Crime Cure?

For a long time, the criminal career of Millard F. Wright puzzled the police. Because he seemed to have an uncontrollable urge to steal things, Wright has spent 15 of his 38 years in jail. Often he has stolen things he could neither use nor sell. The last time the cops caught him, after a series of Pittsburgh burglaries, they found his apartment full of hoarded, unused loot, including 40 suits, assorted jewelry, several alarm clocks and radios.

In jail, Wright tried to commit suicide, and was sent to a mental hospital. The hospital treated him, decided that he was sane, and sent him back to jail. Thereupon his lawyer called in a top-ranking Pittsburgh psychiatrist. Dr. Yale David Koskoff, senior neurosurgeon at Montefiore Hospital, suggested a prefrontal lobotomy (brain nerve-cutting) to revamp Wright's "psychopathic personality." That was all right with the prisoner--and with the court.

Last week Millard Wright's brain operation presented the court with a difficult legal question: Is a criminal tendency a disease that surgery can cure? Brought to trial for his burglaries before Judge G. Malcolm McDonald, Wright looked like a new man. He was cheerful, sociable and relaxed. Dr. Koskoff thought there was a good chance that he had been cured of the urge to steal. But to complete the cure, the prisoner would have to be set free and given a chance to live in a "normal" environment.

Even if Wright had really been cured, Judge McDonald had another disquieting thought to ponder: if he ruled that lobotomy could correct a criminal urge, would the precedent eventually empty all jails? After long thought, in which he decided not to "take this chance," the Judge said: "If we were to accede to the request that Wright be absolved ... we would soon be overwhelmed by similar requests from many other habitual criminals who are now incarcerated . . . and who would be willing to submit to similar operations. ... I have no confidence in such surgery. Hopes, perhaps, but no confidence."

Nonetheless, as a reward for Wright's "desire to help medical science," Judge McDonald let him off with a light sentence--two to twelve years in the penitentiary (instead of the 40 years to life Wright might have expected to get as a habitual offender).

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