Action: _People vs. Callista Blake_; Justice Terence Mann presiding.
Court in session at 0956.
JUDGE MANN: Do I understand, Mr. Hunter, that you wish to have read to
the jury the letters that were admitted in evidence before adjournment
yesterday?
MR. HUNTER: Yes, your Honor. I am prepared to read--to go ahead with
that right away.
JUDGE MANN: Let them be read by the clerk of the court.
MR. DELEHANTY: Your Honor, I have a--not laryngitis exactly, but a sort
of cold. I'm perfectly ready to do as the Court directs, only I'm afraid
that with this cold or whatever it is, maybe my voice won't be too clear
to the jury.
JUDGE MANN: Well ... Yes, Mr. Warner?
MR. WARNER: Your Honor, the defense will not object to a reading of
these letters by Mr. Hunter himself. I am certain my learned colleague
would never take any improper advantage of his dramatic ability,
admittedly great. Very often, however, written words are capable of
conveying different meanings according to where the emphasis is placed,
not because of any willful misconstruction, but simply because our
language is not always a precise instrument. Therefore I would only
stipulate, request rather, that if there should be any doubt in my mind,
or in my client's mind, that the meaning of the letters is being
correctly conveyed, we may have the privilege of interrupting the
reading at that point, to indicate what we believe is the right
interpretation.
JUDGE MANN: Is that agreeable to you, Mr. Hunter?
MR. HUNTER: Yes, your Honor, so long as the interruptions have to do
with important points, not trivialities.
MR. WARNER: Sir, there are no trivialities in this case.
MR. HUNTER: Subject to the limitation I mentioned, the request of the
defense appears reasonable, and I will not argue it.
JUDGE MANN: You may proceed, Mr. Hunter.
MR. HUNTER: The first of these letters, acknowledged by the defense to
have been written by Callista Blake to James Doherty, is dated the 10th
of May, 1959. Members of the jury, my dramatic ability is not, as Mr.
Warner has described it, great. Any drama here is provided by the force
of events, not by me. I must simply ask you to remember, while you hear
these letters, that they (that is, the first three and the fifth) were
written by a girl nineteen years of age, in the summer of this year,
under the influence of a love affair which the testimony of witnesses
has established and the defense has not denied. The first letter reads
as follows:
"Jimmy--
"Tonight I cannot see you--that was really all I understood over
the telephone, though I know you gave me the decent sensible
reasons why you cannot come--something about work at the office,
wasn't it?--for as soon as I heard you say that, I thought, Oh,
bang goes the whole batch of cookies. You see, I was going to be
domestic for you tonight, and I had just taken some cookies from
the oven when you phoned--the airy egg-white kind, a sort of
culinary idiocy because no damn good the next day, like letting air
out of a tire. Therefore if I were a weeping wench they would now
be soaked in brine and serve you right. But I never weep, Jimmy.
Never. Remember that. So, since you cannot come, I will only count
over the times I've had you with me, a miser adoring the sparkle
and fall of jewels through her fingers. While you are submerged in
the honest dreadfulness of whatever you do at the office--what the
devil is it anyhow?--do you convey subtle conveyances and do dark
deeds (these are puns) or just sit with your feet up and brood over
Deals?--think of me playing with my pretties and having a better
time than yourself, because this is all I can wish to do when
you're away from me. Because I love you.
"It occurs to me, I never wrote to you before. You may not like me
on paper. I sprawl and ramble, Dearest. Don't mind my doodling
either--see the border I drew around your true name while I
daydreamed and my pen was thinking for me? I'm only surprised it
wasn't a tangle of Cupids, an out-of-season Valentine, and maybe it
will be yet. In my here-and-now mood I would draw them saucy, I
think (most of them), strutting and romping and showing off their
little male apostrophes--all, I suppose, with a sneaking
resemblance to you. Because I love you.
"No, don't say it's reckless and foolish of me to write at all--I
know it. I can't care, not now. I tell you, Jimmy, what we have (is
it possible it's only ten days?) is something that could not happen
with Ann. Or anywhere in her world. I tell myself, I am not she,
she is not me, my love (you know it) is nothing like what could
happen for you with anyone but me. And there's my cure for
jealousy--if I could apply it, if I could make my head rule me a
little more, my crazy heart a little less. I want you, I'm empty
and dull in your absence, tonight this is the only way I can talk
to you. So let me talk, and think me foolish and reckless, and
destroy this scrawled thing if you think best. It's me, though.
Remember when you throw it away, it's me. And perhaps (because I
love you) I wouldn't like you to burn me.
"More than you have already.
"Yes, I will type the envelope and mark it PERSONAL, lest the
chaste eyes of Miss Anderson be stricken unto confusion and dismay.
Damn 'em, why hasn't the Postoffice a Bureau of Hollow Oaks?
Ooh--now I think of it, there is--not an oak, but a big maple with
a hole in the trunk about seven feet above ground, on the path
between your house and Mother's, near the pond. I saw a squirrel in
residence there last year, stuck his head out and told me with the
usual fuss that it was his'n. No good, I guess, because he's
probably still there, and would think poorly of anyone dropping a
letter into his living-room. He'd eat it or use it for nest-lining.
That's how Nature is, you know, not a bit cooperative with the
frills of romance, only with the essentials--but there, how
cooperative indeed! As if, so far as Nature cares, every atom,
every motion of life were aimed at nothing but the mounting of
female by male and the begetting of young. Well, it comes to me
that you with your long legs could reach that hole in the maple,
though I'd have to stand on something. It comes to me that a letter
could be squirrel-proofed in a metal box. Let us reflect on this."
Members of the jury, I might say in passing that because of this mention
in the letter, the maple tree in question was examined. It does have a
hole in it, nearer eight feet above ground than seven. Nothing was found
there except an abandoned squirrel's nest; no sign of any previous
disturbance by a human agency. [_Laughter by the defendant._] I see Miss
Blake is amused, which is her privilege I suppose. [_Disturbance at rear
of room, a man (James Doherty) leaving his seat for the exit; Mr. Hunter
waiting for quiet._] The letter resumes:
"I love you as a sleeping seed in the earth must love the rains of
spring, blindly, thoughtlessly, responding because it must--the
shell breaks underground from the inward pressure, the outer warmth
and fertile moisture. Shall I one day become a flower for you and
know the sun? I am still in the dark, and rather blind, and yet
happy to be living. You my awakener, it seems to me you're finding
no such happiness. Am I too much for you, Jimmy? Too weird and
different? Poor Jimmy, did you want only that May-day moment, and
then discover the dryad had caught you fast and would not let go?
There are thorns in my branches, I suppose. I never wanted them to
wound. Oh, I must write no more like this, or I'll be needing you
too much to sleep.
"Don't look distressed, as you did last night, and ask me, what are
we to do? I don't know yet, Jimmy. There's an answer and we'll find
it somehow. Likely it will be you that finds it, and not myself. I
don't know. Maybe I'd never try to tell you what to do, even if I
were inwardly certain what was best. May-day, it seemed ridiculous
to me that anything about this could be a solemn Problem--no more a
problem than the romping of animals. It is, of course--I merely had
to shove that aside (without regrets) for the sake of May-day. It
is, and I--(here comes a truth, my darling, that may be unwelcome
or distressing; if it is, just set it down to my weirdness and
forgive me for it)--I am, in many important ways, a much more
civilized human creature than you. So civilized--so wide a gap
between the cool life of the mind and the violence of that
primitive part which never grows civilized in anyone--that I can
never hope to explain myself, or be anything but a stranger to the
easy routines of existence. My mind looks down on both of us,
Jimmy, sees well enough that we are foolish lovers running into the
jungle blind--(running, I will not say driven)--and inviting
disaster in everything we do. But if now I only glimpsed you or
heard your voice--why, away with all thought, the self you roused
up on our May-day would be mad for you, throw away all sober
knowledge, bite your throat, dance like a maynad and burn your
flesh in a blaze of love."
DEFENDANT: The word is "maenad," if it matters.
MR. HUNTER: I stand corrected, I suppose. May it please the Court, my
understanding was that any interruption of this reading would be made by
counsel, in an orderly manner, not by the accused who is not at present
under oath.
JUDGE MANN: It must be so ordered. I hope you understand the legal
necessity, Miss Blake. If any other point comes up, please draw your
counsel's attention and let him deal with it. That is the method
required of us here. Incidentally, if anything during this reading makes
it desirable for you to confer at any length with Mr. Warner, a short
recess can always be requested, and the Court stands ready to allow it.
Go ahead, Mr. Hunter.
MR. HUNTER: Well, the first letter is nearly finished. It concludes with
these words:
"Understand, Jimmy, that I fit no pattern. No one can own me, no
one can make me over. I was born a heretic and so live. No one can
catch me except if I will.
"I love you.
"Callista."
The second letter, also from Callista Blake to James Doherty, bears no
date except Thursday, but it is in an envelope marked PERSONAL,
addressed in typing to Mr. Doherty at his office at Judd and Doherty, 12
Somerset Street, Winchester. The postmark on this envelope is June 18th.
It reads as follows:
"Dear--
"More than a month ago I wrote you a letter, and I remember that
although you didn't say so, you weren't exactly pleased at my doing
it. So I am reckless, but look, love, the heavens didn't fall, the
grass is still green and soft (as we should know) and so here I go
again, because I want to take advantage of an evening when I seem
to be fairly clear-headed, or as near it as I ever am. Anyway,
darling, you told me Miss Anderson is out with a cold, so this is
sure to pass through no hands but yours, isn't it?
"Jimmy, I can almost wish that Ann did know. Don't blow your
top--caution will prevail. I'm just wishing. The fact of secrecy I
don't particularly mind--what business of anyone else is it that I
love you? I don't care about parading you before the world in a
proper woman's look-what-I-caught manner--that's nothing, to me
there's even a kind of indecency in public possessiveness. But I do
mind the limitations and humiliations of secrecy, the haunting by
social fears, enforced furtiveness--can't go alone into a
restaurant with you, where some friend of yours and Ann's might
notice you together with that screwball broad with the limp. That
I hate. It's a spoiling thing. I wonder more and more whether we
are big enough to stand much more of it. And yet if you tire of me,
or if the dreary social pressure forces you away from me--I swear
the world's turning into one big God-damned suburb--I don't know
what will happen to me. I don't know if I'm big enough to take it.
I suppose I am. I just don't know.
"Please tell me: is your own religious feeling so strong that you
do actually feel sinful when you're with me? I hardly dared write
that. Do you realize how badly you hedged when I asked you almost
the same thing two nights ago? I wasn't asking about Ann's views,
blast you--I know she'd condemn the whole thing without a moment's
pause for thought--I wanted to find out how it was with you, but
all you could talk about was how Ann would feel. Well, I picked the
wrong time of course. A real feminine trick, to cross-examine you
with your head on my breast and only a few minutes after the little
death. Bitchy of me, I suppose I was going by instinct, and when I
do that, bitchy is my middle name. But see, dear, everything's calm
now, I'm not whispering in your ear, I'm only fumbling for words on
paper. I suppose you do know, don't you, that if you had to be free
of me I would let you go? The dryad's thorns would scratch
some--that I couldn't help, couldn't help your bleeding a bit--but
they couldn't hold you, and would not. I don't want you as a
prisoner. You are already a prisoner, and I wish I might set you
free.
MR. WARNER: I will call the jury's attention to the fact that there is
no actual break in the letter at the point where Mr. Hunter stopped
reading. The thought there is incomplete, and Miss Blake went on to
complete it in the same paragraph.
MR. HUNTER: I will call the jury's attention to the fact that I have
been reading a rather difficult handwriting for several minutes, and am
slightly hoarse. I would also point out that it is the end of a page,
and the indentation at the beginning of the next page looks to me very
much like the beginning of a paragraph.
MR. WARNER: Mr. District Attorney, you must have noticed that Miss
Blake's writing does not make a very precise left-hand margin, but the
paragraph indentations are characteristically quite deep.
MR. HUNTER: Very well--I don't want to argue a point like this--it's all
one paragraph if you like. May I continue?
MR. WARNER: By all means, finish the paragraph.
MR. HUNTER (reading):
"... No, I don't hate Ann, I was not thinking
only of Ann when I wrote that.
"Another thing, by the way, that I hardly dared to write.
"Jimmy, I need to know: if Ann would allow a separation, and if we
went somewhere--no matter where, so it's a long way off--would you
be mentally, emotionally _able_ to live with me? Look into
yourself. Tell me, if you can, what would happen inside you,
supposing the situation was like that. Make it far away--Arizona,
Tahiti, island of Capri, who cares?--and I am with you, in your bed
at night and with you in all the long bright days. Would you see me
still as a human woman who loves you and who would be happy to bear
you children?--that could be, you know; a doctor assured me of it a
couple of years ago, the little deformity is no obstacle. Or would
I become the whore who 'led you astray' and 'wrecked your life'?
"You know, Jimmy, it hasn't seemed to me (but I could be so damned
wrong!) that religion goes very deep with you. Isn't it mostly a
matter of being brought up in a certain way that automatically
shuts out other views without seriously examining them? I'm trying
to suggest that unlike Ann, you're really not embedded in religion
like a fly in amber. I've made no secret of my own agnosticism with
you--wouldn't have occurred to me to do so--and that hasn't
appeared to trouble you particularly. You do shy away, you don't
like the topic, I suppose you feel the way so many people do
nowadays, that religion is all right but talking about it is not
quite nice. But I can't imagine that you condemn me in your heart
(do you?) for relying on my own reason, being unafraid of doubt,
interested in proof, critical of all self-appointed authority?
"So I'll even dare ask you: just where is the mercy, the rationale,
the loving-kindness, in an ethical-religious system that makes me a
whore bound for hell because I love you and welcome intercourse
with you and want to live with you?
"I want to see you tomorrow, Jimmy. You spoke of having to work
late because of Miss Anderson's being out sick--may I come there in
the evening, just to see you for a few minutes? I'll be
well-behaved (I hope). There are one or two other things--things
even I don't care to scrawl on paper. If you call and say I mustn't
come, of course I won't, but--please?
"For the first time in our experience I shall be listening for the
phone and hoping you don't call. 'How do I love thee? Let me count
the ways'--I can't, I can't.
"Callista."
The third letter, members of the jury, is again from Callista Blake to
James Doherty. It is dated June 25th, just a week later than the one I
last read, and was addressed, like the other two, to Mr. Doherty at his
office. It reads as follows:
"Jimmy--
"Didn't you say you would call me Monday evening? What happened? I
remember you said you would be tied up over the week end--if only
my silly hungry arms had been the rope to tie you!--well, so I
counted the hours to Monday evening, and glued myself to the phone,
but no Jimmy. I know I mustn't call your house--you needn't have
reminded me of that, last Friday! Tuesday, though, I did try to
call you at the office--I'm sorry, Jimmy, I know you didn't want me
to, but I was miserable, I had to try to reach you somehow--but you
were out, anyway Mr. Judd answered the phone and said you were, and
he sounded so chilly--am I a black cat across his path or
something?--I didn't know he disliked me. What's happening, Jimmy?
Could be purely my nerved-up imagination. But all week, no Jimmy.
Couldn't you at least have got as far as a phone booth? Oh hell,
I'm writing like a sniveling brat.
"Lately I've been having too many morbid thoughts. I know I
behaved badly Friday evening--you didn't want anything to get
started, and I had to act like a whining bitch in heat. You should
know there's more to me than that--I guess you do, I guess you do.
Well, since that evening I've now and then thought of us--I even
dreamed something of the kind--as if we were no wiser than a pair
of kids slipping out behind the barn to study the difference
between a boy and a girl--with peevish grown-ups likely to come
around the corner of the building any minute. I've lost some of the
dream--I think we did get caught and stood there frozen waiting for
the wrath. Only the boy in the dream wasn't quite you. Be jealous,
damn you.
"Are we so terribly far apart? I'm beginning to understand there's
plenty about me you don't even like. It's not strange. Didn't I
tell you at the start, or try to, that I'm not easy to get along
with? I often have a bad enough time trying to get along with
myself. But Jimmy, Dearest, _all_ people are far apart in a lot of
important ways. No exceptions. And all people have elements in
common too, things they can share, use to bridge the gulf between
self and self, if they only knew it. Don't you think we have enough
in common so that if we both tried hard and honestly and lovingly,
we could live happily together?
"I know, I know--I wrote that as if I were assuming that Ann would
set you free. Oh, I like you and don't like you, for not wanting to
talk about her with me. Like you for it because I know it's
loyalty, you're trying to be fair to her, spare her pain, you still
love her in many ways--and somehow I know about all of them, and
respect every one of them whether you believe that or not. And
dislike it, it hurts, because--well, because I happen to be the one
under the gun, Jimmy, and I keep thinking if I knew more about her
I might see my own way better. I love you in ways she never
imagined, couldn't imagine. She's not a passionate woman, Jimmy--as
I don't suppose you need to be told. She's sweet, possessive,
domestic, good to you so far as she knows how to be, loves you in
her fashion so long as you conform to what she wants you to be.
Undoubtedly it troubles her that you haven't happened to have
children yet. Loves you in her fashion--oh, Jimmy, to my thinking,
and I'm not a fool, loving an image of what you'd like another
person to be, that's not love at all, just self-love and arrogance.
"Am I doing it too? Am I in love with what I wish you were? I
mustn't _always_ shy away from that thought--I'll have to look at
it straight some time, can't now somehow, not now, not now. I don't
think it's true. Anyway I will assure you, pretty Ann never woke up
at night whimpering your name and tasting blood on her lip.
"There's no solution that won't hurt somebody. I'm selfish
too--like you, like Ann if she knew and understood, I don't want to
be hurt any more than I have been. I don't hate Ann, I don't want
to hate her. I don't want anything except to get away somewhere
with you--are we savages to be held in line by magic words mumbled
in the mouth of a priest?--because I love you best and need you.
"Silence is the cruelest of a coward's weapons. It's not like you
to use it against me. Please write, or call me. Please come to me.
"Callista."
The fourth letter is typed, dated July 5th, 1959, and signed only with a
typed capital J. You remember yesterday Mr. Lamson testified that James
Doherty himself, as well as Miss Blake, acknowledged his authorship of
this letter. It reads:
"Dear Callista:
"I meant to write to you sooner, but have been very busy, so am
afraid the time has slipped by, besides I do not know just how to
say what I ought to, except that we must relinquish the prospect we
have discussed and that you mention in your letter, as it would not
work out for the best but am afraid would have bad consequences to
all concerned. I consider myself very much to blame having given
you a wrong idea of the situation, although that certainly was not
my intention. I think all we can do is try to forget about it,
because that is what we must do, unless the situation changes some
time. I am sorry to have to say it as you may feel disappointed and
that I have let you down, as a matter of fact I feel that myself,
am afraid I may have treated you rather badly letting you take
things for granted when I ought not to have done so, although that
was not my intention, and am very sorry if it is so. I feel you are
not to blame in any way but I am, I know, and the only thing we can
do is sort of forget the whole thing and hope you can forgive me
for letting you down.
"Sincerely,
"J."
"P.S. I feel we ought not to get in touch again about this for a
while as there is nothing we can do. Please read between the lines
and don't be angry."
Since the defendant appears to find this letter amusing, I can only say
that her sense of humor has not much in common with mine.
MR. WARNER: Is the defendant on trial for changes in facial expression?
I did not know that an unhappy smile was an indictable offense.
JUDGE MANN: The comments of both counsel are out of order. Continue,
please.
MR. HUNTER: As you have already heard, members of the jury, the last
letter we have here was not mailed, but found in Miss Blake's
possession. During her interrogation by Mr. Lamson, she stated certain
reasons for not mailing it--part of the testimony which you have heard,
to which you will give whatever weight you believe it deserves. This
last letter is dated August 8th, 1959, more than a month after Miss
Blake received that letter from James Doherty. I would remind you too
that August 8th was the day after the picnic which has been mentioned
several times in the testimony. The letter reads:
"Dear Jimmy:
"Understand, before you start reading this, that you need not
answer it unless you wish. I will wait a while, and then take
silence for your answer if that is how it must be. I had almost
accepted silence already, or thought I had, most of the time this
last month. But I saw you yesterday--might have stayed away, meant
to, could not--with all the fog of company manners between us, and
discovered what I should have known: I am not cured of you. I wish
I were, and I shall be after a while. I've wished I could hate or
despise you--can't do that, but I'll be able to forget you
sometime, and if there's no happiness at least there will be peace,
of one sort or another.
"I have gone by two periods, Jimmy. In those good days of
June--yes, they were good--we evidently managed to start a certain
arrogant little Blake-Doherty thing which now lives in me as if he
belonged there. And he does. What does this knowledge do to you?
Sorry? Scared? Maybe a little bit happy, or proud? Or just angry
with me? I'm shocked to realize I don't know you well enough to
guess the answer.
"One thing I will not do--and your religion would approve my
decision, I believe (at the same time that it provides some cruel
obstacles in the way of carrying it out). I will not, Jimmy--I will
_not_ creep off on the wrong side of our idiot laws and have an
abortion. I want this child. Crazy of me it may be, but I already
love it, while it's just a blob of almost-nothing that'll soon be
making me sick and physically scared. I want it.
"And I want the child to have a father. From the start. I've seen
too much of petticoat government--it reeks. I don't trust my own
self to bring up a child alone. In spite of all the best knowledge
I have, sooner or later I'd have some damned uprush of maternity to
the brain and start making a lot of the mistakes all mothers
make--including some my own mother made with me, no doubt--and
nobody to check me, nobody to fill the father's place that must not
be empty if a child is to grow up straight and good. I won't have
my baby crippled that way.
"He's yours too, Jimmy. It's your seed in me, the life-package from
all your grandfathers and grandmothers. He's from Ireland, dear,
he's from Italy where my father's mother was born, he's from one of
the embraces when your sweet strong body could not free itself
until I was willing to let you go. I frightened you sometimes,
didn't I? I will again, or at least I dream of it.
"All right, let's be sober. For religious reasons, Ann will never
even consider a divorce. There is such a thing as separation, that
would allow you to provide for her but live with me. The legal
formula is not too important to me--I wish we might have it, but it
would not hurt me to live without it, and we could educate the
child so that his understanding would be too big to care for such
cretinous words as 'illegitimate.' With your training you could
find work anywhere in the States--or abroad for that matter,
Canada, England, Australia. So could I. I understand the kind of
art work that makes money, as well as photography. I also know
shorthand and typing. We'd make out wherever we went, and be the
same as married. It only needs your will for it, Jimmy, and an
amount of courage that isn't abnormal. Others faced with the same
difficulty have done it.
"Granted, Ann would be hurt badly, for a while. She'd consider us
both lost in sin. (Do you?) Her pride would be hurt, and her love
for you, which may be strong--I don't know that, yes or no. Jimmy,
you and Ann don't have children. You and I do have a child. Granted
also that Ann is good and sweet and conventionally right. Does that
give her the right--
Members of the jury, three words are crossed out here, but not
illegible. It is my understanding that these letters will be available
for the inspection of the jury; the purpose of reading them is to save
time and to make sure of the correct interpretation, as Mr. Warner
pointed out. Now I think I should read these crossed-out words, but will
not do so if the defense has any objection. Do you wish to look at the
page again, Mr. Warner?
MR. WARNER: Not necessary, but wait a moment, please. [_Conferring with
defendant._] The crossed-out words may be read, so long as the jury is
given the whole picture. The words are still legible, it's true, but not
clearly, and it was evidently not Miss Blake's intention that they
should be legible, if she had ever mailed the letter.
MR. HUNTER: Thank you, Counselor. The words crossed out are "to destroy
us"--"Does that give her the right to destroy us"--but with those words
crossed out, the letter reads thus:
"Does that give her the right to keep you and me
apart and prevent my child from having a father?
"Living seems to be full of situations where you can't do a good
thing without an accompanying evil. I suppose it's questions of
this kind that make people give up trying to solve their own
ethical problems and ask some supernatural authority to do it for
them. And yet I would think that the only answer in any such
dilemma is to decide which is greater, the evil or the good. If
they seem to balance, doubtless inaction is better than trying to
perform your good act. But if one is clearly greater than the
other, isn't the answer plain? I know this goes contrary to your
religious views, but Jimmy, this once, think whether I may not be
right and yourself mistaken.
"I am trying to think straight, about the years ahead, the child,
about living with you, the difficulties we'd face. I'm trying not
to remember that you did look at me yesterday once or twice as a
lover might, and with the sunlight falling across your cheekbones,
before I quit playing with the Wayne kids and wandered off. Maybe
some time I'll tell you where I went and what I did.
"I can't think of Ann as anything but an innocent bystander. She
needs you in the common ways, but I--"
Members of the jury, the letter ends there. The State rests.
JUDGE MANN: The Court will hear any motions.
MR. WARNER: Your Honor, I move that the case of the People against
Callista Blake be dismissed on the following grounds: one, that the
prosecution has not demonstrated that the death of Ann Doherty resulted
from a criminal action; two, that the prosecution has not, by witnesses,
connected the defendant Callista Blake with the death of Ann Doherty
beyond a reasonable doubt.
JUDGE MANN: The motion is denied, Mr. Warner. Are there other motions?
MR. WARNER: No, your Honor, not at this time.
JUDGE MANN: The Court stands adjourned until 1 P.M.
7
Upon this, by us has she been required to voluntarily declare
herself to be, and to have always been, a demon of the nature of a
Succubus, which is a female devil whose business it is to corrupt
Christians by the blandishments and flagitious delights of love. To
this the speaker has replied that the affirmation would be an
abominable falsehood, seeing that she had always felt herself to be
a most natural woman.
Then her irons being struck off by the torturer, the aforesaid has
removed her dress, and has maliciously and with evil design
bewildered and attacked our understanding with the sight of her
body, the which, for a fact, exercises upon a man supernatural
coercion.