W. Mitchell Jones

Dr. W. Mitchell Jones enters the trial as a volunteer specialist whose examination offers an alternative to the brief assessment by local doctors. Under thirty and experienced in criminal psychology and the criminally insane, he interviews Dick and Perry separately and asks each to write an autobiographical statement. The book establishes his role in examining them, but does not report his findings or whether he ultimately testifies.

Professional Background

Jones is introduced as a criminal-psychology specialist who had worked and studied in both Europe and the United States. The narrative presents him as exceptionally competent and notably young: he was not yet thirty when he agreed to examine the defendants. His expertise distinguishes him from the Garden City physicians appointed by Judge Tate, who were described as general practitioners rather than psychiatric specialists.

Jones’s involvement begins after that three-doctor commission meets the defendants and, following about an hour of conversation, concludes that neither has a mental disorder. Dick’s attorney then returns to Larned State Hospital seeking a psychiatrist willing to travel to Garden City and interview the men. Jones is the one person who volunteers, offering his services without payment and agreeing to testify if his examination warrants it.

Role in the Competency Dispute

The sequence places Jones’s proposed specialist assessment against the court’s reliance on local doctors. The first commission has already delivered a conclusion; Jones’s examination introduces a more specialized inquiry into the defendants’ mental condition as the trial approaches. His participation therefore matters not simply as another interview, but as a challenge to whether a short conversation with general practitioners is sufficient to assess two men facing trial for a grave crime.

The distinction remains unresolved in the evidence presented here. Jones agrees to examine Dick and Perry and to testify if his findings support doing so, but the account does not disclose those findings or state that he takes the stand. His narrative function is consequently tied to the attempt to bring specialist knowledge into the proceedings, rather than to a recorded diagnosis or courtroom conclusion.

Interviews and Autobiographical Statements

On the day before the jury-assembly proceedings described in the book, Jones interviews Dick and Perry separately for approximately two hours each. At the end of the interviews, he asks both men to write autobiographical statements. The task continues to occupy them as the court selects a jury: seated at opposite ends of the defense table, Dick writes with a pen and Perry with a pencil.

The statements give the assessment a documentary dimension. Rather than being presented only through a doctor’s questions and conclusions, the defendants are prompted to set down accounts of their own lives. The evidence does not establish how Jones interprets those accounts, but it does show that his request shapes what the two men do during the jury proceedings and directs their attention toward personal histories as the trial nears.

Narrative Significance

Jones represents a specialist approach to mental assessment within a trial where the initial official inquiry has been conducted by local general practitioners. The contrast makes expertise itself part of the proceedings: a psychiatrist is sought after the commission’s conclusion, and Jones’s willingness to volunteer supplies the defendants with an opportunity for a different kind of examination.

The book also keeps the limits of that intervention visible. Jones’s credentials and interviews are specified, but the available account leaves his conclusions and any testimony unstated. His importance lies in the examination he undertakes and in the autobiographical exercise he sets in motion, not in a result the evidence does not provide.