The Science of 'Degeneracy' in the Courtroom

If your nose is not set straight on your face, if your ears extend out from your head too far, if your jaw is too pointed, if your mouth is too large, or if you have any one of a number of other odd marks, you can lay claim to symptoms of degeneracy. Degeneracy has come to be a common and successful defense in murder trials. All sorts of troubles, from insanity down to wasting diseases, demoralizing habits, and malformations of the head and body, are classed as producing or tending to produce degeneracy. Doctors have standards of perfection for the head, eyes, ears, nose, face, neck, trunk, and limbs. If a person measures above or below the limits, the doctors class him as having symptoms of degeneracy. The method of finding symptoms of degeneracy has been reduced to a science. Some physicians make a special study of degeneracy and these are usually called in murder trials to testify for or against the prisoner. This much and more doctors have stated on the witness stand in the criminal courts of Tacoma during important murder trials. Finding deformities of the body and defects of the mind, the experts suspect degeneracy; or, if there are enough marks, they pronounce the prisoner a degenerate or a maniac. By presenting facts of this kind to juries, the lawyers and doctors manage at times to have prisoners acquitted of murder or assault, or to have the penalty lessened.