Meyer Levin - Compulsion

“Is there any reason, Your Honour, why their proud names and all the future generations that bear them shall have this bar sinister written across them? It is bad enough as it is, God knows. But it’s not yet death on the scaffold. It’s not that. And I ask Your Honour, in addition to all that I have said, to save two honourable families from a disgrace that never ends, and which could be of no avail to help any human being that lives. I have been sorry and I am sorry for the bereavement of Mr. and Mrs. Kessler, for those broken ties cannot be healed. But as compared with the families of Steiner and Straus, the Kesslers are to be envied, and everyone knows it.

“Now I must say one word more and then I will leave this with you where I should have left it long ago. The easy thing and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud. The cruel will approve. It will be easy today; but in Chicago, and reaching out over the length and breadth of the land, more and more fathers and mothers, the humane, the kind and the hopeful, who are gaining an understanding and asking questions not only about these poor boys, but about their own – these will join in no acclaim at the death of my clients. These would ask that the shedding of blood be stopped.

“I know the future is with me and what I stand for here; not merely for the lives of these two unfortunate lads, but for all boys and all girls; for all of the young, and as far as possible, for all of the old. I am pleading for life, understanding, charity, kindness, and the infinite mercy that considers all.”

Tears flowed freely on old Steiner’s face; some said that Judd and Artie wept. We were all utterly held by some tragic sympathy in Wilk’s voice, in his whole being, that transcended any effect of words.

“I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love. Your Honour stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys, but in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.”

He walked back a little, partly releasing us.

“If I should succeed in saving these boys’ lives and do nothing for the progress of the law, I should feel sad indeed. If I can succeed, my greatest reward and my greatest hope will be that I have done something to help human understanding, to temper justice with mercy, to overcome hate with love.

“I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar Khayyám. It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all.

So it be written in the Book of Love,

I do not care about that Book above.

Erase my name or write it as you will,

So I be written in the Book of Love.

We did not dare speak to each other, for our words might deride sentiment. We rather made the comments professional. A great plea. His greatest. His valedictory. It was a plea for every human life.

The praise accorded Wilk, even in the papers that cried the loudest for blood, must have been the final goad to Horn, for he rushed into his hanging plea like a blinded fighter, flailing, hitting in every direction at once. It was Wilk that he attacked, as much as the murderers, for Wilk’s philosophy, he argued, would condone all crime, abandon all punishment, dissolve the basic rule that protected society. There were screaming, flailing periods when his voice went ridiculously high, and even Judd and Artie smiled sardonically, and this drove him to utmost fury.

Horn began with sarcasm: “Before going into a discussion of the merits of the case, there is a matter I would like to refer to. The distinguished gentleman whose profession it is to protect murder in Cook County, and concerning whose health thieves inquire before they go to commit crime, has seen fit to abuse the State’s Attorney’s office. We all have hearts of stone.

“We have dared to tell Your Honour that this is a cold-blooded murder. We ought not to refer to these two young men, the poor sons of multimillionaires, with any coarse language. We should have come up here and tried these kiddies with kindness and consideration!

“Your Honour ought not to shock their ears with cruel references to the laws of the State, to the penalty of death. Why, don’t you know that one of them has to shave every day of the week, and that is a bad sign. The other one has to shave only twice a week, and that is a bad sign. One is short and one is tall, and it is equally a bad sign in both of them. One is over-developed sexually and the other not quite so good.

“My God, if one of them had a harelip, I suppose Jonathan Wilk would want me to apologize for even having them indicted!

“We are cold-blooded! We have planned, according to Mr. Wilk, for three months and we have conspired to take the lives of two little boys who were wandering in dreamland.”

Padua was a decent, clean-living man, he told us, and so was Czewicki; as for himself, “I believe that not even Mr. Wilk, who has known me for years, would say that Arthur Horn is a vicious, cruel, heartless monster.” Were he not State’s Attorney he would have no feeling of animosity against these two individuals. When they were in his custody he had treated them with “kindness and consideration”. When he had first received Judd’s name as a possible owner of the glasses he had interviewed him at a hotel, so as to keep the matter out of the newspapers. “I think the State’s Attorney of this county is as kindly a man as the paid humanitarian, the man who believes in doing his fellow citizens good – after he has done them good and plenty.”

There was hesitant laughter.

“But as a public official selected by the people, charged with the duty of enforcing the law of my country,” he shouted, “I have no right to forgive those who violate their country’s laws. It is my duty to prosecute them.

“You have a right to forgive, and I know you do forgive those who trespass against Gilbert Matthewson personally, but sitting here as Chief Justice of this great court, you have no right to forgive anybody who violates the law! You have got to deal with him as the law prescribes!

“Your Honour, in this case, with the mass of evidence presented by the State, if a jury were sitting in that box and they returned a verdict and they did not fix the punishment at death, every person in this community, including Your Honour and myself, would feel that the verdict was founded on corruption!”

The judge’s face darkened, but he kept his composure.

“And I will tell you why. I have taken quite a trip during the last four or five weeks. I thought I was going to be kept in Chicago all summer trying this case, and that most of my time would be spent in the Criminal Court Building. I did come up to Your Honour’s courtroom five weeks ago, but then Old Doc Yak – what is his name? The man from Washington – Oh, Dr. McNarry – Dr. McNarry took me by the hand and led me into the nursery of two poor, rich young boys, and he introduced me to a teddy bear. Then he told me some bedtime stories, and after I got through listening to them he took me into the kindergarten and he presented to me a little Artie and Judd.

“I was then taken by the hand by the Feldscher brothers and taken to a psychopathic laboratory, and there I received quite a liberal education in mental diseases, and particularly what certain doctors did not know about them.”

The defence lawyers were sitting back, smiling.

“The three wise men from the East, who came on to tell Your Honour about these little babes, wanted to make the picture a little more perfect, and one of them was sacrilegious enough to say this pervert, this murderer, this kidnapper, thought that he was the Christ Child and that he thought that his mother was the Madonna.