To those accustomed to the atmosphere and tone of a court room, it is
doubtful if its message is impressive. To one who spends a day in
a criminal court for the first time after reaching an age of
thoughtfulness, it is more than impressive; it is a revelation not
easily forgotten. The message conveyed to such an observer arouses
questions, and suggests thoughts which may be of interest to thousands
to whom a criminal court room is merely a name. I went early. I was
told by the officer at the door that it was the summing up of a homicide
case. "Are you a witness?" he asked when I inquired if I was at liberty
to enter. "Were you subpoenaed?"
"No," I replied, "I simply wish to listen, if I may, to the court
proceedings. I am told that I am at liberty to do so."
He eyed me closely, but opened the door. Just as I was about to pass in
he bent forward and asked quickly:
"Friend of the prisoner?"
"No."
He said something to another officer and I was taken to an enclosed
space (around which was a low railing) and given a chair. I afterward
learned that it was in this place the witnesses were seated. He had
evidently not believed what I said.
There was a hum of quiet talk in the room, which was ill-ventilated and
filled with men and boys and a few women. Of the latter there were but
two who were not of the lower grades of life. But there were all grades
of men and 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 with the question in point to which I
returned.
"But the public prosecutor is not, as I understand it, hired to convict
but to represent the 'people,' one of whom is the accused. Now, is the
State interested in convictions only--does it employ a man to see that
its citizens are found guilty of crime, or is it to see that justice
is done and the facts arrived at in the interest of _all_ the people,
including the accused?"
"I guess that is about the theory of the State," he replied, laughing as
he started for the door, "but the practice of the prosecuting attorney
is to convict every time if he can, and don't you forget it."
I have not forgotten that nor several other things, more or less
important to the public, since my day in a Criminal Court.
It may be interesting to the reader to know that the jury in the case
cited, disagreed. At a new trial the accused was acquitted on the
grounds of self defense and the prosecutor no doubt felt that he was in
very poor luck, indeed: "For," as I was told by a court officer, "he has
lost his three last homicide cases and he's bound to convict the next
time in spite of everything, or he won't be elected again. I wouldn't
like to be the next fellow indicted for murder if he prosecutes the
case, even if I was as innocent as a spring lamb," said he succinctly.
Nor should I.
But aside from this thought of the strangely anomalous attitude of the
State's attorney; aside from the thought of the possible influence of
such court room scenes upon the boys who flock there--who are largely of
the class easily led into, and surrounded by, temptation; aside from
the suggestions contained in the officer's statement--which I cannot but
feel to be somewhat too sweeping, but none the less illustrative, that
only one in ten brought before the Criminal Court escapes conviction,
and only one in that ten fails to be reconvicted until it becomes
practically a conviction for life to be once sent to a penal
institution; aside from all this, there is much food for thought
furnished by a day in a Criminal Court room. A study of the jury, and of
the judge, is perhaps as productive of mental questions that reach far
and mean much, as are those which I have briefly mentioned; for I am
assured by those who are old in criminal court practice, that my day in
court might be duplicated by a thousand days in a thousand courts and
that in this day there were, alas, no unusual features. One suggestive
feature was this. When the jury--an unusually intelligent looking body
of men--was sworn for the next case, seven took the oath on the Bible
and five refused to do so, simply affirming. This impressed me as a
large proportion who declined to go through the ordinary form; but since
it created no comment in the court room, I inferred that it was not
sufficiently rare to attract attention, while only a few years ago, so
I was told, it would have created a sensation. There appeared to be a
growing feeling, too, against capital punishment. Quite a number of
the talesmen were excused from serving on the jury on the ground of
unalterable objection to this method of dealing with murderers. They
would not hang a man, they said, no matter what his crime.
"Do you see any relation between the refusal to take the old form of
oath, and the growth of a sentiment or conscientious scruple against
hanging as a method of punishment"? I inquired of the officer.
"I do' know. Never thought of that. They're both a growin'; but I don't
see as they've got anything to do with each other."
But I thought possibly they had.