Irresistible Impulse (40 page)

“Really, really,” said Marlene.

Rohbling
now entered the endgame, each side with a single major piece left to play. For Waley this was Dr. Bannock, the psychiatrist who knew the defendant best. For Karp it was Dr. Perlsteiner. The two men could not have been more different in their mien or appearance. Erwin T. Bannock was six feet tall and athletic, in his early fifties, with a full head of dark hair nicely graying at the sides. He was dressed in a beautifully cut tweed suit, a three-piece, with a paisley tie and shiny brown cap-toe shoes, an outfit just casual enough to distinguish him from the lawyers, and suggesting (as he meant it to) a British gentleman who had through some quirk found himself at Johns Hopkins and decided it would be a lark to become a psychiatrist. He had a soft, reassuring voice, and the habit of pausing for three beats before answering a question, as if summoning the information afresh from some vast store kept behind that broad, tanned forehead.

Waley proposed to stipulate Dr. Bannock’s sterling record in the interest of saving time. Karp refused, got a glare from the judge, ignored it. The jury had to hear about the doctor’s education, his awards, his membership on the appropriate boards.

Bannock was an essential witness for the defense, not only because he knew the defendant best, but because he had been treating
Rohbling
throughout the period of the murders. He had met with him three days before Mrs. Hughes had been killed, and two days afterward.

Waley took his position before the jury and began slowly to wring from Dr. Bannock his expertise. Karp scribbled notes in the private shorthand he had developed in law school. With the part of his mind not thus engaged, he became conscious once more of his revulsion toward this sort of expert witness. Theoretically, and perhaps at some time actually, an expert witness was supposed to be a servant of the court, explaining complex matters to the jury. This largely remained the case with experts like city engineers and ballistics technicians. But psychiatrists were invariably mere pimps, their substantive knowledge hollow and entirely for sale.

Waley was taking his witness through the psychiatric treatment provided. Bannock said that Jonathan Rohbling was out of his mind, a paranoid schizophrenic family, in fact, with multiple-personality disorder the cherry on top. A schizophrenic family, as the Rohblings: the tyrannical father, the neurasthenic mother, the powerful figure of Clarice Brown, loaded with love-hate ambiguity, combined to produce the psychotic break. Jonathan thought he was a black man named Jared Brown, the true son of Clarice, hence the makeup, hence the trips to Harlem to blend in with his people. Significance of the blue cloth suitcase? Ah, yes: Dr. Bannock had determined that Clarice Brown packed her things in just such a suitcase when the Rohblings had dismissed her.

Bannock also recounted his take on the actual murder. Jonathan wanders Harlem, lost and lonely, driven to find a warm maternal replacement for Clarice. He shows up at a church supper, befriends Jane Hughes. She invites him for coffee; she is lonely too, is attracted in a maternal way to the handsome, religious youth. Once in the apartment, he switches to his “true” self, the son of the beloved, hated, Clarice. He starts treating Mrs. Hughes as his mother, fantasizing, speaking to people who are not there. Mrs. Hughes becomes frightened, asks him to leave. He brandishes the suitcase, opens it, engages in a dialog with the mammy-mistress doll. Mrs. Hughes is terrified, shouts for help. He pushes her to the couch. He is in a panic.
Clarice is going to abandon him again!
He holds her down with the suitcase; without the suitcase she cannot leave. Symbolically, of course. In actuality, the cloth suitcase smothers her. Now, in his mind, she won’t leave him. So lost in unreality is he that he has no idea that he has killed her. He continues with his pleasant conversation, picks up the famous ashtray, imagines that she gives it to him as a present. He puts it in his suitcase and leaves.

So, because of his suffering from a mental disease, paranoid schizophrenia, he didn’t really
understand
that he had killed Mrs. Hughes? Waley’s voice was filled with wonder at the power of science. No, came the answer. He had no idea what he was doing? No, he was dominated by his psychotic ideation. Or that what he was doing was wrong? No. In a sense, Jonathan Rohbling was not even there. Thank you, Doctor. Your witness.

“Dr. Bannock,” Karp began, “you’ve testified that the defendant has a mental disease called paranoid schizophrenia, and that you were treating him for that disease. What was that treatment?”

“Well, with schizophrenia the best we can hope for is a reduction in the symptoms through the use of drugs. Halperidol is used, the thiothixenes, and for more refractory cases, chlorpromazine and clozapine.”

“And what was the defendant in fact taking at the time of the murder?”

Bannock pursed his lip, paused for his usual moment. “I can’t say what he was actually taking. I had prescribed sixty milligrams daily dosage of Navane, which is a thiothixene antipsychotic.”

“When you last saw him, before the murder, as you testified, on April seventeenth, had he been taking his medication?”

“I can’t say for certain, obviously. He said he was.”

“In your professional opinion, was he?”

A longer pause. “No.”

“So, on April seventeenth, the defendant, your patient, was an unmedicated psychotic there in your office, was he?”

An impatient wrinkling of the noble brow. “It’s not as cut and dried as that. He may still have had some drug in his system.”

“I see,” said Karp. “But to all
appearances
he was normal, he was not in blackface, he did not think he was this Jared, he was not having conversations with imaginary people, he showed none of the symptoms you have described, correct?”

“Yes.”

“He presented the aspect of a drug-controlled schizophrenic then, this is what you’re telling us, Doctor?”

“That is correct.”

“You didn’t think on the afternoon of April seventeenth that he could not comport his behavior to the requirements of the law, did you?”

A clever man, Dr. Bannock. He saw the trap closing and thought for a moment on how to avoid it. “It’s not that simple. The underlying schizoid state does not—”

“Just answer the question, Doctor,” said the judge.

“No, not at that time,” said Bannock grumpily.

“Because if he had been manifestly incapable, you, as a good citizen and a doctor, would not have allowed him to roam the streets, isn’t that so?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you,” said Karp. “So that was Wednesday. On Thursday, since, as we have heard, the defendant, in disguise, appeared in Harlem, met Mrs. Hughes at a church affair, befriended her, made a date for Saturday, kept that date, and killed her, are you therefore saying, Doctor, that in three days he somehow lost that substantial capacity to comport his behavior to the requirements of law?”

“Yes, with schizophrenics we often see periods of near-normal-appearing behavior.”

“I see. Now, then, you’ve testified that you also saw the defendant on the Monday
after
the murder for his regular appointment. The twenty-second of April. How did he seem then?”

“He appeared calm and normal.”

“So are you telling us, then, that he appeared to have no mental disease on the seventeenth, trots out a mental disease on the eighteenth, kills Mrs. Hughes on the twentieth, still in the grip of a mental disease, and then appears normal in your office two days later?”

“No, not exactly. The disease is always present, but it can take different forms, mild or severe, depending on both internal and external factors. Some triggering event often causes the actual psychotic break, and the—and the aberrant behavior.”

Karp heard the little stammer, observed some moisture on the noble brow, and was glad. “What triggering event, Doctor?”

“Well, the situation, the presence of a black woman of the correct age, middle-aged or older, the blue suitcase, the opportunity …”

“So the presence of all these would trigger this psychotic break?”

“Yes. Would tend to.”

“Doctor, if you look around the courtroom, you will see several women of that description. There is even one on our jury. The blue suitcase is right here. Yet Mr. Rohbling is sitting calmly in his seat. How do you explain that?”

“The situation, I mean here, a courtroom, is not appropriate for the situation in which we would see the psychosis actually evinced.”

“Do you mean that if he rose from his seat, grabbed the blue suitcase, and tried to smother Mrs. Finney there in the jury box, the court officers would stop him?”

“Yes, but what I meant was that a certain situation of intimacy is necessary to trigger the response.”

“Intimacy, I see. You mean, he has to be alone in an apartment, say, with a helpless woman before he becomes incapable of comporting his conduct to the requirements of the law.”

“Well, in effect, that is the case.”

“In simple terms, he only goes crazy and kills when he can get away with it, is that what you’re saying?”

“That is the effect, but in the event he is not thinking in those terms. He—”

“Thank you. How terrifically convenient for Mr. Rohbling! He only becomes an insane killer when he can escape the consequences of his act.”

“Objection! Argumentative. Not a question.”

“Sustained. Jury will disregard.”

“Doctor,” Karp resumed quickly, “your testimony—this business about Jared, and Clarice, and Mr. Rohbling’s mental states—is entirely based on what Mr. Rohbling has told you, isn’t that true?”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t been able to look into his head, say, with modern instruments of any kind, or do any definitive blood or tissue tests that would independently establish this diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia?”

“No.”

“Why not, sir?”

“Because there are no such tests. The indicia of the disease are straightforward, as I’ve testified. The flatness of affect, the retreat into hallucinatory fantasies, the inability to form normal social bonds, are diagnostic for this disease.”

“Yes, thank you, Doctor. You’re a scientific man, do you know what Occam’s razor is?”

This caught the witness off guard, as it was meant to. He frowned and said, “In a general way. I believe it’s the principle that says that if you want to explain something, some experimental result, then the simplest explanation, the one making the fewest assumptions, is the one likely to be true.”

“Yes, very good, that’s my understanding exactly,” said Karp, beaming. “So, Doctor, since we have on one hand an elaborate set of assumptions about some mental disease, based on another set of assumptions of how this disease was generated during the defendant’s youth, based on the defendant’s word alone, with no independent verification, and on the other hand we have the alternate possibility that the defendant is spinning a line of malarkey to escape punishment, wouldn’t Occam’s razor practically force us to believe that you are being fooled?”

Karp was rewarded by the flush that blossomed on the witness’s cheeks. “Absolutely not!” he declared.

“Pray tell, why not, sir?” said Karp gently, as to a child.

“Because I’m a psychiatrist. I’ve had years of training to distinguish malingerers from genuine sufferers, in addition to nearly twenty years of experience with all types of mental disease. I know what I’m talking about!”

“Do you? Tell me, Doctor, how many of your patients, in your whole career, have been paranoid psychotic murderers?”

The witness was startled by the question. His mouth opened but nothing came out.

“Counting them up, are you?” put in Karp.

“Your Honor, I protest this badgering,” cried Waley.

“Mr. Karp, have a care!” growled Judge Peoples.

Karp voiced an apology and waited.

Bannock cleared his throat. “Mr. Rohbling is the only one.”

“The
only one!
” exclaimed Karp in mock amazement. “Do you tell us, sir, that the defendant is the
only
patient you have ever had that was facing a charge of murder and might have a powerful reason to prevaricate as to his symptoms?”

“Yes, but that’s—”

“Then, isn’t it true,” said Karp, lowering the pitch and lifting the volume of his voice so as to sound as much like the Lord of Hosts as possible, “that your testimony as to the defendant’s so-called disease, and his ability or inability to comport his conduct to the requirements of the law, is worth nothing? Zero?”

“No, no, my experience can be generalized to … the present case and, of course, I’m familiar with the literature—”

“The literature, I see,” said Karp, his tone contemptuous. “I have no further questions for this witness.”

Naturally, Waley rose for redirect, to repair the damage Karp had done to his star. Once again the jury was treated to a look inside Jonathan Rohbling’s skull, courtesy of Dr. Bannock. The on-again, off-again nature of his disease was explained as entirely consistent with paranoid schizophrenia. Mr. Rohbling was not going to attack a member of the jury because he was taking antipsychotic drugs. When he was taking these drugs, he was free of the violent impulses that characterized his disease. The drugs were uncertain in their influence, were they not? Of course. They even affected the same people differently at different times. Therefore, it was perfectly consistent with science that Mr. Rohbling could be a good little boy on a Thursday and a monster on Friday and a good little boy the following Monday. Of course, and this was delivered with a dose of psycho-speak equivalent to six hundred milligrams of Thorazine; the jury was stunned, gaping,
psyched
.

Nevertheless, Karp came right back on re-cross. Doctor, you contend that the defendant was not under the influence of his medication when he committed the murder? He was not. But he was drugged at your appointment before and your appointment afterward? Probably. Then a colloquy on the pharmacology of Navane, or thiothixene, its effects, the absurdity of assuming that its effects could be turned on and off like a lightbulb over the course of a long weekend. Karp had done his homework, or Collins had. He waved research reports. He quoted. Then the finale: Doctor, do you know of a single other case,
in the literature
, where a paranoid schizophrenic committed a violent act attributable to his disease and then appeared normal to a psychiatrist three days before and two days after that act? Answer the question. The answer was no. Thus Karp ran out the clock, which was, at least in part, the point. The judge halted the proceedings at five-thirty, which meant that Karp could start with a fresh jury when he presented his rebuttal witness the following day.