The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1895-04-09
HYpNoT1sM, CRIME AND THE LAW.

If the decision of the Kansas courts
that hypnotism may be an element in
the commission of crime is to be a prece-
dent in crimina practice it opens a wide
door of defense to those who ctually
commit evil deeds. In the Kansas case
Thomas Mcdonald, without apparent
provocatioli, shot and killed Thomas
Patton. He was tried for murder, and
set up the plea that he was neither
legally nor morally responsible, having
been under the hypnotic influence of An
derson Gray. He was acquitted and
Gray vas then tried and found guilty
of murder in the first degree, though he
was not present when the crime was
committed. The evidence went to show
that by means of hypnotism he caused
Mcdonald to do the deed.
The legal recognition of this power is
a very serious matter. 1t is not well
understood even by scientists who ex-
pertinent with it. Some of them assert
that the will power and consciousness
of one individual may be SO completely
subjugated by the mentality of another
that he. has no control over his own
others maintain that this
subsection extends only to certain fixed
limits-for instance, that il the hypno-
tier directs his victim to plunge a knife
into a mans heart he will withhold the
blow at the critical moment unless he is
himself inclined to the crime. Still
others doubt whether hypnotic influence
can go even to this extent, but recog-
nize it only as the action of one mind
upon another more direct and noticeable
than in ordinary manifestations of the
same force, but by no means SO COM
plete and overwhelming as often de-
scribed. such persons look with great
distrust upon all professional and pub
lie exhibitions of so-called hypnotic
power and decline to accept unquestion-
ingly all apparently authentic tales con-
corning this mysterious influence. Ger
tainly, it would seem that the phenome-
ma of such mental action are not suffi-
GENTLY understood nor we'll enough
classified to enter into the domain of
acceptable legal evidence. If the KAN
sas courts had merely treated the case
under consideration as one in which n
rascal, being a ruling spirit, exercised
a strong personal influence over another
their rulings could be better understood
and would come within the realm of
common sense: but in such event the
man who committed the deed at the
instigation of the other would not be
relieved of entire responsibility. BY
clearing Mcdonald entirely they admit
the possibility that a murderer may be
an innocent and helpless agent. 1t is a
dangerous conclusion. What is to him
der any criminal from setting up the
same defense and laying the blame upon
whatever person he may choose? Blixt,
the man who killed Miss Cling at the
command Of Harry Hayward, has al
ready put forward the plea of hypnotic
control, and, with the Kansas precedent
in his favor, may escape punishment for
his crime. In the old Salem days inno-
cent men and women against whom
others cherished grudges were declared
to be witches. and some of them were
hanged. 1t is the same sort of principle
precisely that is in operation here. In
that day people were 'bewitched;" now
n are '~hypnotized." We are not get
ting on so very fast in the paths of in
te~lligence, after all.