In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

MURDER 157
of the criminal, now redefined as someone with a pathological condition,
to accuse society for the crime he or she has committed and to request
clinical therapy. But providing therapy instead of punishment is only one
of many options that emerge out of a more general crisis in the relation
between individuality and collectivity. In the Flessa case, the Frankfurt
court settles on a compromise. The defendant is neither acquitted nor
given the death penalty. She is sentenced to seven years in prison (Zuchthaus),
and her deed is defined as "attempted homicide in conjunction
with involuntary manslaughter." No lower degree of agency can be
attributed to someone who admits that she has taken another person's
life.
A wide range of models for renegotiating the relation of individual to
society emerges from the newspaper coverage of such cases. Society looks
particularly bad whenever the legal system fails to identify the perpetrator
of a crime. With three full pages of photographs, the September 18
issue of Caras y Caretas offers its readers the illusion of participating in
the prosecution of the "mysterious murder of Dr. Carlos A. Ray in his
villa in Vicente Lopez." A physician, city councillor, and member of
Buenos Aires high society, Carlos A. Ray has been found murdered in
the bedroom of his beautiful home, where he was living with his lover,
the widow Maria Poey de Canelo, attended by an impressive number of
servants. Caras y Caretas presents detailed exterior and interior views of
the house, as well as profiles of all the suspects, strongly orienting
readers' speculations toward the figure of Ray's mistress and toward the
possibility of a crime of passion. Two weeks later, the style of the
coverage has changed considerably. It now features photographs of fourteen
judges, public prosecutors, and specialists in forensic medicine, and
describes the approach that each one would take toward solving the
"sensational murder of Dr. Carlos A. Ray."
Rarely is decisive evidence unearthed after such a long period of
uncertainty. In August, the French press reports on the belated solution
to another "mysterious" case of murder. The body of Marie-Louise
Beulagnet is exhumed and-at the grave site-is subjected to a second
autopsy, which reveals that she was strangled. This triggers a confession
by her lover, Charles Guyot (Annees-Memoire, 47). Much more frequently,
however, the weakness of the legal system is implicitly-sometimes
even explicitly and provocatively-highlighted by criminals who
confess without being under any kind of pressure. After converting to