The question as to whether hypnotic suggestion can play a part in the commission of a crime has frequently been before the courts in recent years. To these belongs the case of Eyraud and Bompard, who were accused in 1890 of murdering an employe of the courts, named Eyraud. Sacresta, the family doctor of the Bompards, informed the court that he had frequently hypnotized the accused, and Liegeois, who was called as an expert, declared, in opposition to the opinion expressed by Brouardel, Motet, and Ballet, that the woman Bompard had committed the crime under the influence of a hypnotic suggestion she had received from her lover Eyraud. Both of the accused were convicted. Eyraud was executed, and Bompard condemned to twenty years' penal servitude, from which she was released after serving thirteen years. After she came out of prison, Liegeois submitted her to a series of hypnotic experiments, the result of which was to strengthen the opinion he had formed in the first instance. Although she at first resisted, he finally succeeded in making Bompard, while in the hypnotic state, re-act the scenes in which the crime was originally suggested to her. The Weiss and Chambige cases also excited a considerable amount of interest.

In the former, a Madame Weiss, in Algiers, attempted to poison her husband, and was condemned to twenty years' imprisonment, whereupon she committed suicide by poison. Liegeois believes this was a case of post-hypnotic suggestion received by the woman from her lover; but the possibility of this was not seriously investigated by the court. In the other case a married woman who had previously been a model wife and mother was killed by a man, Chambige, who had fallen in love with her, and who afterwards attempted suicide. Liegeois's explanation is that the woman was hypnotized by Chambige, and then by suggestion induced to forget her husband and children and fall in love with him, Chambige. Liegeois supports this argument by the defence put forward by the advocate Durier.

In another case, A. Voisin expressed the expert opinion that a certain woman accused of theft had been induced by suggestion to commit the crime, and was therefore irresponsible. It is impossible to decide from the official report of this case whether it was one of hypnotic or of waking suggestion.

Hypnotic suggestion has also often been made a pretext in other criminal cases. A few years ago a woman was charged in Liegnitz with attempting to murder her husband. Here also the possibility of hypnosis being in some way connected with the crime was discussed. It seemed at first as though it was intended to present the accused lover in the light of a victim to the hypnotic suggestions of the woman, because he had often been hypnotized, but as the case proceeded it was shown that hypnosis was only used to prove that his mental capacity was of a very low order. There was a case a short time ago in Berlin in which a magnetopath, Reichel, and a rich widow, with whom he was on intimate terms, were accused of suborning witnesses. One of the persons involved in the case expressed the opinion that the widow was under the hypnotic influence of her fellow-prisoner. In a case that occurred in Vienna, Caroline Ullrich, a former dancer, who was accused of slander, asserted that she was hypnotized by her husband and wrote the slanderous letters while she was in that state.

It was this very case that showed what confused notions about hypnosis obtain in the public mind.

A few years ago I was called in as an expert in a case of this kind in Germany. A young girl, X., had fallen into the clutches of a procuress, Y., who gave spiritualistic seances, and who drove the girl to prostitution and crime by means of automatic (?) writing. The woman Y. used to write down the commands of the spirits, and a number of documents were impounded minutely detailing what X. was to do. The seed fell on fruitful ground, for the girl was a spiritualist and therefore believed that she was bound to do all that the spirits ordered. Y. was greatly assisted by the artistic ambition of the girl, who had been trained as a singer. Fame, honour, and riches were promised the girl if she would only obey the spirits' commands. The girl consequently became intimate with all kinds of men, and Y. always took the money. Finally, X. took a blackmailing letter to the man who had first seduced her. That letter also was instigated by Y. Similarly, X. let herself be induced to attempt to procure abortion, to be guilty of breach of contract, etc., at the instigation of the spirits. This uncanny influence, as we must call it, that Y. exerted over the girl X., caused many people to think of hypnotic influence, particularly in respect to the spiritualistic stances.

X.'s own father finally gave information to the police, so as to release his daughter from the overwhelming influence of the woman Y. But careful consideration of all the circumstances of the case gives no ground for considering that the girl had been hypnotized; it was rather a case of the superstitious tendencies of an obviously nervous girl being artfully utilized by a procuress for her own gain.

There are many other criminal actions in connection with which the possibility of hypnotic suggestion having played a part has been discussed. This happened some years ago in the charge of murder brought against two men in Kansas, named Gray and Macdonald. Gray, who found a certain Patton an irksome witness in a case in which he was interested, artfully induced Macdonald to murder Patton by representing the latter to be an enemy of his, Macdonald's. Macdonald was acquitted, but Gray was condemned to death. It was frequently urged at the time in the press that hypnotic suggestion had been employed, though in reality the case was of a totally different nature. The court did not accept the plea of hypnotic suggestion, but assumed that another kind of influence had been brought into play (William Hirsch).