Only seven were hanged
know what card you had up your sleeve until the moment arrived to
present it? Come, come!"
The judge flushed and glowered.
"Besides," went on the waiter, "the information I possessed was
available to everybody who cared to find it out. Doubtless the State
Department I have mentioned feels a little reticent about the Goff
case. To admit a great miscarriage of the law would militate against
the security of the public mind. Ah, and to think that convicts in a
prison know what the public never guesses! My lord, is not the
object of my coming here tonight to let you see the point of view
that you and the public seldom perceive? I assure you it is. Alas,
for the defense of John Williams, the manservant! It never had a
chance against the trained legal minds of state-paid officials who
desired a conviction and an execution. Why did Williams not keep on
yelling his innocence from the moment he was arrested? I shall tell
you. It was because he was already a victim of the law."
"What do you mean?" asked the judge.
"You have told me what I already knew--namely, that Williams had been
sent to preventive detention. It was you who sent him. Listen to
me."
The waiter rose to his feet and wagged a finger in the judge's face.
"I tell you there is a prison full of men in this country--and there
are prisons full of men in other countries--where the fiercest hatred
of your law is fostered by the conditions under which these men live.
They are, or they hold they are, serving two sentences for one crime.
Is that fair? Is it just?"
"I know of no prison of the kind, sir!"
"Yes, you do. And you have sent men there. Two sentences for one
crime! When they have served their first sentence they are sent to
preventive detention for a period of not less than five, and not more
than ten, years. Two sentences for one crime! So many years in a
convict prison is a punishment enough for most crimes. To be
transferred to another prison for another term is a frightful
injustice. Two sentences for one crime, my lord! How would you like
to serve them?"
"My dear sir, be calm!" expostulated the judge. "You must be aware
that you are referring to habitual criminals----"
"Habitual sentences!"
"These men must have had at least three convictions against them
after the age of sixteen years; and they must be shown to be living
dishonestly----"
"Stop it! Living dishonestly! What about your business crooks, and
fakes, and bluffers, and four-flushers, and company promoters, and
gamblers in stocks and lives, and slum owners, and rack-renters, and
all the petty and great dishonesties that go on every day, winked at
by the law and encouraged by the society you smugly defend?"
"Exaggerations, my dear sir! If the law is broken the legal process
may easily be set in motion. The habitual criminals who are sent to
preventive detention are recidivists whose cases are considered
by--shall I say it humbly?--wise judges, who send them to detention
under discretionary powers----"
"Discretionary tommyrot! Two sentences for one crime! Two sentences
for one crime! And not always for even one crime! A police
interrogation may lead to a charge. Harsh opponents of the police
call this a frame-up. How many ordinary people know that if a
policeman asks questions they have the right to say, 'I will not
answer'? And answers may be misrepresented unwillingly. The judge
and jury are prejudiced against a wretch the moment he appears in the
dock. The betting is a gold mine to a hayseed against the prisoner!
That was why John Williams, who had endured preventive detention, did
not open his lips. His prison life had taught him that if he showed
resentment, if he protested, if he cried aloud in his agony that he
was a victim of a police mistake, he would be put through an
examination--which, with exquisite humor, is called 'making a
statement'--that would reduce him to pulp mentally and a wreck
physically. Oh no, the third degree is not practiced in this
country! Not at all! But there is damned little difference between
the British legal enticement to 'make a statement' and the French or
American third-degree torture! Two sentences for one crime! And so
John Williams was silent--the silence of the beaten, hurt, scared
animal caught in a net. His solicitor did not believe in John
Williams for a moment! He accepted the defense because he wanted to
figure in a big murder trial! The swine that lawyers are! And he
suggested the defense to Williams, the defense of insanity and
innocence all mixed up and so distorted that Williams, led onward by
his lawyer, never really had a chance. It was you, my lord, who
tried the case. Is it not a fact that the defending counsel frankly
admitted that he had advised his client to throw himself on the mercy
of the jury when he saw the arguments going against him? Answer me,
is not that so?"
"It is. I recollect the speech."
"You recollect the speech! Do you recollect the prisoner? Fighting
for his life in the midst of a whirl of legal arguments he did not
understand, and procedure he did not follow. So he was hanged. Thus
the law murdered him, after it had bullied him and smashed him and
cowed him and frightened him. The majesty of the law! The blindness
of justice! Supposing I made an additional charge against you, my
lord! Supposing I said that I would now try you for the murder of
John Williams, what would you say?"
The waiter stopped and his face returned to its normal calm. He had
worked himself up into a fever of excitement during his harangue and
his voice had been raised almost to a shouting tone. It was evident
that he was deeply stirred and in a dangerous state. But his
wildness had only the effect of raising the indignation of the judge.
The latter perceived that this man was a criminal who was suffering
from a distorted sense of values.
"Preventive detention," he said, hotly, "is not what you describe it
at all. It is meant for the benefit of the prisoners themselves, to
reform them and make them useful members of society. The
establishment to which you refer is conducted----"
"Aw, cut it out!" cried the waiter, staring at the judge
unflinchingly. "You can't tell anything about preventive detention.
I've had some."
"But not enough!" cried the judge, swiftly.
"On the contrary, too much! I came from preventive detention to see
you!"
The accent of the retort was so incisive that it penetrated the
judge's heart and caused him to draw in his breath.
"My lord," said the waiter after a pause, "I think you are aware that
you have lost your case and that I may, with perfect fairness, add
another glass to my collection. You do not seem to be very
successful tonight in your advocacy of the law."
"I protest that you forced a card in the case of Goff, the
money-lender. You had facts--if what you have said is true--which
never came before me when I tried the case."
"That is a poor excuse, my lord. All these facts were mentioned
during the hearing of the case--all but the facts relating to Finn.
The case was built up by the police, and on their evidence you summed
up and the jury convicted. You dismissed the evidence of Williams
that he came down for a letter as a thin excuse. All of you--police,
prosecuting counsel, jury and judge--concentrated on Williams when
you might have considered Finn. And besides, can you honestly say
that you knew nothing about the confession Finn made after he was
sent to prison--it was overheard by a warder and communicated to the
governor, and I have told you that a report went to the State
Department concerned. You must have known there was such a
statement----"
"Men often make statements that are untrue."
"There you go again--always trying to sink items that oppose your
judgment! You see how you are prejudiced, perhaps unconsciously.
Well, well! I will take the glass without further argument."
And the waiter lifted a glass from beside a sleeping member and
placed it beside the others.
"Have you anything to say before judgment is passed on you?" asked
the waiter in a hollow voice.
Coming swiftly on the top of what had already been said, the question
acted as a sting to the judge's highly strung nerves. He jerked
forward and began to speak rapidly in a high falsetto key.
"I have a great deal to say. I oppose your judgment altogether. I
have not been given a chance. I have been placed in a false
position. I have been forced to plead when my function for years has
been to judge, to sum up----"
"But you used to defend or prosecute with brilliance!"
"Years ago. And then one had time to consider one's case before
presenting it----"
"You complain of being pressed into a defense without having an
opportunity to study your brief?"
"I certainly do."
The waiter considered for a moment, deep in thought. Seeing his
apparent reflection on this point, and believing that he had made an
impression, the judge went on.
"There is a vast difference between hearing a case and presenting
one. In the latter instance one has had time to consider the line of
attack or defense, according to law. In the former the duty of a
judge is to keep counsel strictly to the law. A judge does not know
anything about a case before he hears it. A counsel knows
everything. The positions here are all wrong. You have known more
about cases than I, and have brought forward evidence of the
existence of which I was not aware. How, then, could a defense meet
a prosecution on fair and equal grounds? Now, had I been in the
position of judge--my usual position--the results would have been
very different."
"But you accepted the challenge!"
"Perhaps a little unwisely," murmured the judge.
The waiter glanced at the glasses in front of him.
"I agree," he remarked, drily.
"At the same time," cried the judge, "I repeat that I have not had
any opportunity of studying my brief----"
"And you think that if you had been in the position of judge you
would have reversed the result?"
"It would have been my natural office to sum up with fairness and
clarity so far as the law is concerned----"
"But it is the law that is on trial!"
"Admittedly. But there is a spirit as well as a letter of the law.
You must know that the proportion of persons who are actually hanged
for murder is small compared with the number charged, and, I may say,
proved guilty. Leniency is often exercised----"
"We are not discussing leniency. The issue is simply whether the
state has a right to take life. You hold that it has. I hold that
it has not. You grumble that you have not had time to study your
brief. Why, you have had all your professional life to study it!"
The judge was silent. The waiter looked at the glasses in front of
him once more.
He seemed to have forgotten the judge's presence, so deeply was he
engrossed in his secret thoughts. A few minutes passed. Suddenly
the waiter jumped up and gave an exclamation expressive of futility.
"You lawyers! The audacity of you! And the unreasonableness of you!
Your minds are encased in a crust of unhuman, stubborn inflexibility!
Stromatic brains! Drive you from one stronghold, you find another
round the corner! Destroy your web and, spider-like, you begin to
weave again!"
He started to pace up and down the room, muttering to himself.
The judge smiled behind his hand. The man was certainly mad. He had
given away to the judge in this outburst the key to his peculiar
insanity, the weakness that was also his strength.
He stopped and cast a look of purpose on the judge.
"But I shall break through that crust!" he roared. "I shall drive
you out of your fortresses! I shall destroy your webs! I shall
compel you to admit defeat!"