Facts and Fictions of Life. Gardener Helen Hamilton
boys. The boys appeared to look upon it as a sort of matinee to which they had gained free admission.
The trial was one of unusual interest. It had been going on for several days. The man on trial (who was twenty-four years of age and of a well-to-do laboring class,) had shot and killed his rival in the affections of a girl of fourteen. Some months previous, he had been cut in the face, and one eye destroyed, by the man he afterward killed, who was at the time of the killing out on bail for this offense. I had learned these points from the scraps of conversation outside the court room, and from the court officer. This was the last day of the trial. There was to be the summing up of the defense, the speech of the prosecutor, the charge of the judge, and the verdict of the jury.
The prisoner sat near the jury box, pale and stolid looking. The spectators laughed and joked. Court officers and lawyers moved about and chaffed one another. There was nothing solemn, nothing dignified, nothing to suggest the awful fact that here was a man on trial for his life, who, if found guilty, was to be deliberately killed by the State after days of inquiry, even as his victim had been killed, in the heat of passion and jealousy, by him.
The State was proposing to take this man's life to teach other men not to commit murder.
"Hats off!"
The door near the Judge's dais had been opened by an officer, who had shouted the command as a rotund and pleasant-faced gentleman, with decidedly Hibernian features, entered.
He took his seat on the raised platform beneath a red canopy. The buzz of voices had ceased when the order to remove hats was given. It now began again in more subdued tones. In a few moments the prisoner's lawyer – one of the prominent men of the bar – began his review of the case. He pointed out the provocation, the jealousy, the previous assault – the results of which were the ghastly marks and the sightless eye of the face before them. He plead self defense and said over and over again, "If I had been tried as he was, if I had been disfigured for life, if I had had the girl I loved taken from me, I'd have killed the man who did it, long ago! We can only wonder at this man's forbearance!"
I think from a study of the faces that there was not a boy in the room who did not agree with that sentiment – and there were boys present who were not over thirteen years of age.
The lawyer dwelt, too, upon the fact that the prosecutor would say this or that against his client. "He will try to befog this case. He will tell you this and he will try to make you think that; but every man on this jury knows full well that he would have done what my client did under the same conditions." "The prosecutor told you the other day so and so. He lied and he knew it." The defender warmed to his work and shook his finger threateningly at the prosecutor. Every one in the room appeared to think it an excellent bit of acting and a thoroughly good joke. No one seemed to think it at all serious, and when he closed and the State's attorney arose to reply there was a smile and rustle of quiet satisfaction as if the audience had said:
"Now the fur will fly. Look out! It is going to be pretty lively for he has to pay off several hard thrusts."
There was a life at stake; but to all appearances no one was controlled by a trifle like that when so much more important a thing was risked also – the professional pride of two gentlemen of the bar. In the speech which followed, it did not dawn upon the State's attorney – if one may judge from his words – that he was "attorney for the people," and that the prisoner was one of "the people." It did not appear in his attitude if he realized that the State does not elect him to convict its citizens, but to see that they are properly protected and represented.
Surely the State is not desirous of convicting its citizens of crime. It does not employ an attorney upon that theory; but is this not the theory upon which the prosecutor invariably conducts his cases? Does he not labor first of all to secure every scrap of evidence against the accused and to make light of or cover up anything in his favor? Is not the State quite as anxious that he – its representative – find citizens guiltless, if they are so, as that he convict them if they are offenders against the law? Is not the prosecutor offending against the law of the land as well as against that of ordinary humanity when he bends all the vast machinery of his office to collect evidence against and refuses to admit – tries to rule out – evidence in favor of one of "the people" whose employee he is?
These questions came forcibly to my mind as I listened to the prosecutor in the trial for homicide. He not only presented the facts as they were, but he drew inferences, twisted meanings, asserted that the case had but one side; that the defendant was a dangerous animal to be at large; that his witnesses had all lied; that his lawyer was a notorious special pleader and had wilfully distorted every fact in the case. He waxed wroth and shook his fist in the face of his antagonist and appealed to every prejudice and sentiment of the jury which might be played upon to the disadvantage of the accused. He sat down mopping his face and flashing his eyes. The Judge gave his charge, which, to my mind, was clearly indicative of the fact that he, at least, felt that there were two very serious sides to the case. The audience which had so relished the two preceding speeches, found the Judge tame, and when the jury filed out, half of the audience went also. Most of them were laughing, highly amused by "the way the prosecutor gave it to him" as I heard one lad of seventeen say. The moment the Judge left the stand there was great chaffing amongst the lawyers, and much merry-making. The prisoner and his friends sat still. The prosecutor smilingly poked his late legal adversary under the ribs and asked in a tone perfectly audible to the prisoner, "Lied, did I? Well, I rather think I singed your bird a little, didn't I?" When he reached the door, he called back over his shoulder – making a motion of a pendant body – "Down goes McGinty!" Everyone laughed. That is to say, everyone except the white-faced prisoner and his mother. He turned a shade paler and she raised a handkerchief to her eyes. Several boys walked past him and stopped to examine him closely. One of them said, so that the prisoner could not fail to hear, "He done just right. I'd 'adone it long before, just like his lawyer said."
"Me too. You bet," came from several other lads – all under twenty years of age.
And still we waited for the jury to return. The prisoner grew restless and was taken away by an officer to the pen. There was great laughter and joking going on in the room. Several were eating luncheons abstracted from convenient pockets. I turned to an officer, and asked:
"Do you not think all this is bad training for boys? It must show them very clearly that it is a mere game of chance between the lawyers with a life for stakes. The best player wins. They must lose all sense of the seriousness of crime to see it treated in this way."
"Upon the other hand," said he, "they learn, if they stay about criminal courts much, that not one in ten who is brought here escapes conviction, and not one in ten who is once convicted, fails to be convicted and sent up over and over again. Once a criminal, always a criminal. If they get fetched here once they might as well throw up the sponge."
"Is it so bad as that?" I asked. He nodded. "Is there not something wrong with the penal institutions then?" I queried.
"How?"
"You told me a while ago," I explained, "that almost all first crimes or convictions were of boys under seventeen years of age. Now you say that not one in ten brought here, accused, escapes conviction, and not one in ten of these fails to be convicted over and over again. Now it seems to me that a boy of that age ought not to be a hopeless case even if he has been guilty of one crime; yet practically he is convicted for life if found guilty of larceny, we will say. Is there not food for reflection in that?"
"I do' know," he responded, "mebby. If anybody wanted to reflect. I guess most boys that hang around here don't spend none too much time reflectin' though – till after they get sent up. They get more time for it then," he added, dryly.
"Another thing that impresses me as strange," I went on, "is the apparent determination of the prosecutor to convict even where there is a very wide question as to the degree of guilt."
"I don't see anything queer in that. He's human. He likes to beat the other lawyer. Why, did you know that the prosecutor you heard just now is cousin to a lord? His first cousin married Lord – ."
This was said with a good deal of pride and a sort of proprietary interest in both the lord and the fortunate prosecutor. I failed to grasp just its connection