Джон Макдональд - The End of the Night

There is the alternate assumption that Owen did give the preparation of his summation every morsel of time and energy he felt it required. Those of us who were present that icy day can be forgiven for believing that his final effort in the trial could have been improved upon, regardless of the outcome. His case was beyond saving. His professional reputation was not.

Though it is not pertinent, it is somehow touching to see how perfectly the Owen memoranda were typed by Miss Leah Slayter. They were without erasures, strikeovers. It is likely that whenever she made an error, she started the page over. Though this is prescribed procedure with legal documents, it could only be considered proper for informal memoranda when the typist has the feeling she is typing a work of great importance for a great man.

It is rather pleasant somehow to realize that this devoted employee was blind to the hapless performance of her boss in his most famous trial, and thought his rambling memoranda so precious as to deserve infinite care.

Certainly Riker Deems Owen’s total performance in that trial can be considered of the second-rate. If we assume it was a case no man could have won, we can at least say that there are men who could have come closer. The electrocution of a female is a startling example of the ineptitude of any defense attorney.

It was the post-trial derision in the public press which reduced Riker Deems Owen to a shrunken and rather hesitant old man.

At the time he wrote this final memo on the case, he was not absolutely certain he would lose the case. Certainly he had no suspicion that his conduct of the defense would cause him to be jeered at. He had no idea of placing his professional reputation on the line when he took the case. But sometimes we gamble without knowing what the stakes are.

Long days of testimony, of exhibits, objections, cross examinations tend to focus the mind and the attention on trivia, so that the larger issues are forgotten. John Quain is a clever, dogged, tireless prosecutor. I cannot take the chance of giving him perfectly free rein to establish the State’s case. I must protect my clients through emphasizing the chance of reasonable doubt in certain areas, in spite of my master plan of defense which borrows from certain interesting aspects of the Loeb-Leopold Case.

John Quain is perfectly aware of my obligation to weaken, insofar as is possible, his edifice of evidence, and thus I must be constantly alert to avoid the traps implicit in his presentation. This, despite the competent staff at my elbow, is an exhausting task.

I believe that I dug a few important holes in the testimony of the youngsters, Howard Craft and Ruth Meckler. The most significant one was Howard’s admission that it is possible that Arnold Crown struck the first blow, and due to their angle of observation, they missed it.

Murder in the first degree implies motive, opportunity and prior intent. The priority of intent need be only a matter of a split second. If a murderer had adequate reason to have a rock in his hand, premeditation would be difficult to establish. But should he seek a rock and bend and pick it up, premeditation exists during that interval. However, should he be struck or injured in any way before picking up the rock, the chance of proving premeditation is weakened thereby.

Would that I were permitted to defend these people before a judge and jury and spectators who had never heard of their wicked exploits. Justice, in the circumstances I face, is a farce. A whole nation watches these four human beings. An outraged nation demands they be executed. You can feel the weight of all the pressure in that courtroom. It is a tangible heaviness. If Stassen, Golden, Hernandez and Koslov had come from the most remote planet of the galaxy, if they were creatures of slime and tentacles, they could not be watched with any more curiosity and revulsion.

They are being tried for what was done to the salesman, to the Nashville people, to Arnold Crown and to Helen Wister, not just for Crown alone. So this case is only symbolic, and hence my defense is the only possible one.

It is interesting to see the various ways the four of them accept their long hours on trial. Stassen, in his well-cut flannel suit, with his polite, attentive and somewhat detached manner, would look much more at home at the press table. He writes me short notes from time to time. Some of them have been mildly helpful. I have noticed that he often stares directly at his jurors. I sense that he seems to baffle them, that they cannot equate his demeanor with the evidence presented.

The idleness, the enforced spectator role is most difficult for Sander Golden to endure. He jitters and twitches endlessly, keeping a dozen mannerisms going at the same time. He whispers and mutters to the other defendants until he has to be silenced a half dozen times a day. He stares with bright mockery at every member of the jury in turn until they look away. He has written me foolish notes in an awkward hand, miserably spelled.

The girl sits placidly. She plays with her hair. She nibbles her nails. She yawns, and often, out of boredom, sighs audibly, recrosses her legs, scratches her thigh, yawns again. She cannot understand why she cannot have magazines to look at. Sometimes she draws the same face over and over again, the empty comic-book face of a pretty girl.

Robert Hernandez endures it with the silent, unmoving patience of an ox. His metabolism is low, his deep, slow breathing imperceptible. A bear in a cage, when it is not pacing, will endure in that same way. He stares at the floor fifteen feet in front of him. A hairy fist lies slack on the table. The jury regards him with more assurance. This is a criminal type. Can’t you see it?

I have tried to analyze the tangible emanations of hate that come from the spectators. It is uncommon, even in murder trials. I believe I have the reason for it. They did not kill for profit. Their entire adventure netted them less than fifteen hundred dollars, and finding so much cash on Crown was an accident they could not have anticipated.

So because it was violence without meaning, they made a small, cheap thing of life. It is the instinct of man to consider life of greatest importance. If it is to be taken away the reason should be substantial. So he who denigrates the value of life, tries to give it a lower value in the market place, must be punished for the commission of great evil.

And they have made a small, cheap thing of love. That is the second unforgivable. Reckless lust, if it should shake a man and overwhelm him and make him commit idiocies, can be partially understood and thus forgiven. But a casual code which makes of the act of sex a function barely more important than shaking hands invites hate and punishment.

By diminishing life and diminishing love, they have threatened to diminish every man and woman who learned of their acts. When anyone seeks to reduce you, in your own eyes, to unimportance, you fight.

So these hated four sit in a court and famous artists draw them for the big magazines. A journalist coins the name Handy Nan, and ten thousand dirty jokes are invented. A hundred thousand fathers give their wayward teen-age daughters overdue whippings, and a predictable number of them leave home as a result. Car thefts have increased greatly. There is a higher than normal incidence of rape. A few people have been kicked to death by vicious metropolitan youngsters.

And all of this, too, is a part of the circus in the courtroom. What we do each day affects a number of lives impossible to compute.

As the man who must defend them, I have made a special effort to avoid emotional prejudice toward these four distorted people. But in all honesty I must confess to a distaste which has been caused by the way they have cheapened the illusions man holds most dear.