Trials: Sirhan through the Looking Glass

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Prosecutor David Fitts peppered the diminutive professor with hostile questions, but he could not blunt the thrust of Diamond's testimony about murder in a trance. A far-out tale? Perhaps. A grave problem of determining mental health in criminal trials is that expert witnesses are almost always available to back up either prosecution or defense with their testimony (see BEHAVIOR). After two more psychologists declared that Sirhan suffers from grave mental disorders, avuncular Attorney Grant Cooper rested for the defense. And though a handwriting expert called by the prosecution saw no evidence that Sirhan's diary had been written under the mirror's hypnotic influence, even the star rebuttal witness, Psychiatrist Seymour Pollack, told of the assassin's "paranoid personality." Pollack, however, asserted that the assassination of Kennedy was "triggered by political reasons with which he [Sirhan] was highly emotionally charged." Altogether, as the trial enters its final stages this week, the prosecution faces an uphill struggle to refute contentions that Sirhan was either insane or suffering from diminished mental responsibility.