Defense rests in the Hickock–Smith trial

The event titled “Defense rests in the Hickock–Smith trial” marks the close of the defense case against Dick and Perry Smith after a Monday morning session lasting about ninety minutes. Its decisive significance lies in what the proceedings did not establish: neither defendant testified, so the court did not resolve which man had killed the Clutter family. The testimony instead brought into view the legal restrictions on psychiatric evidence and the sharply different accounts of the defendants’ mental states, while leaving the jury to assess the case within those limits.

The defense case concludes

The trial resumed at ten o’clock on Monday morning. An hour and a half later, the defense had completed its case. Five witnesses had appeared, but the defendants themselves declined to take the stand. That choice had a direct consequence for the question that had shadowed the prosecution’s evidence: whether Dick or Perry had been the actual executioner. Because neither gave testimony in his own behalf, that question did not arise for resolution through their courtroom accounts.

The silence was especially consequential because the two men’s earlier statements differed over who had fired the shots. Perry had initially said that Dick killed Nancy and her mother, but later told Alvin Dewey that he wanted to correct his statement and claim responsibility for killing all four members of the family. Perry said that he had previously blamed Dick because he wanted to punish him for cowardice, and that he was now changing the account partly out of consideration for Dick’s parents. Dewey did not accept the proposed correction as sufficient reason to alter the written statement. At trial, Dewey disclosed Perry’s claimed reversal, and Mrs. Hickock wept as she heard that her son had not, according to Perry, killed any of the Clutters. The defense’s decision not to call either accused to testify left these conflicting claims outside a direct examination of the defendants themselves.

Dick Hickock and the limits of psychiatric testimony

The first witness was Walter Hickock, who testified in support of the claim that his son had been temporarily insane. He described Dick as a happy-go-lucky, successful and considerate boy before a car accident in July 1950. After the accident, Walter said, his son no longer acted like the same person. His testimony offered the defense a possible dividing line between Dick’s earlier behavior and the person who later stood trial, but it did not itself establish a medical explanation for the change.

Dr. W. Mitchell Jones, a psychiatrist, followed. He identified himself as a physician specializing in psychiatry, had entered a psychiatric residency at Topeka State Hospital in 1956, and had since served on the staff of Larned State Hospital, where he was in charge of a unit for the criminally insane. Asked for his opinion under the court’s governing legal definitions, Jones said that Dick knew right from wrong. The answer frustrated the defense, which sought to qualify it, but the prosecution objected and the court upheld the restriction: Kansas law permitted only a yes-or-no response to the relevant question.

The account then supplies the fuller opinion Jones would have given if allowed to elaborate. He described Dick as intelligent, alert, organized in his thinking and in contact with reality, while noting that a serious head injury with concussion and several hours of unconsciousness had been verified in hospital records. Dick reported blackouts, periods of amnesia and headaches afterward, but had never undergone the tests needed to determine whether he had lasting brain damage. Jones also described impulsiveness, difficulty tolerating frustration, low self-esteem, boastfulness and a pattern of irresponsible conduct. His assessment was qualified: he considered Dick’s behavior consistent with a severe character disorder, while stressing that possible organic damage still needed investigation. The trial’s yes-or-no procedure kept that complexity from reaching the jury as testimony.

Perry Smith’s witnesses and an unanswered opinion

After Jones’s testimony ended Dick’s planned defense, Arthur Fleming presented witnesses for Perry. The group included Reverend James E. Post, the Protestant chaplain at Kansas State Penitentiary; Joe James, a friend of Perry’s who had traveled for more than a day and a night to reach court; Don Cullivan, who had known Perry in the Army; and Jones again. James and Cullivan offered favorable character assessments, but the prosecution cut their testimony short, arguing that such personal judgments were irrelevant to the case.

Post described a less direct form of character evidence. He recounted meeting Perry in the prison chapel after Perry brought him a pastel-crayon portrait of Jesus and offered it for the chapel. The picture had remained on the wall of Post’s office. When Fleming sought to provide photographs of it to the jurors, Logan Green objected, and the judge stopped the presentation. The episode showed how quickly an account of Perry’s artistic gesture reached the boundary of what the court would admit as relevant evidence.

Jones was recalled and asked whether, from his conversations with and examination of Perry, he had an opinion about whether Perry knew right from wrong at the time of the crime. Under the court’s instruction, Jones answered only that he had no opinion. The defense then tried to have him explain the basis for that answer, but Green objected and the court barred further explanation. The narrative reports what Jones would have said: that Perry showed signs of severe mental illness, had grown up amid brutality and lack of care, and appeared to have acquired no stable moral sense. Jones described pronounced suspicion and distrust, an expectation of being misunderstood or betrayed, and anger that could be triggered by perceived insults or unfairness. He also noted that Perry’s anger had at times been directed toward himself in suicidal thoughts, and that his thinking could become disorganized or detached from reality. These observations remained outside the testimony the jury was permitted to hear.

What the proceedings leave unresolved

The defense phase brought forward two different kinds of explanation without allowing either to become a complete account. Walter Hickock traced a change in his son to an earlier accident; Dr. Jones raised the possibility of lasting brain damage but said it required further testing. For Perry, Jones’s withheld assessment connected mental illness to childhood and to recurring patterns of suspicion and uncontrolled anger, but the court’s procedure prevented him from explaining that judgment to the jury. In both cases, the distinction between a clinician’s fuller assessment and the narrow answer allowed in court became part of the event itself.

The proceedings also left a factual uncertainty intact. Perry had privately claimed that he alone shot the Clutter family, while earlier accounts assigned some of the killings to Dick; Dewey conveyed Perry’s proposed correction during the trial, but neither defendant took the stand. The defense’s completion therefore closed one phase of the case without settling the disputed division of responsibility or furnishing the jury with either man’s sworn explanation. The trial moved forward with the defendants’ mental states argued through witnesses, constrained by the court’s rules, and the central question of who fired the shots still unanswered in their own testimony.