newsome left, he seemed to be much the same as before, quiet, rather affectionate, extremely polite and respectful.’”

On and on he went, using the report: “‘The patient says that he will tell a lie with no compunction whatever, and that he is completely dishonest.’ Then, on page sixty-six, ‘He said he had failed to mention certain things because he had been advised not to mention them.’”

Horn slammed shut the report. “Here are doctors,” he blazed, “who want to make Your Honour believe that their only interest is in finding out what the truth is. And yet they admit there were major episodes they did not inquire into!”

A , B , C , D! What were they? Even though the defence advised its doctors to inquire no further, the State had inquired further.

The entire defence table had risen. Before he could be silenced, Horn shouted, What of the monkey-gland robbery? What of the handless stranger? What of the two dead South Side students, one pushed into the icy lake, one found in a street, shot!

And in pandemonium, the session ended.

In the afternoon, Horn turned to the motive. “Your Honour, I have shown that this psychological-thrill motive was the bunk. The motive was money.

“The kidnapping was planned for ransom. Page 104, ‘They decided to get a young boy they knew to be of a wealthy family.’ Thrills? Excitement? Money! Page 116, ‘He had no hatred for the boy. Neither he nor his associate would have done it without the money’! Money! And of his share, Artie says, ‘After all, five thousand dollars is five thousand dollars’! Page 118, Your Honour, in the language of Artie Straus, ‘We anticipated especially the money’, and then the doctor adds in parenthesis, ‘Facial expression of interest.’

“On page 122, ‘The plan of kidnapping Willie Weiss was given up because his father was so tight we might not get any money from him.’

“They thought of kidnapping their fathers. But on page 121, they decided it was not practical, that there would be no one to furnish the money.

“They wrote in the ransom letter, ‘As a final word of warning, this is strictly a commercial proposition ’! From beginning to end, Your Honour, they tell us their motive – you don’t have to send East for doctors to dig for it. The motive is Money!

“On page 124, this is Artie talking about money and his opinion of the power of money. He believed that you cannot hang a million dollars in Cook County, no matter how dastardly the crime! Well, I disagree with him. I think the law is superior to money! ‘He thinks an escape could be managed by spending a few thousand dollars, by bribing the guards at the jail and by someone giving him a gun. He says this without any swagger, as though it were only a matter of careful, detailed planning, which his mind can do.’

“What a feeling of comfort and security the mothers and fathers of this town would have, with their children going back and forth upon the streets of Chicago to school, and these two mad dogs at large!”

And tellingly, Horn shouted, “Why, one of the books Artie Straus left in the Morrison Hotel when they registered to establish a fake identity for their murder was The Influence of Wealth on Imperial Rome !”

Then he read: “Page 118, ‘I asked him if he would go through with his plan again if he felt certain he would not be discovered. He replied, “I believe I would if I could get the money”!’

“And Wilk says money had nothing to do with it! Not the thrill, not the excitement.”

Artie had three thousand dollars in the bank. Was it gain from other crimes, robberies, holdups?

After Judd was to leave for Europe, Artie had “thought of other ways of continuing his career of crime”. One idea was to rent a room in a bad neighbourhood and hang around pool-rooms and meet criminals. Another was of becoming a clever financial criminal, putting through gigantic stock swindles, like Koretz. “Money, money, money!” Horn shouted.

“Mentally sick? On page 131. ‘The patient’s intellectual functions are intact; he is correctly oriented, in excellent contact with his surroundings. He denies any hallucinatory experiences, and there is no evidence of their presence.’

“Finally, Mr. Wilk tells us, the cause is heredity. But on page 139 their own doctors say there is nothing to show any evidence of a hereditary nature. All his evil is of his own making. ‘The condition’,” Horn read, “‘is acquired within the life history of the individual and will die out when he dies.’”

As he dropped his arms, that death seemed to stand before us.

Horn took a glass of water. He turned, then, to Judd.

“No emotions, they say. He drove them all out when he was seven or eight years of age, at the same time that God passed out of his heart. Well, let’s see what his companion Artie says about it. ‘I had quite a time quieting down my associate.’ This is during the murder, if Your Honour please. It follows right after ‘he was hit over the head with the chisel’.