episodes. During moments of actual violence, they often felt separated or isolated from themselves, as if they were watching someone else. Also seen in the historical back-ground of all the cases was the occurrence of extreme parental violence during childhood. . . . One man said he was ‘whipped every time I turned around.’ . . . Another of the men had many violent beatings in order to ‘break’ him of his stammering and ‘fits,’ as well as to correct him for his allegedly ‘bad’ behavior. The history relating to extreme violence, whether fantasied, observed in reality, or actually experienced by the child, fits in with the psychoanalytic hypothesis that the child’s exposure to overwhelming stimuli, before he can master them, is closely linked to early defects in ego formation and later severe disturbances in impulse control. In all of these cases, there was evidence of severe emotional deprivation in early life.
This deprivation may have involved prolonged or recurrent absence of one or both parents, a chaotic family life in which the parents were unknown, or an outright rejection of the child by one or both parents with the child being raised by others. . . . Evidence of disturbances in affect organization was seen. Most typically the men displayed a tendency not to experience anger or rage in association with violent aggressive action. None reported feelings of rage in connection with the murders, nor did they experience anger in any strong or pronounced way, although each of them was capable of enormous and brutal aggression. . . .
Their relationships with others were of a shallow, cold nature, lending a quality of loneliness and isolation to these men. People were scarcely real to them, in the sense of being warmly or positively (or even angrily) felt about. . . . The three men under sentence of death had shallow emotions regarding their own fate and that of their victims. Guilt, depression, and remorse were strikingly absent. Such individuals can be considered to be murder-prone in the sense of either carrying a surcharge of aggressive energy or having an unstable ego defense system that periodically allows the naked and archaic expression of such energy. The murderous potential can become activated, especially if some disequilibrium is already present, when the victim-to-be is unconsciously perceived as a key figure in some past traumatic configuration.
The behavior, or even the mere presence, of this figure adds a stress to the unstable balance of forces that results in a sudden extreme discharge of violence, similar to the explosion that takes place when a percussion cap ignites a charge of dynamite. . . . The hypothesis of unconscious motivation explains why the murderers perceived innocuous and relatively unknown victims as provocative and thereby suitable targets for aggression. But why murder? Most people, fortunately, do not respond with murderous out-bursts even under extreme provocation. The cases described, on the other hand, were predisposed to gross lapses in reality contact and extreme weakness in impulse control during periods of heightened tension and disorganization.
At such times, a chance acquaintance or even a stranger was easily able to lose his ‘real’ meaning and assume an identity in the unconscious traumatic con-figuration. The ‘old’ conflict was reactivated and aggression swiftly mounted to murderous proportions. . . . When such senseless murders occur, they are seen to be an end result of a period of increasing tension and disorganization in the murderer starting before the contact with the victim who, by fitting into the unconscious conflicts of the murderer, unwittingly serves to set into motion his homicidal potential.”
Because of the many parallels between the background and personality of Perry Smith and the subjects of his study, Dr. Satten feels secure in assigning him to a position among their ranks. Moreover, the circumstances of the crime seem to him to fit exactly the concept of “murder without apparent motive.” Obviously, three of the murders Smith committed were logically motivated – Nancy, Kenyon, and their mother had to be killed because Mr. Clutter had been killed. But it is Dr. Satten’s contention that only the first murder matters psychologically, and that when Smith attacked Mr. Clutter he was under a mental eclipse; deep inside a schizophrenic darkness, for it was not entirely a flesh-and-blood man he “suddenly discovered” himself destroying, but “a key figure in some past traumatic configuration”: his father? the orphanage nuns who had derided and beaten him? the hated Army sergeant? the parole officer who had ordered him to “stay out of Kansas”? One of them, or all of them.
In his confession, Smith said, “I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” While talking to Donald Cullivan, Smith said, “They [the Clutters] never hurt me. Like other people. Like people have all my life. Maybe it’s just that the Clutters were the ones who had to pay for it.”
So it would appear that by independent paths, both the professional and the amateur analyst reached conclusions not dissimilar.
The aristocracy of Finney County had snubbed the trial. “It doesn’t do,” announced the wife of one rich rancher, “to seem curious about that sort of thing.” Nevertheless, the trial’s last session found a fair segment of the local Establishment seated alongside the plainer citizenry. Their presence was a courteous gesture toward Judge Tate and Logan Green, esteemed members of their own order. Also, a large contingent of out-of-town lawyers, many of whom had journeyed great distances, filled several benches; specifically, they were on hand to hear Green’s final address to the jury. Green, a suavely tough little septuagenarian, has an imposing reputation among his peers, who admire his stage craft – a repertoire of actorish gifts that includes a sense of timing acute as a night-club comedian’s. An expert criminal lawyer, his usual role is that of defender, but in this instance the state had retained him as a special assistant to Duane West, for it was felt that the young county attorney was too unseasoned to prosecute the case without experienced support.
But like most star turns, Green was the last act on the program. Judge Tate’s level-headed instructions to the jury preceded him, as did the county attorney’s summation: “Can there be a single doubt in your minds regarding the guilt of these defendants? No! Regardless of who pulled the trigger on Richard Eugene Hickock’s shotgun, both men are equally guilty. There is only one way to assure that these men will never again roam the towns and cities of this land. We request the maximum penalty – death. This request is made not in vengeance, but in all humbleness. …” Then the pleas of the defense attorneys had to be heard. Fleming’s speech, described by one journalist as “soft-sell,” amounted to a mild churchly sermon: “Man is not an animal. He has a body, and he has a soul that lives forever.
I don’t believe man has the right to destroy that house, a temple, in which the soul dwells….” Harrison Smith, though he too appealed to the jurors’ presumed Christianity, took as his main theme the evils of capital punishment: “It is a relic of human barbarism. The law tells us that the taking of human life is wrong, then goes ahead and sets the example. Which is almost as wicked as the crime it punished. The state has no right to inflict it. It isn’t effective. It doesn’t deter crime, but merely cheapens human life and gives rise to more murders. All we ask is mercy. Surely life imprisonment is small mercy to ask. . . .” Not everyone was attentive; one juror, as though poisoned by the numerous spring-fever yawns weighting the air, sat with drugged eyes and jaws so utterly ajar bees could have buzzed in and out.
Green woke them up. “Gentlemen,” he said, speaking without notes, “you have just heard two energetic pleas for mercy in behalf of the defendants. It seems to me fortunate that these admirable attorneys, Mr. Fleming and Mr. Smith, were not at the Clutter house that fateful night -very fortunate for them that they were not present to plead mercy for the doomed family. Because had they been there – well, come next morning we would have had more than four corpses to count.”
As a boy in his native Kentucky, Green was called Pinky, a nickname he owed to his freckled coloring; now, as he strutted before the jury, the stress of his assignment warmed his face and splotched it with patches of pink. “I have no intention of engaging in theological debate. But I anticipated that defense counsel would use the Holy Bible as an argument against the death penalty. You have heard the Bible quoted. But I can read, too.” He slapped open a copy of the Old Testament. “And here are a few things the Good Book has to say on the subject. In Exodus Twenty, Verse Thirteen, we have one of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not kill.’
This refers to unlawful killing. Of course it does, because in
