Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1907-02-19
BATTLE FOR THAW's LIFE.
Wife of the Millionaire Prisoner i
Witness for Defense

Witness for Defense.
With the fact of Stanford Whites
murder by Harry Kendall Thaw estab-
lished in their minds; with the muir
derer daily in their presence, self-pos-
sessed, Unconditional, deeply interested
| in the movements of the machinery of
law upon which his future so largely
| depends, dutiful and courteous to his
mother, gracious to his wife; with the
knowledge that the father of this
prince of Incidence and intemperance
was man of sufficient genius industry
and acumen to accumulate a fortune
of $4O,OOO,OOO, that the mother has been
for years a ruling spirit in the social,
religious and philanthropic circles of
Pittsburg that the daughters possessed
sufficient attractiveness of mind as
well as of purse to marry one an Eng
lish earl of venerable titIe and the
other a man of large business responsi-
bilities, and that the prisoner himself
was deemed by the administrators of
his fathers estate capable of handling
his inheritance-with these things be-
fore them, the twelve Jurors who are
to determine whether Thaw shall die
fer the murder which he committed
are asked to believe not only that the
accused was insane when he fired the
fatal shots, but that the faint of insan-
ity runs through the family.
;,11x h. 90
plea, the jurors are to believe that the
climax of arrangement, the high tide
of Thaw brain disturbance, was reach
ed when White was slain, and that
since then the mind of the prisoner
has returned to normal conditions.
There is no contention of present in
sanity. Such a preposterous claim, in
view of the prisoners attitude in court,
might upset the whole defense, which is
not directly a plea of justification for
the act, but an ingenious scheme of ar
gument and testimony intended not
only to prove irresponsibility, but to
absolve from moral guilt. Insinuating-
ly and purposefully interviewer with
this plan is the effort to keep con-
stantly before the minds of the jurors
the stains upon the character of the
slain man, especially in their relation
to the wife of the murderer, so that
while no actual defense based upon the
unwritten law is introduced this ele-
ment is present. In the opening address
for Thaw it was stated that his attor-
neys, while relying upon insanity as
sufficient and reasonable defense,
would avail themselves of every de-
Tense allowed by the statutes
All things considered, the insanity
defense has in it much suggestive of
the absurd, yet it furnishes a basis
upon which to establish at least a dis
agreement. The defense is not re-
qufred to prove that Thaw was insane.
If it can establish in the minds OF a
few of the jurors, or even Of one, . rea-
, senable doubt of the DEFENDERS mental
condition on the night o. the murder
1t will secure a disagreement.
Here is what they are endeavoring TO
| prove: That Harry Thaw comes of
mentally tainted stock, because two of
his fathers cousins and an aunt of his
| father were confined in insane asy-
! lunls; that Harry's inheritance of the
| family iaff1iction manifested itself when
he was a child by his awaking sudden
II and unnaturally from his sleep; that
this hereditary tendency made him sub
| ject to decisions; that out of his great
love for Evelyn Nesbit. after his meet
ing with her in 1901, was evolved a de-
fusion which had to do with Stanford
| White; that in the development of this
delusion he came TO see in White not
only an enemy of himself and Evelyn
Thaw but of all mankind; that when
he killed White he believed himself to
be an agent of Providence. 1t was
the disease of his mind which instilled
these thoughts in him. However, the