George R. (Bob) Dekle, Sr. has done it again. He has written Six Capsules: The Gilded Age Murder of Helen Potts. It
is another splendid book by Bob—this time a “true crime book” that recounts the
poisoning of Helen Potts by Carlyle Harris and the high profile murder trial of
Harris in the late 19th century.
Bob’s prestigious list of prior books, among others, includes: Cross-ExaminationHandbook: Persuasion, Strategies, and Techniques (which I co-authored
along with William Bailey); The Last Murder: The Investigation, Prosecution,
and Execution of Ted Bundy (2011); The Case against Christ: A
Critique of the Prosecution of Jesus (2011); Abraham Lincoln's Most
Famous Case: The Almanac Trial (2014); Ted Bundy, Celebrity Slayer (2014
Kindle ed.); The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case: A Critical Analysis of the Trial
of Bruno Richard Hauptmann; Chronicles of Crime and Criminals: Thirty
Two Years in the Courtroom (2017 Kindle ed.); and Prairie Defender:
The Murder Trials of Abraham Lincoln (2017).
New York
assistant district attorney Francis L. Wellman, who prosecuted Harris, was a familiar
character to Bob Dekle because Wellman wrote the second best book on
cross-examination entitled The Art of
Cross-Examination, second only to Bob’s Cross-Examination
Handbook. Notable is the fact that The
Art of Cross-Examination is still in print, and, despite its somewhat
archaic language, it is still filled with excellent advice regarding how to
conduct cross-examinations.
A highlight
in Six Capsules is Bob’s description
of Harris’s cross-examination of a defense expert witness Dr. Horatio Wood
along with Bob’s observations about how Harris conducted the cross. Carlyle
Harris was a young medical student who was alleged to have poisoned Helen Potts
with morphine to prevent disclosure of the fact that he had convinced her to
secretly marry him under assumed names.
Dr. Horatio
Wood of the University Hospital in Philadelphia was the defense witness expert upon
whom the defense case rested. On direct examination, Wood in essence testified
that given that the body had been embalmed and buried for a length of time, it
was not possible to determine the cause of death and that her symptoms were
“compatible with various conditions.”
I can’t do
justice here to either how Bob describes Wellman’s cross of Wood or Bob’s
analysis of Wellman’s strategies and skills as a cross-examiner. Suffice it to
say, Wellman did the following:
· Challenged Wood’s opinion that
morphine poisoning could not be diagnosed based upon symptoms.
· Took advantage of Wood’s assertion
that a definitive diagnosis could not be reached based upon symptoms but a
physician confronted with them would come to a working diagnosis she had been
poisoned.
· Attacked Wood’s qualifications—Wood
had seen only one case of morphine poisoning and that was 20 years before the
Harris trial.
· Examined Wood with a portion of his
book in which he stated: “I have thought that inequality of pupils is proof
that a case is not one of narcotism; but Professor Taylor has recorded an
instance of opium-poisoning in which it occurred.” Then, Wellman confronted Wood
with the fact that Taylor’s case involved a man with one eye. (This was
followed with laughter from the spectators.)
· Wellman concluded with “You may go
back to Philadelphia, sir.”
Bob Dekle is
a meticulous researcher, and he reported what the newspapers said of Wood’s trial
performance under Wellman’s cross, as follows:
“The Herald
reported that when Jerome dismissed Wood from the witness stand, the doctor
‘hurried away from the witness stand with that pained expression sometimes
visible on the face of a picnicker who sat on an anthill.’ Upon Wood’s return
to Philadelphia, he remarked that he had ‘gone to New York only to make a fool
of himself.’ . . .”
To get both the full enjoyment of a true crime
history book and insights into effective trial practice, particularly
cross-examination, read Six Capsules.
