The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-12-30
One Week From Today Is the
Time Appointed.
INSANITY THIS TINE
Will Be the Plea Offered in
His Defense.
His Wife Will Again Tell Her
Story in Court.

New York, Dec. 30.-One week from
! today Harry K. Thaw will be called {
second time before a jury to make his
defense to the charge of having muir
dered Stanford White. There have beer
several postponements of the date OF
the second hearing of this noted case
but it is said now there will be no fur
| Their delay.
1t is announced that Mrs. William
Thaw, mother of the defendant, is ex-
pected in the city by next Saturday
Mrs. Thaw has been in poor health, il
! is said, but believes she will be able tC
! come on to be with her son during tho
opening hours of his second fight fol-
! life and freedom. Other members OF
the family circle including Mrs. Gee &c
Carnegie, Harry Thaw's sister, and
josiah and Edward Thaw his brothers
are also expected to reach the city dur
| ing the week and will remain through
| out the trial. The Countess of Var
| mouth, the defendants sister, is at
| present in England and is not expected
| to attend the second trial. Mrs. Evelyn
| NeSbit ThaW, who has been a daily WIS.,
| itOr at the TombS ever since the first
Thaw jury disagreed, save recently
| when she was i'll, for few days, will, OF
course, be one of the first arrivals in
| the court room on Monday next.
| There have been many rumors as to
| the plans of the defense for the second
| hearing of the case and it has been pre-
dicted that an entirely new line of ac-
| ton might be followed. 1t can be au-
| thoritatively stated, however, that the
defense will again be the same, that
| Evelyn Nesbit Thaw will again relate
| her story to the jury and that an i'm
posing array of expert alieniSts will
again undertake to submit the theory
that Thaw was insane at the time he
killed Stanford White in the Madison
Square garden, but has so far recover
ed his mental balance since that time
as to be no longer a menace to the
community and therefore is entitled to
freedom.
This theory was expounded at length
during the first trial, but after the talk
ing of much expert testimony and after
a lunacy commission had declared
Thaw sane at the present time. the plea
of temporary insanity was practically
abandoned in the summing up speech
of Dolphin M. Delmas, the California
attorney, who made an almost direct
appeal to the so-called 'unwritten law
Plea of Insanity.
In the coming trial, it is declared.
there will be no mention made of a
higher unwritten law, but the de-
tense will adhere strictly to a plea of
legal insanity at the time the act was
committed. 6Fhereswere mistakes made
at the first trial, which it will be the
attempt of Thaw's attorneys studiously
to avoid during the second hearing. In
the expert testimony for instance, they
have been able to separate the wheat
from the chaff and will only offer that
which proved most effective before
And having once felt the sting of Dis
trict Attorney Jerome,S sk1llful cross
examination on all phases of diseases
affecting the BRAIN several of the ,Fhaw
experts will be in much more secure
position than they were at the first
trial, when the prosecuting officers
wonderful knowledge of medicine fairly
amazed and in one case, completely
dumbfouEded witness
Evelyn Thaw, it has been variously
reported, would and would not take
the stand in defense, of her husband.
There is no longer any doubt that she
will do so. Without her testimony it
would be difficult for the defense to
predicate a plea. of insanity. During
the first trial the entire structure of
mental arrangement rested upon the
story of her alleged mistreatment at
the hands of Stanford White, told by
her to Thaw, the night in Paris when
he had asked her to become his wife.
1t was after he had heard this narra-
tive that Thaw wrote the queer letters
which were introduced in evidence
that he made his will with its provi-
sion of a fund for the punishment of
persons responsible for vice; after
wards he went to his home in Pitts
burg and acted so strangely that his
mother was alarmed and afterward
that he shot and killed the man his
wife had accused. Without Evelyn
Nesbit's story as the moving cause for
the insanity which spent its fury in
the death of Stanford White on the
gaily lighted, crowded summer roof
garden, Harry Thaw's plea for i'm
munity from punishment would have
but little left to stand upon.
Same Old Testimony.
Evelyn Thaw again will be the
storm center of the trial, and next in
to her story Will be the
testimony of several alienistS who teS-
titled before.
District Attorney Jerome will of
course be prepared to combat the tes-
timony of the insanity experts. His
hypothetical question
which was asked before in omnibus
style to nine state experts in row,
and upon which they based opinions
entirely opposite to those entertained
by the experts for the defense, will be
taken out of the archives and polish
ed up for use in rebuttal. The states
direct case will again be very brief 1t
will have added to it the testimony of
James Clinch Smith, brother-in-1aw
Of Stanford White, who met and talk
ed with Thaw the night of the TRACE
Nv. Mr.. Smiths testimony which M. |
Jerome regards Is highly important |
and as showing a calm, cool, calculat- |
ng state of Thaw's mind, but a few
minutes before he fired the fatal shot, |
was taken before on rebuttal, having |