“Incompetent testimony,”4 objected Elizabeth’s lawyers, a legal term that aimed to cast doubt on McFarland’s expert ability.
Yet the doctor was the nationally renowned superintendent of the State Hospital. That argument was never going to wash. Incompetent testimony can also mean the evidence is irrelevant, but these documents cut right to the heart of the case. Moore tried one final objection: to present the paperwork but not the person “debarred the defense of the benefit of a cross-examination.”5
But Starr overruled him on every single point. Theophilus had chosen his lawyer well; Bonfield was an “acknowledged leader”6 among his peers, with a “convincing personality”7 that commanded respect. His arguments were known to carry “more than ordinary weight with court, bar and jury,”8 and it seemed he had triumphed again. McFarland’s letter from December 1863 and his certificate were both allowed to be read to the jury.
It was damning evidence indeed. And although Elizabeth had already seen the documents among Theophilus’s papers, this felt like fresh treachery. It was one thing to read the words herself in the quiet of the night, quite another to hear them read aloud by Theophilus’s lawyers in a courtroom. Every word of McFarland seemed to seal her fate.
“Of the existence of insanity I have no question,”9 the lawyer intoned as he recited the certificate, while the words of McFarland’s December letter were yet more bricks in the walls beginning to surround her. “The officers of the institution…were satisfied she could not be cured.”10
Elizabeth sat glumly, numbly listening. It didn’t help that her own lawyer seemed equally despondent. “The defence had no opportunity for cross-examination,” Moore complained, “while Mr. Packard thus got the benefit of McFarland’s evidence that she was insane, with no possibility of a contradiction.”11
As if scenting victory, Bonfield confidently rested his case.
Moore tried to rouse himself. He called his first witnesses: Isaac Simington, the Methodist minister, and Dr. Mann, the physician who’d twice refused Theophilus a certificate of insanity in 1863. Both testified they believed Elizabeth sane, but Bonfield did not even bother to cross-examine.
Joseph Labrie, the local postmaster and notary public, was up next. The forty-one-year-old was a slight man with a wire-brush mustache. “I always said she was a sane woman, and say so yet.”12
In addition to his other jobs, Labrie had trained as a lawyer and gave evidence with all the eloquence and command one might expect from such a man. For that reason, perhaps, he was cross-examined—to weaken him before the jury.
“I am not a physician,” he conceded. “I am not an expert. She might be insane.” Yet he insisted, “But no common-sense man could find it out.”
Moore tried to reestablish Labrie’s standing.
“I am a Justice of the Peace, and Notary Public,” the witness confirmed. He testified that at Mr. Packard’s request, he’d witnessed Elizabeth’s signature on real estate deeds “within the past two months,” suggesting that her husband had then thought her sane enough to sign.
Labrie had done as well as could be hoped for, but it’s probable Moore still felt uneasy as his witness stepped down. Bonfield’s lack of cross-examination of most of his witnesses, plus his line of attack with Labrie, spoke volumes. Theophilus’s lawyer clearly did not think that any of them had a patch on the authority of Dr. McFarland.
The trouble was: he was right. The doctor’s words seemed to hang in the courtroom with an emphatic presence: “Her insanity consists in a thoroughly diseased conception of her own powers as one having supernatural attributes.”13 Moore had done brilliantly earlier in dismantling Dr. Brown’s prejudices about Elizabeth’s feminist theological beliefs, but with McFarland not present to be cross-examined, he hadn’t been able to strike down these haunting words in the same way. What the jury was left with was a sensible-sounding diagnosis from an expert medical man. And no amount of testimony from a Methodist minister, a local doctor, or a notary public could combat it.
What Elizabeth needed was her own expert, who could not only refute McFarland’s powerful testimony but also present a strong case for her beliefs. But as of yet, they didn’t have one. Theophilus still held all the cards.
But they did have one secret weapon.
Elizabeth herself.
“[We would like] to read to the jury the following paper,” began Elizabeth’s counsel, “which has been referred to by the [prosecution’s] witnesses as evidence of Mrs. Packard’s insanity.”14