When the ‘corpus juris’ meets a corpus delicti: The appearance

The Supreme Court Trial (August 1954)
According to the Glamuzina and Laurie account of the Hulme-Parker trial (23-28 August 1954), the defence case was seriously weakened by the girls’ confessions of murder to detectives (without lawyers present!) and the prescriptive jury instruction of the presiding Supreme Court Judge, Sir Francis Adams: “You really have no option but to hold the accused guilty of murder on the ground that the defence of insanity of the required nature and degree has not been proved.”[63] In Glamuzina and Laurie’s account, Adams J “pointed out to the Jury that both medical witnesses for the defence had agreed the girls knew that what they did had been wrong in the eyes of the law.”[64] This was an erroneous application of the M’Naghten common-law Rules in that it took no cognizance of Dixon J’s nuanced ruling in R v Porter (1933), especially given that one of the prime symptoms of their mental alienation was a sense of their exemption from the dictates of law and community norms. One also recalls Clarence Darrow’s comment à propos Leopold and Loeb: that despite this “archaic legal test”, the fact that defence counsel discovered “extensive derangements of their emotional life…[which] entered into and caused the commission of the crime” led them to expect, in a court of justice, some mitigation of the offence. However, one jury source claimed that the jurors had believed Hulme and Parker to be insane but felt that a guilty verdict would spare them from lengthy incarceration in a mental hospital (being under eighteen, they came under the protection of s5 of the Capital Punishment Act 1950 and would be subject to detention at the Crown’s ‘pleasure’). Aside from the crudity of Adams J’s ruling, it is true that a full insanity verdict would indeed have quashed their conviction and placed them in indefinite custody under Part IV of the Mental Health Act 1911. In addition to the appalling judicial derogation of Porter (1933) and Stapleton v The Queen (1952) – the point of which Turner J emphasized so clearly in Macmillan (previously cited) – there was another critical criminological nuance which seems to have escaped Adams J’s attention in framing his jury instruction: that when confronted with ‘method in the madness’ of criminal defendants, jurists may be too quick to think in terms of parallels with Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet.[65] Turner J observed that evidence of “method and logical approach to an alleged crime might not be inconsistent with the [insanity] diagnosis, but might in fact support it” (R v Macmillan [1966] NZLR 616(CA) at 625). This assessment is entirely consonant with Sir Owen Dixon’s rulings but seems to have been suppressed by Adams J in ruling on the statutory options available in the 1908 Crimes Act. A robust defence might have been able to displace the Crown’s presumption of sanity (s43 (1) ) , using Juliet’s and Pauline’s confession as evidence of shock and mens rea after the event, and while there was clearly no bio-physical evidence of “natural imbecility or disease of the mind” (s43 (2) ) , defence psychiatrists ought to have been schooled by defence counsel to exploit s43(3) and (4) as a ground for a defence of temporary delusional insanity-automatism (exogenous rather than endogenous), as per Porter. Let us re-examine the relevant subsections under which the Supreme Court trial was held:
(3) A person labouring under specific delusions, but in other respects sane, shall not be acquitted on the ground of insanity under the provisions hereinafter contained unless the delusions caused him to believe in the existence of some state of things which, if it existed, would justify or excuse his act or omission.
(4) Insanity before or after the time when he committed or omitted the act, and insane delusions, though only partial, may be evidence that the offender was, at the time when he committed or omitted the act, in such a condition of mind as to render him irresponsible for such act or omission. [66]

These legal parameters—if linked to Porter and Stapleton—surely ought to have provided a proverbial ‘barn-door’ through which a full insanity claim could have been avoided, thereby circumventing Crown Prosecutor Alan Brown’s appallingly unsubtle characterization that “this plainly was a callously planned and premeditated murder, committed by two highly intelligent and perfectly sane but precocious and dirty-minded girls.”[67] (Emphasis mine.) Defence counsel Terence Gresson rebutted , stating that “The Crown’s description is unfortunate and medically incorrect. They are mentally sick girls more to be pitied than blamed.”[68] Thus the rather invidious ‘mad or bad?’ label became attached to the trial process (with the defence and prosecution tethering each case , respectively, to the relevant adjective). Of course the social context of the trial would have made a defence of temporary insanity very difficult to sustain (especially with Mrs Hulme as a Crown witness whom the police tried to keep away from defence counsel), but it would have been the most juristically nuanced option. It is apparent that Adams J was operating under the equivalent of the “Queensberry Rules” (Lord Queensbury’s attack on Oscar Wilde in 1895), with all the legally-sanctioned homophobic violence of the Oscar Wilde trials still ringing in his earlobes 59 years on from that watershed event in British criminal jurisprudence.

Mr Brown pre-warned the jury that they were to ignore the dire legal plight of the accused; that feelings of outrage for the late Mrs Parker or pity for the girls “have nothing to do with this trial at all” for the simple reason that “Sentiment and emotionalism have no part in British justice.” Brown set out the Crown case: “The evidence will be that the two girls came to the conclusion, after much thought, that the mother of one of them, Parker, was an obstacle in their path, that she thwarted their desires, and that she should be done away with. They planned to murder her, and put their plan into effect by battering her over the head with a brick encased in a stocking…in a manner as to make her death appear to be an accident.”[69] Brown added that “Their main object in life was to be together, sharing each other’s thoughts, secrets and plans; and if any person dared to part them then that person should be forcibly removed.”[70] From February 1954 the personal diaries of Pauline Parker referred, with increasing frequency, to the death of her mother, and in March Pauline began visiting shipping companies in anticipation of their projected American voyage. In April both girls began a short-lived campaign of shop-lifting to garner travel funds. Here is a sample of the more notorious passages from Pauline’s diary:
As usual I woke at 5 and managed to write a considerable amount. I felt depressed at the thought of the day. There seemed to be no possibility of mother relenting and allowing me to go out to Ilam. This afternoon mother told me I could not go out to Ilam again until I was eight stone and more cheerful. As I am now seven stone there is little hope…she is most unreasonable. Why could not mother die? Dozens of people are dying every day. So why not mother, and father, too? [13 February 1954]
Anger against mother boiled up inside me, as it is she who is one of the main obstacles in my path. Suddenly a means of ridding myself of the obstacle occurred to me. If she were to die… [28 April]
I did not tell Deborah [Juliet] of my plans for removing Mother. The last fate I wish to meet is one in a Borstal. I am trying to think up some way….I do not want to go to too much trouble but I want it to appear either a natural or an accidental death. [29 April]
We practically finished our books today and our main idea for the day was to moider [transcribed Brooklyn pronunciation of ‘murder’] Mother. This notion is not a new one, but this time it is a definite plan which we intend to carry out. We have worked it out carefully and are both thrilled with the idea. Naturally we feel a trifle nervous but the anticipation is great. We are both stark, staring mad. [19 June]
…we discussed our plans for moidering Mother and made them a little clearer. Peculiarly enough I have no qualms of conscience (or is it peculiar, we are so mad?). Next day I rose late and helped Mother vigorously this morning. Deborah rang and we decided to use a rock in a stocking rather than a sand-bag. We discussed the moider fully. I feel very keyed up, as though I were planning a Surprise party. Mother has fallen in with everything beautifully and the happy event is to take place tomorrow afternoon. So next time I write in this diary Mother will be dead. How odd—yet how pleasing. [21 June]