Читать книгу The Great Harry Thaw Case; Or, A Woman's Sacrifice онлайн

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Jerome failed. When the day had closed the evidence as to insanity remained unshaken, but the witness was exhausted and so confused that he often took refuge in the answer “I don’t know,” or “I cannot recall.”

Mr. Gleason, attorney for Thaw, asked the expert a hypothetical question the answer to which immeasurably strengthened the plea that Thaw was insane. It was:

“Assuming that any man was proved to you, as an expert, to have attended a roof garden the day of June 25, 1906, the occasion of the opening of a theatrical entertainment which was largely attended, and that on walking out from the theater, with his wife near him, and apparently in a quiet and orderly manner; that that man should turn aside and fire three shots from a revolver into a man who was sitting at the table and to whom he did not speak; that this man then held the pistol above his head and walked quietly toward an elevator; that he gave up the pistol without resistance and did not make any attempt to escape, and that he said, ‘He ruined my wife,’ and that immediately thereafter he said to his wife, ‘I have probably saved your life,’ I ask you, sir, upon your judgment as an expert, whether you are able to give an opinion touching on the sanity of the man who made that answer?”