Page:The Great Harry Thaw Case.djvu/194

 The district attorney made an impassioned argument to secure the admission of Hummel's testimony. He said:

"Your Honor has ruled and rules, as I believe, with entire correctness, that as to the truth or falsity as to whether Stanford White did do these acts, we on this trial have nothing to do, the issue being, did the defendant's mind become unhinged by these and other things that have been proven in evidence? Was an insanity induced by this revelation and the others that appear in evidence which so swept reason from its moorings that when he killed Stanford White that night he did not know the nature and the quality of the act and that it was wrong?

"Your Honor's rulings have reduced the case to that, and have properly reduced it, in my estimation, to that point.

"Now on that question of whether or not his mind was unhinged by these revelations, whether or no these revelations ever were made to him is surely most important. It is not collateral. It goes to the very root of the case.

"They claim that as Thaw sat in the hotel in Paris that night and asked her to marry him and she said she would not because of White, and she then cryingly told how this man had drugged her when but a girl of fifteen—they contend that this picture unhinged his mind. Your Honor has ruled we have nothing to