HYPNOTIC COERCION.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 103, 4 May 1927, Page 9

HYPNOTIC COERCION.

Man Who Was Dominated by a Woman's Will. AMERICAN MURDER TRIAL. NEW YORK, April 28. So great is public interest in the fight of Henry Gray and Mrs. Ruth Snyder to escape death in the electric chair for the murder of Snyder's husband, that the Press here has engaged some of the nation's leading actors, actresses, parsons, psychologists, and novelists to describe the trial. Gray claims that he was hypnotically coerced by Mrs. Snyder to help her strangle her husband with picture wire. He claims that her will dominated him and he acted as an automaton. Anxious to glimpse the famous personages at the reporters' -table, and morbidly desirous of watching the faces of the two defendants who sit in the shadow of death, crowds daily storm the courtrooms. Police have been strongly reinforced. Of 300 jurors examined so far only seven have been accepted and a new panel of 150 has been called in an attempt to get the remainder of the jury. The defendants are accompanied in Court only by their mothers, the rest of their families having deserted them. Once lovers, they arc now openly hostile. Ruth Snyder, cold and defiant, watches keenly every move, occasionally glancing contemptuously at Gray, who leans cowering on his mother's arm, attempting to evade all eyes.