In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [130]
The trial was scheduled to start on March 22, 1960. In the weeks preceding that date the defense attorneys frequently consulted the defendants. The advisability of requesting a change of venue was discussed, but as the elderly Mr. Fleming warned his client, "It wouldn't matter where in Kansas the trial was held. Sentiment's the same all over the state. We're probably better off in Garden City. This is a religious community. Eleven thousand population and twenty-two churches. And most of the ministers are opposed to capital punishment, say it's immoral, unchristian; even the Reverend Cowan, the Clutters' own minister and a close friend of the family, he's been preaching against the death penalty in this very case. Re-member, all we can hope is to save your lives. I think we stand as good a chance here as anywhere." Soon after the original arraignment of Smith and Hickock, their advocates appeared before Judge Tate to argue a motion urging comprehensive psychiatric examinations for the accused. Specifically, the court was asked to permit the state hospital in Larned, Kansas, a mental institution with maximum-security facilities, to take custody of the prisoners for the purpose of ascertaining whether either or both were "insane, imbeciles or idiots, unable to comprehend their position and aid in their defense." Larned is a hundred miles east of Garden City; Hickock's attorney, Harrison Smith, informed the court that he had driven there the previous day and conferred with several of the hospital's staff; "We have no qualified psychiatrists in our own community. In fact, Larned is the only place within a radius of two hundred and twenty-five miles where you'll find such men - doctors trained to make serious psychiatric evaluations. That takes time. Four to eight weeks. But the personnel with whom I discussed the matter said they were willing to start work at once; and, of course, being a state institution it won't cost the county a nickel." This plan was opposed by the special assistant prosecuting attorney, Logan Green, who, certain that "temporary insanity" was the defense his antagonists would attempt to sustain in the forth-coming trial, feared that the ultimate outcome of the proposal would be, as he predicted in private conversation, the appearance on the witness stand of a "pack of head-healers" sympathetic to the defendants ("Those fellows, they're always crying over the killers. Never a thought for the victims"). Short, pugnacious, a Kentuckian by birth, Green began by pointing out to the court that Kansas' law, in regard to sanity, adheres to the M'Naghten Rule, the ancient British importation which contends that if the accused knew the nature of his act, and knew it was wrong, then he is mentally competent and responsible for his actions. Furthermore, said, Green, there was nothing in the Kansas statutes indicating that the physicians chosen to determine a defendant's mental condition must be of any particular qualification: "Just plain doctors. Medical doctors in general practice. That's all the law requires. We have sanity hearings in this county every year for the purpose of committing people to the institution. We never call anybody in from Larned or psychiatric institutions of any kind. Our own local physicians attend to the matter. It's no great job to find whether a man is insane or an idiot or an imbecile ... It is entirely unnecessary, a waste of time to send the defendants to Larned." In rebuttal, Counsel Smith suggested that the present situation was "far graver than a simple sanity hearing in probate court. Two lives are at stake. Whatever their crime, these men are entitled to examination by persons of training and experience. Psychiatry," he