MR CRESSON’S ADDRESS

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27441, 30 August 1954, Page 12

MR CRESSON’S ADDRESS

Announcing his intention of keeping his address short, Mr Gresson began by expressing his agreement with everything that had been said by Dr. Haslam. "As I said in my opening, the fact that Parker and Hulme assaulted Mrs Rieper cannot be denied and neither Dr. Haslam nor I denied it. The vital, all-important question Is the sanity or otherwise of the two accused when they committed this brutal and unjustified assault,” Mr

“If, after hearing the evidence, you are satisfied that when the two accused committed this attack they were sane, knew what was right and knew that what they were doing was wrong, then it is your duty to convict them and let them suffer the penalty which the law imposes. But if the evidence you have heard convinces you that they were insane to the extent that they did not know it was wrong, then your' duty is to find them not guilty on the ground of insanity. “The extent of their insanity is to a large extend a medical question,” said counsel. “The diagnosis of the exact nature of a mental illness is a matter for competent psychiatrists or doctors and is not one for laymen to decide. It has been emphasised by the witnesses for the defence that it is the cumulative effect of the symptoms that justifies the diagnosis of paranoia in these two girls. No single hair constitutes a beard, but if there are sufficient hairs on a person’s chin neither you nor I can have any difficulty in deciding that person has a beard. “Dr. Medlicott told you that his considered opinion was that the two accused suffer from a paranoia of the exalted type in a setting of folie a deux,” said Mr Gresson. T ‘ln other words, his considered medical opinion, given to you on oath, is that the two accused are insane. They were. two unusual girls, of unusual personality and their association was, in his opinion, tragic for them. 1 think we can all agree on that. “Homosexuality and paranoia are frequently related, he told us. But he did not make his diagonisis for the reasons the girls gave him; he was convinced they were definitely insane because they were harbouring delusional ideas,” said counsel. “He gave you the grounds for that statement; they had their own religion; their own god, their own morality. They were outstanding geniuses, with their own special para-

dise, for which only 10 people canquality. It is Dr. Medlicotfs considered opinion that these are delusions.’Paranoia of the exalted type is usually accompanied by an exaltation of mood and a delusion of grandeur, a conceit which has to be fed continually,” Mr Gresson said. “In this case the mental instability of one accused affected the instability of the other. They act as resonators, Dr. Medlicott said, each increasing the pitch of the other’s insanity. Judgment Affected

“Paranoia is diflicult to diagnose because of the apparent lucidity in other directions shown by the affected person. That is why laymen did not pick the disease. They were insane at the time they killed Mrs Rieper, but notwithstanding their insanity they would know they were killing Mrs Rieper. Their capacity to form a judgment as to the rightness or wrongness was affected. They knew, in the sense of being aware at times of rightness or wrongness, but in their interviews with him they would switch between what they knew of the. law and their own fantastic notions at ■ a moment’s notice. Dr. Medlicott said he would not have the slightest hesitation in certifying both the accused as insane,” said Mr Gresson.

“Dr. Medlicott was cross-examined for something like five hours and in the course of that cross examination, it is submitted, he did not retract one word of his evidence. ‘To my mind, they are insane, from a legal point of view,’ he Said. Even if the killing had not occurred he would say these two girls were insane; in other words, he did not make his diagnosis as a result of the murder. The killing, Df. Medlicott said, was indirectly the result of their delusions.”

The integrity of Dr. Medlicott as a witness, said Mr Gresson, could be gauged from one incident during his long stay in the box, when he was ‘‘courteous under extraordinary pressure, and, above all, mentally honest.” Mr Gresson recalled that Dr. Medlicott had said the girl Parker had told him she had had a period of religious mania. To his Honour, Dr. Medlicott said these were her own words. “Overnight Dr. Medlicott turned up his notes —and I assure you they are voluminous—and ascertained that those words

were his own, and not Parker’s. He told you that the next morning.” The jury could accept the view, then, that a man of such integrity would give evidence in this trial only if he was -convinced that these two girls were mentally sick. He had reached this conclusion only after observing the facts dispassionately, and after discounting their own “pathetic” evidence of their insanity. Dr. Bennett had confirmed the evidence of Dr. Medlicott and had arrived independently at the same .conclusion. “You have two competent, reliable doctors telling you that Parker and Hulme are insane and that they were so afflicted when they took to the unfortunate Mrs Rieper that they were unable to judge properly the moral quality of their action,” said Mr Gresson. “I ask you to accept that evidence. There were three doctors called to say otherwise, but they all agree there was room for a genuine difference of medical opinion. “They were all Crown doctors, hold.mg salaried positions in Government institutions,” said counsel. “I do not suggest for a moment they were dishonest in their evidence, but I would emphasise they all come from the same fte ble - If they were out at Addington this afternoon they would have to be bracketed. It does tend to create an identity of view among them. “They see a number of criminals whose only hope of salvation is to convince a panel of Crown doctors they are insane. I ask you to accept by contrast what Dr. Medlicott and Dr. Bennett have said.” Correspondence and Actions

Mr Gresson, after referring to the medical history of the two accused, discussed their correspondence with each other under imaginary names. They had built a “Temple of Minerva” and had erected crosses to “dead l? eas Z , . l _7‘ The y are S°teg to rewrite the Bible and it is going to be on vellum parchment, and Parker is to ulustrate ft. They are going to Paradise and they have a fourth part of their brhin. They are goddesses on high: they are going to have their books filmed; they shojy an intense and gross homosexuality. They even set out to break all the Ten Commandments; they have committed blackmail cheating, theft, and murder. All this happened in this vital period between Christmas, 1953. and June, 1954,” said Mr Gresson. “The recital of that is not to show that they are like dishonest, nasty little girls, but that they were ill, and that as their alliance continued their illness progressed.”

tecidents were quoted by Mr Gresson in support of this contention: their dressing up in black a 9^L. ea ,tteg birthday cake “in honour °Z s blr teday”; their writing poems at Lancaster Park during the interschool sports; their writing operas and singing songs; and their plan for a masked ball for their plasticine characters. . •

_Tbeir w “gods” included Rupert Brooke, Caruso, Julius Caesar, and Charles 11. You will agree they are a curiously ill-assorted group,” said counsel. The girls wrote in the diary their intention to murder Mrs Parker. June 22 was referred th as “the day of the happy event.” “Some of you will have—as I have—daughters of your own,” said Mr Gres, son. “Suppose one of them Showed even half the symptoms of these two girls. Do you mean to tell me you would not get the doctor in to her? Isn t it plain, and wouldn’t anybody say, that if these facts were proved about a girl she is—in common language—crackers? . “They are both incapable of forming a rational judgment abcut the moral nature of their act. All the circumstances surrounding the deed suggest the same theory: their lack of remorse, their lack of contact with reality. They are simply delusional, insane girls.” ' These were “problem children,” adolescents whom competent medical opinion considered insane; two mentally ill adolescents, not brutal criminals. “At the time they committed the crime they were ill and not crimresponsible for their actions,” Mr Gresson concluded.