The psychological side of convict life is intensely interesting, but in
studying brain processes, supposed to be mechanical, one's theories and
one's logical conclusions are likely to be baffled by a factor that will
not be harnessed to any set of theories; namely, that _something which
we call conscience_. We forget that the criminal is only a human being
who has committed a crime, and that back of the crime is the same human
nature common to us all.
During the first years when I was in touch with prison life I had only
occasional glimpses of remorse for crimes committed. The minds of most
of the convicts seemed to dwell on the "extenuating circumstances" more
than on the criminal act, and the hardships of prison life were almost
ever present in their thoughts. I had nearly come to consider the
remorse pictured in literature and the drama as an unreal thing, when I
made the acquaintance of Ellis Shannon and found it: a monster that
gripped the human heart and held it as in a vise. Nemesis never
completed a work of retribution more fully than it was completed in the
life of Ellis Shannon.
Shannon was born in an Eastern city, was a boy of more than average
ability, and there seemed no reason why he should have gone wrong; but
he early lost his father, his mother failed to control him, and when
about sixteen years of age he fell into bad company and was soon
launched in his criminal career. He broke off all connection with his
family, went West, and for ten years was successful in his line of
business--regular burglary. He was widely known among men of his calling
as "The Greek," and his "professional standing" was of the highest. The
first I ever heard of him was from one of my other prison friends, who
wrote me: "If you want to know about life in ---- prison, write to Ellis
Shannon, who is there now. You can depend absolutely on what he
says--and when one professional says that of another you know it means
something." I did not, however, avail myself of this introduction.
Shannon's reputation for cool nerve was undisputed, and it was said that
he did not know what fear was. In order to keep a clear head and steady
hand he refrained from dissipation; he prided himself upon never
endangering the lives of those whose houses he entered, and despised the
bunglers who did not know their business well enough to avoid personal
encounter in their midnight raids. Unlike most men of his calling he
always used a candle on entering a building, and his associates often
told him that sometime that candle would get him into trouble.
One night the house of a prominent and popular citizen was entered.
While the burglar was pursuing his nefarious work the citizen suddenly
seized him by the shoulders, pulling him backward. The burglar managed
to fire backward over his own head, the citizen's hold was relaxed, and
the burglar fled. The shot proved fatal; the only trace left by the
assailant was a candle dropped on the floor.
A reward was offered for the capture and conviction of the murderer.
Circumstantial evidence connected with the candle led to the arrest of
George Brett, a young man of the same town, not of the criminal class.
The verdict in the case turned upon the identification of the piece of
candle found in the house with one procured by the accused the previous
day; and in the opinion of the court this identification was proven.
Brett admitted having obtained a piece of candle from that grocer on
that afternoon, but claimed that he had used it in a jack-o'-lantern
made for a child in the family.[12] Proof was insufficient to convict
the man of the actual crime, but this bit of evidence, with some other
less direct, was deemed sufficiently incriminating to warrant sending
Brett to prison for a term of years--seventeen, I think; and though the
convicted man always asserted his innocence his guilt was taken for
granted while six years slipped by.
Ellis Shannon, in the meantime, had been arrested for burglary in
another State and had served a sentence in another penitentiary. He
seemed to have lost his nerve, and luck had turned against him. On his
release still another burglary resulted in a ten years' sentence, this
time to the same prison where Brett was paying the penalty of the crime
in which the candle had played so important a part.
The two convicts happened to have cells in the same part of the prison,
and for the first time Ellis Shannon came face to face with George
Brett. A few days later Shannon requested an interview with the warden.
In the warden's office he announced that he was the man guilty of the
crime for which Brett was suffering, and that Brett had no part in it.
He drew a sketch of the house burglarized--not altogether correct--gave
a succinct account of the whole affair, and declared his readiness to go
into court, plead guilty to murder, and accept the sentence, even to the
death penalty. Action on this confession was promptly taken. Shannon was
sent into court and on his confession alone was sentenced to
imprisonment for life.
Brett was overjoyed by this vindication and the expectation of immediate
release. But, no; the prosecuting parties were unconvinced by Shannon's
confession, which, in their opinion, did not dispose of the evidence
against Brett.
It was a curious state of affairs, and one perhaps never paralleled,
that, while a man's unsupported statement was considered sufficient to
justify the imposing of a sentence to life imprisonment, this statement
counted for nothing as affecting the fate of the other man involved. And
there was never a trace of collusion between the two men, either at the
time of the crime or afterward.
Shannon's story of the crime I shall give in his own terse language,
quoted from his confession published in the newspapers:
"Up to the time of killing Mr. ---- I had never even wounded anybody. I
had very little regard for the rights of property, but to shoot a man
dead at night in his own house was a climax of villainy I had not
counted on. A professional thief is not so blood-thirsty a wretch as he
is thought to be.... I am setting up no defense for the crime of murder
or burglary--it is all horrible enough. It was a miserable combination
of circumstances that caused the shooting that night. I was not feeling
well and so went into the house with my overcoat on--something I had
never done before. It was buttoned to the throat. I had looked at Mr.
---- a moment before and he was asleep. I had then turned and taken down
his clothes. I had a candle in one hand and the clothes in the other. I
would have left in a second of time when suddenly, before I could turn,
Mr. ---- spoke. As quick as the word he had his arms thrown around me;
the candle went out and we were in the dark.
"Now I could hardly remember afterwards how it all occurred. There was
no time to think. I was helpless as a baby in the position in which I
was held. There is no time for reflection in a struggle like this. He
was holding me and I was struggling to get away. I told him several
times to let go or I'd shoot. I was nearly crazy with excitement and it
was simply the animal instinct of self-preservation that caused me to
fire the shots.
"I was so weak when I got outside that in running I fell down two or
three times. That night in Chicago I was in hopes the man was only
wounded, and in that case I had determined to quit the business. When I
read the account in the papers next morning all I can say is that,
although I was in the city and perfectly safe, with as little chance of
being discovered as if I were in another planet, I would have taken my
chances--whether it would have been five or twenty years for the
burglary--if it were only in my power to do the thing over again. I did
not much care what I did after this. I thought I could be no worse than
I was.
"In a few months I was arrested and got five years for a burglary in
----. I read what I could of the trial from what papers I could get; and
for the first time I saw what a deadly web circumstances and the
conceit of human shrewdness can weave around an innocent man.
"The trial went on. I did not open my mouth. I knew that if I said a
word and went into court fresh from the penitentiary I would certainly
be hanged, and I had not reached a point when I was ready to sacrifice
my life for a stranger.
"In the feverish life I led in the short time out of prison I forgot all
about this, until I found myself here for ten years and then I thought:
there is a man in this prison doing hard work, eating coarse food,
deprived of everything that makes life worth having, and suffering for a
crime of which he knows as little as the dust that is yet to be created
to fill these miserable cells. I thought what a hell the place must be
to him.
"No one has worked this confession out of me. I wish to implicate no
one, but myself. If you will not believe what I say now, and ---- stays
in prison, it is likely the truth will never be known. But if in the
future the man who was with me that night will come to the front,
whether I am alive or dead, you will find that what I have told you is
as true as the law of gravitation. I was never in the town of ----
before that time or since. I did not know whom I had killed until I
read of it. I do not know ---- (Brett) or any of his friends. But I do
know that he is perfectly innocent of the crime he is in prison for. I
know it better than any one in the world because I committed the crime
myself."
The position of Brett was not affected in the least by this confession,
though his family were doing all in their power to secure his release.
The case was considered most difficult of solution. The theory of
delusion on Shannon's part was advanced and was accepted by those who
believed Brett guilty, but received no credence among the convicts who
knew Shannon and the burglar associated with him at the time the crime
was committed.
I had never sought the acquaintance of a "noted criminal" before, but
this case interested me and I asked to see Shannon. For the first time I
felt myself at a disadvantage in an interview with a convict. A sort of
aloofness seemed to form the very atmosphere of his personality, and
though he sat near me it was with face averted and downcast eyes; the
face seemed cut in marble, it was so pale and cold, with clear-cut,
regular features, suggesting a singular appropriateness in his being
known as "The Greek."
I opened conversation with some reference to the newspaper reports;
Shannon listened courteously but with face averted and eyes downcast,
and then in low, level tones, but with a certain incisiveness, he
entered upon the motive which led to his confession, revealing to me
also his own point of view of the situation. Six years had passed since
the crime was committed, and all that time, he said, he had believed
that, if he could bring himself to confess, Brett would be cleared--that
during these six years the murder had become a thing of the past,
partially extenuated in his mind, on the ground of self-defence; but
when he found himself in the same prison with Brett, here was a result
of his crime, living, suffering; and in the depths of Shannon's own
conscience pleading for vindication and liberty. As a burden on his own
soul the murder might have been borne in silence between himself and his
Creator, but as a living curse on another it demanded confession. And
the desire to right that wrong swept through his being with
overmastering force.
"I had always believed," he said, "that 'truth crushed to earth would
rise again,' and I was willing to give my life for truth; but I learned
that the word of a convict is nothing--truth in a convict counts for
nothing."
The man had scarcely moved when he told me all this, and he sat like a
statue of despair when he relapsed into silence--still with downcast
eyes; I was absolutely convinced of the truth of what he had told me, of
the central truth of the whole affair, his guilt and his consciousness
of the innocence of the other man. That his impressions of some of the
details of the case might not square with known facts was of secondary
importance; to me the _internal evidence_ was convincing. Isn't there
something in the Bible to the effect that "spirit beareth witness unto
spirit"? At all events, _sometimes a woman knows_.
I told Shannon that I believed in his truth, and I offered to send him
magazines and letters if he wished. Then he gave me one swift glance of
scrutiny, with eyes accustomed to reading people, thanked me, and added
as we parted: "If there were more people like you in this world there
wouldn't be so many like me."
My belief in the truth of Shannon's statement was purely intuitive, but
in order to make it clear to my understanding as well I studied every
objection to its acceptance by those who believed Shannon to be the
victim of a delusion. His sincerity no one doubted. It was claimed that
Shannon had manifested no interest in the case previous to his arrival
in the prison where Brett was. On the way to this prison Shannon, in
attempting to escape from the sheriff, had received a blow on the back
of his head, which it was assumed might have affected his mind. Among my
convict acquaintances was a man who had worked in the shop beside
Shannon in another prison, at the time of Brett's trial for the crime,
and this man could have had no possible motive for incriminating
Shannon. He told me that during all the time of the trial, five years
previous to the blow on his head, Shannon was greatly disturbed,
impatient to get hold of newspapers which he had to borrow, and
apparently absorbed in studying the evidence against Brett, but saying
always, "They can't convict him." This convict went on to tell me that
after the case was decided against Brett Shannon seemed to lose his
nerve and all interest in life. This account tallies exactly with
Shannon's printed confession, in which he says: "I read what I could of
the trial in what papers I could get. I had not yet reached the point
where I was willing to sacrifice my life for a stranger."
In his confession Shannon had spoken of his accomplice in that terrible
night's work as one who could come forward and substantiate his
statements. Four different convicts of my acquaintance knew who this man
was, but not one of them was able to put me in communication with him.
The man had utterly disappeared. But this bit of evidence as to his
knowledge of the crime I did collect--his whereabouts was known to at
least one other of my convict acquaintances till the day after Shannon's
confession was made public. That day my acquaintance received from
Shannon's accomplice _a paper with the confession marked_ and from that
day had lost all trace of him. The convict made this comment in defence
of the silence of the accomplice:
"He wouldn't be such a fool as to come forward and incriminate himself
after Shannon's experience."
Convicts in several States were aware of Shannon's fruitless effort to
right a wrong, and knew of the punishment brought upon himself by his
attempt. The outcome of the occurrence must have been regarded as a
warning to other convicts who might be prompted to honest confession in
behalf of another.
At that time I had never seen George Brett, and not until later was I in
communication with his lawyers. But I was convinced that only from
convicts could evidence verifying Shannon's confession be gleaned.
As far as I know, nothing more connected with that crime has ever come
to light. And even to-day there is doubtless a division of opinion among
those best informed. Finding there was nothing I could do in the matter,
my interest became centred in the study of the man Shannon. He was an
interesting study from the purely psychological side, still more so in
the gradual revelation of his real inner life.
It is difficult to reconcile Shannon's life of action with his life of
thought, for he was a man of intellect, a student and a thinker. His use
of English was always correct. The range of his reading was wide,
including the best fiction, philosophy, science, and, more unusual, the
English essayists--Addison, Steele, and other contributors to _The
Spectator_. The true philosopher is shown in the following extract from
one of his letters to me:
"I beg you not to think that I consider myself a martyr to the cause of
truth. That my statement was rejected takes nothing from the naked fact,
but simply proves the failure of conditions by which it was to be
established as such. It did not come within the rules of acceptance in
these things, consequently it was not accepted. This is a world of
method. Things should be in their place. People do not go to a
fish-monger for diamonds, nor to a prison for truth. I recognize the
incongruity of my position and submit to the inevitable."
In explanation of his reception of my first call he writes:
"I don't think that at first I quite understood the nature of your
call--it was so unexpected. If my meaning in what I said was obscure it
was because in thinking and brooding too much one becomes unable to talk
and gradually falls into a state where words seem unnatural. _And these
prison thoughts are terrible._ In their uselessness they are like
spiders building cobwebs in the brain, clouding it and clogging it
beyond repair. I try to use imagination as a drug to fill my mind with a
fanciful contentment that I can know in no other way. When I was a child
I used to dream and speculate in anticipation of the world that was
coming. Now I do the same, but for a different reason--to make me forget
the detestable period of fact that has intervened.
"So when I am not reading or sleeping, and when my work may be
performed mechanically and with least mental exertion, I live away from
myself and surroundings as much as possible. I was in a condition
something like this at the time of your call. A dreamer dislikes at best
to be awakened and in a situation like mine it is especially trying.
While talking in this way I must beg pardon, for I did really appreciate
your visit and felt more human after it. I would not have you infer from
this that the slightest imagination entered into my story of that
unfortunate affair. I would it were so; but if it is a fact that I
exist, all that I related is just as true."
His choice of Schopenhauer as a friend illustrates the homoeopathic
principle of like curing like.
"Schopenhauer is an old friend and favorite of mine. Very often when I
am getting wretchedly blue and when everything as seen through my eyes
is wearing a most rascally tinge, I derive an immense amount of comfort
and consolation by thinking how much worse they have appeared to
Schopenhauer." In other words, the great pessimist served to produce a
healthy reaction.
But this reaction was but for the hour. All through Shannon's letters
there runs a vein of the bitterest pessimism. He distrusted all forms of
religion and arraigns the prison chaplains in these words:
"I have never met a class of men who appear to know less of the
spiritual nature or the wants of their flocks. It is strange to me that
men, who might so easily gather material for the finest practical
lessons, surrounded as they are by real life experiences and
illustrations by which they might well teach that _crime does not pay_
either in coin or happiness, that they will ignore all this and rack
their brains to produce elaborate theological discourses founded upon
some sentence of a fisherman who existed two thousand years ago, to
paralyze and mystify a lot of poor plain horse thieves and burglars.
What prisoners are in need of is a man able to preach natural, every-day
common sense, with occasionally a little humor or an agreeable story or
incident to illustrate a moral. It seems to me if I were to turn
preacher I would try and study the simple character of the great master
as it is handed down to us."
It strikes me that prison chaplains would do well to heed this convict
point of view of their preaching.
I do not recall that Shannon ever made a criticism upon the
administration of the prison of which he was then an inmate, but he
gives free expression to his opinion of our general system of
imprisonment. He had been studying the reports of a prison congress
recently in session where various "reformatory measures" had been
discussed, or, to use his expression, "expatiated upon," and writes:
"I wish to make a few remarks from personal observation upon this
subject of prison reform. I will admit, to begin with, that upon the
ground of protection to society, the next best thing to hanging a
criminal is to put him in prison, providing you keep him there; but if
you seek his reformation it is the worst thing you can do with him.
Convicts generally are not philosophers, neither are they men of pure
thought or deep religious feelings. They are not all sufficient to
themselves, and for this reason confinement never did, never can and
never will have a good effect upon them.
"I have known hundreds of men, young and old, who have served time in
prison. I have known many of them to grow crafty in prison and upon
release to employ their peculiar talents in some other line of
business, safer but not less degrading to themselves; but I never knew
one to have been made a better man by _prison discipline_;--those who
reformed did so through other influences.
"It may be a good prison or a bad one, with discipline lax or rigorous,
but the effect, though different, is never good: it never can be. Crime
is older than prisons. According to best accounts it began in the Garden
of Eden, but God--who knew human nature--instead of shutting up Adam and
Eve separately, drove them out into the world where they could exercise
their minds hustling for themselves. Since then there has been but one
system that reformed a man without killing him, namely, transportation.
"This system, instead of leaving a bad man in prison, _to saturate
himself with his own poison_, sent him to a distant country, where under
new conditions, and with something to work and hope for, he could
harmlessly dissipate that poison among the wilds of nature. It may be no
other system is possible; that the world is getting too densely
populated to admit of transportation; or that society owes nothing to
one who has broken her laws. I write this, not as 'an Echo from a
Living Tomb,' but as plain common sense."[13]
Personal pride, one of the very elements of the man's nature, kept him
from ever uttering a complaint of individual hardships; but the mere
fact of confinement, the lack of air, space, freedom of movement and
action, oppressed him as if the iron bars were actually pressing against
his spirit. His one aim was to find some Lethe in which he could drown
memory and consciousness of self. In all the years of his manhood there
seemed to have been no sunny spot in which memory could find a
resting-place.
From first to last his misdirection of life had been such a frightful
blunder; even in its own line such a dismal failure. His boasted "fine
art" of burglary had landed him in the ranks of murderers. He had
despised cowardice and yet at the critical hour in the destiny of
another he had proven himself a coward. And when by complete
self-sacrifice he had sought to right the wrong the sacrifice had been
in vain.
Understanding something of the world in which he lived, I suggested the
study of a new language as a mental occupation requiring concentration
on a line entirely disconnected from his past. He gladly adopted my
suggestion and began the study of German; but it was all in vain--he
could not escape from himself.
He had managed to keep so brave a front in his letters that I was
unaware that the man was completely breaking down until the spring
morning when we had our last interview.
There was in his face the unmistakable look of the man who is doomed--so
many of my prisoners died. His remorse was like a living thing that had
eaten into his life--a very wolf within his breast. He was no longer
impassive, but fairly writhing in mental agony. He did not seem to know
that he was dying; he certainly did not care. His one thought was for
Brett and the far-reaching, irreparable wrong that Brett had suffered
through him. When I said that I thought the fate of the innocent man in
prison was not so dreadful as that of the guilty man Shannon exclaimed:
"You are mistaken. I don't see how it is possible for a man unjustly
imprisoned to believe in any justice, human or divine, or in any God
above," and he continued with an impassioned appeal on behalf of
innocent prisoners which left a deep impression with me. In his own
being he seemed to be actually experiencing at once the fate of the
innocent victim of injustice and of the guilty man suffering just
punishment. He spoke of his intense spiritual loneliness, which human
sympathy was powerless to reach, and of how thankful he should be if he
could find light or hope in any religion; but he could not believe in
any God of truth or justice while Brett was left in prison. A soul more
completely desolate it is impossible to imagine.
My next letter from Shannon was written from the hospital, and expresses
the expectation of being "all right again in a few days"; farther on in
the letter come these words:
"I do believe in a future life. Without this hope and its consoling
influence life would scarcely be worth living. I believe that all the
men who have ever died, Atheists or whatever they professed to be, did
so with the hope more or less sustaining them, of awakening to a future
life. This hope is implanted by nature universally in the human breast
and it is not unlikely to suppose that it has some meaning."
A few weeks later I received a line from the warden telling me of the
death of Ellis Shannon, and from the prison hospital was sent me a
little volume of translations from Socrates which had been Shannon's
companion in his last days. A slip of paper between the leaves marked
Socrates's reflections on death and immortality. The report of one of
the hospital nurses to me was:
"Shannon had consumption, but he died of grief." It is not often that
one dies of a broken heart outside the pages of fiction and romance, but
medical authority assures us that it sometimes happens.
Up to this time I had never seen George Brett, but after the death of
Shannon we had one long interview. What first struck me was the
remarkable similarity between the voices of Brett and Shannon, as
supposed identification of the voice of Brett with that of the burglar
had been accepted as evidence at the trial. My general impression of the
man was wholly favorable. He was depressed and discouraged, but
responsive, frank, and unstudied in all that he said. When he mentioned
the man shot in the burglary I watched him closely; his whole manner
brightened as he said:
"Why, he was one of the best men in the world, a man that little
children loved. He was good to every one."
"And you could never speak of that man as you are speaking now if you
had taken his life," was my inward comment.
Brett's attitude toward Shannon was free from any shade of resentment,
but what most impressed me was that Shannon's belief that the unjust
conviction of Brett and his own fruitless effort to right the wrong must
make it impossible for Brett ever to believe in a just God--in other
words, that the most cruel injury to Brett was the spiritual injury.
This belief proved to be without foundation. George Brett had not been a
religious man, but in Shannon he saw that truth and honor were more than
life, stronger than the instinct of self-preservation; and he could
hardly escape from the belief that divine justice itself was the
impelling power back of the impulse prompting Shannon to confession. In
the strange action and interaction of one life upon another, in the
final summing up of the relation of these two men, it seemed to have
been given to Shannon to touch the deeper springs of spiritual life in
Brett, to reveal to him something of the eternal verities of existence.
And truth crushed to earth did rise again; for not long after the death
of Shannon, in the eighth year of his imprisonment, George Brett was
pardoned, with the public statement that he had been convicted on
doubtful evidence and that the confession of Shannon had been accepted
in proof of his innocence.
No adequate compensation can ever be made to one who has suffered unjust
imprisonment, but there are already indications of the dawn of a
to-morrow when the state, in common honesty, will feel bound to make at
least financial restitution to those who have been the victims of such
injustice.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] The crime was committed after the midnight of Hallowe'en.
[13] This letter was written twenty-five years ago. The logic of
Shannon's argument is unquestionably sound. The futility of imprisonment
as a reformatory agent is now widely recognized. But better than
transportation is the system of conditional liberation of men after
conviction now receiving favorable consideration--even tentative
adoption--in many States.