Snook was back on the stand for more cross-examination Friday, and Chester expertly led him through the assault and murder in minute detail, down to the placement of Snook’s feet during the attempt at lovemaking in the vehicle. Courtroom observers who missed the prurient details of Snook’s testimony the day before were given a chance to hear the entire story over again in a verbal form of slow-motion replay:
Question by Mr. Chester: Was the right door of the coupe open or closed? Answer: Open.
Q: Was your right foot out or your left foot out?
A: Left foot.
Q: Your left foot was out of the car and your right foot, was it out or in?
A: It was in.
Q: It was in the car. Where was it, Doctor?
A: Pushed up around the pedal, as best I know.
By taking Snook step by step through the details of that night, Chester was effectively negating Snook’s claim that he could not remember the events surrounding the murder. He wanted the jury to reason that a man who could remember the exact position of his feet during sex was lying when he said he could not remember cutting the throat of his lover a few minutes later.
Having established the professor’s ability to remember details, Chester handed Snook the hammer and had him demonstrate how he hit Theora. For the prosecution, this was a masterful move; not only did it give the jury a vivid picture of what the professor looked like with the hammer in his hand, but it also put the doctor in the difficult position of having to swing the weapon. If he hit it hard, he would appear violent, but if he laid up, the jury could get the impression that he did not hit Theora with enough force to kill her. Snook fell into the trap and lightly tapped the witness chair.
Prosecutor John J. Chester Jr. cross-examines Dr. Snook at his trial. Courtesy of the Columbus Dispatch.
When Snook denied remembering how he cut Theora’s throat, Chester moved on to Snook’s interrogation. Rather than introduce the signed confession at that time, the prosecutor used the notes of the questions and answers during the third-degree session. For more than an hour, Chester read the interrogatories and responses, and Snook responded with either denials of saying what was attributed to him or saying he did not remember providing such an answer.
“You admitted that you cut the girl’s throat to relieve her suffering after you beat her with the hammer, did you not?” Chester asked.
Snook denied ever saying that.
“Then if we say you did, we are liars?”
“Yes, you are.”
Snook asserted that the words in the confession he signed were drafted by Chester and that he only signed it under duress. By the end of the cross-examination, Snook had denied nearly every statement attributed to him by the police and the reporters Fusco and Howells.
The sentiment was clearly against Snook after his testimony. Kilgallen reported that at the end of his time in the dock, “Snook was taken back to his cell last evening stripped of the glamour of his ‘iron nerve.’ He is shaken and spent by two days of examination on the stand.”
The subhead in the Dispatch story on the cross-examination read: “Killer’s memory is conveniently poor at crucial points: Makes poor showing in reenactment of death scene with prosecutor Chester and insists mind is blank as to what he did after fourth blow with hammer was struck.”
There was little left for the defense to do after Snook testified except to plow ahead with the argument that the confessions were coerced. On Saturday, Seidel and Ricketts both took the stand to testify how Chester denied them access to their client and threatened to “ruin” Seidel unless he secured a confession from Snook. Even this fell flat, as Chester got Ricketts to admit that it was because of a deputy’s actions—not the prosecutor’s—that the defense obtained the injunction allowing them access to their client. Ricketts conceded that he got the court order before he even spoke to Chester.
The defense team took the tactical step of not pursuing the insanity argument and announced at the end of its case that it would not call any psychiatrists to discuss Snook’s mental state. The move was prompted in part by the hope that an appeals court would rule against Judge Scarlett’s decision not to allow the defense experts sixty days to observe their patient. Scarlett’s decision, they would argue, cut off one avenue of defense and made the trial unfair.
Almost as an aside, the defense was able to establish through medical testimony that Snook’s genitals showed signs of scarring due to an attack of the sort he described. A prosecution-appointed physician also inspected the professor and did not dispute the defense’s contention. What effect that might have had on the jury remained to be seen.
Cover of the pamphlet published shortly after Dr. Snook’s trial with his unexpurgated testimony.
Outside the courthouse, the Columbus police were busy tracking down copies of Snook’s testimony that were being sold in booklet form under the title The Murder of Theora Hix: Dr. Snook’s Uncensored Testimony. Some enterprising stenographer had taken the more prurient parts of Snook’s story as he told it from the witness stand and arranged for it to be printed and bound with a hand-drawn cover featuring the professor’s face. Almost as soon as the seventy-page book hit the streets, it was declared obscene, and the police were ordered to confiscate every copy they could find. No more than a handful of the booklets still exist.
The closing arguments on both sides touched briefly on the evidence introduced in the case and reiterated the arguments from the opening statements, but on each side it was the personality and character of the defendant and victim that received the most attention.
In his closing argument, Seyfert addressed Theora’s character, first apologizing for having to do so. “I would like to say ‘peace to her ashes,’ but I cannot do that with the life of a man at stake,” he said. “She has to be ridiculed to be pictured as she was. She was the type that was quiet, but sneaky.”
Seidel piled on. “If Snook wrote those letters that were read to you, then Theora must have written something first which caused Dr. Snook to write such replies,” he said. “And she saved those letters. They were deadly weapons. She was a scheming two-man woman—one for the afternoon, one for the night.”
Assistant Prosecutor Gessaman described Snook as “a man who has lied to the police, lied to the prosecutor, lied to his own attorneys, who is now coming on the stand, trying to blacken this girl’s character, trying to say he was afraid of her to escape the electric chair.”
Chester finished the state’s arguments by cursing Snook, comparing the heinousness of his crime to that of Leopold and Loeb and demanding that the jury uphold the honor of the State of Ohio by finding Snook guilty. At the conclusion of his argument, widespread applause filled the courtroom, prompting an objection by Ricketts and an admonishment to the jury from Judge Scarlett.
Scarlett addressed the jurors at length about the confessions, advising them how to determine whether the confessions were voluntary.
The ultimate question for your determination is whether or not…improper inducements did in fact cause the confession, or confessions to be made, or whether such confession or confessions was or were the free and voluntary act of the accused. All the surrounding circumstances, the defendant’s strength or weakness of mind, his knowledge, his demeanor, etc., must be looked to by you to determine whether he was affected by the promises or threats, if any, and made the confession or confessions as a result of such undue influence, or freely and voluntarily.
Consider separately the circumstances under which each of the alleged confession or confessions were made by the defendant. If you find any or all of the confessions to be involuntary, you will entirely disregard any such confession or confessions. This rule is based upon the belief that confessions so extorted are untrue, or at least unreliable, and therefore must be rejected.
There was one final shock to come in the trial of Dr. James Snook, and this time it was delivered by the jury. After three weeks of testimony by more than sixty witnesses, the jury came back with a guilty verdict in just under thirty minutes. Snook received the verdict with the same coolness he had exhibited throughout the entire ordeal.
Afterward, a juror said the first fifteen minutes of the deliberations were taken up by selecting the foreman and praying for divine guidance.
