Mr. Specter. Dr. Beavers, do you have an opinion as to whether the polygraphic examination which was conducted here today hurt Mr. Ruby mentally or physically in any way?
Dr. Beavers. Well, after the period of time, I think we were all fatigued. I think he was and I think everybody in the room was. I felt that he was fatigued as the rest of us were, during the course of a pretty long number of hours of interrogation.
Whether this would come under the heading of any physical harm, I don’t know. I would not consider it so ordinarily.
Mr. Specter. Would that fatigue diminish or evaporate with some rest tonight?
Dr. Beavers. I think so; I think so. I know what you’re trying to get at and I’ll try to answer it the best I can. The question of whether his mental state, and secondarily, a physical problem would be seriously affected by having this interrogation, by having this man take a polygraph examination. The one thing that this man has not been ambivalent on since my acquaintanceship with him, and I mean that so far as I can think of literally, the one area, the one subject that he has not been having these mixed feelings about is the fact that he did want to make this testimony, either with truth serum or with a polygraph or some way of getting the truth out.
Now, as a physician, and this was my role in these evaluations, not at the time and so far until right now, not as somebody testifying, I was concerned with his mental state, and rather early I felt there would possibly be something useful so far as the man’s mental state, if he could have a chance to tell his story. The mixture of what I consider his delusional state surrounding the possible conspiracy that people thought that he had, and therefore this tremendous number of destructive actions, that were presumably going on, fitted to an extent with some published reports of people’s opinions here and abroad. In short, there has been a mixture of the delusional and of the factual, a mixture of his confusion and a mixture of all other people’s confusion, and he is aware of it and has been, because apparently he gets newspapers. Apparently he has access to what both reasoned and unreasoned statements that are made. Consequently, I felt that it would be useful, if anything, that he be allowed a chance for this. I haven’t stated this to anybody, I don’t think, because there were a lot of other things that I could not evaluate. I’m not in a position to evaluate the legal or other reasons that might not be useful.
Mr. Specter. But with respect to his mental status, would it have been your expectation prior to the time that the polygraph examination started that it would have been beneficial rather than harmful to have it conducted?
Dr. Beavers. If anything, the odds are good that it actually wouldn’t do much one way or the other in my opinion, but the feeling of getting out the catharsis or the getting his story before the people that he has felt, for example, including the State, that were involved in some kind of action against people he cared for, because they assumed erroneously there was some conspiracy, then this might have some beneficial effect.
Mr. Specter. And what is your conclusion after being present during the course of the polygraphic examination as to whether it had beneficial effect or not?
Dr. Beavers. It’s hard to say. I think he held up rather remarkedly well. At least, this is my opinion. I haven’t been present with polygraph interrogations, but he certainly did not show undue stress, either physical or emotional, and handled the questions better than I thought he would. It did seem like he was getting, in a sense, his day in court, which was by reasons of his, as I understand it, trial procedure and presumed defense tactics not allowed him in the first trial. This to me is what he kept coming back to during the course of the examination, that he wanted to get his story out, and during the times I have seen him.