Meyer Levin - Compulsion

“At least you and Jonathan Wilk believe the same thing,” Ferdinand Feldscher said. “But what jury does?”

McNarry shook his head. He had only the gloomiest view of making a jury see it, in this case. For every jury had to act as a sample of the society from which it was drawn. This was inevitable, it was the very heart of the jury system. “What you will get is the herd critique through the medium of the jury.”

He reminded them of several cases in his own experience, cases in which insanity was self-evident. There was the Father Schmidt case – a priest who had cut a woman into seven parts, on the altar. Yet the jury had declared him sane, in order that he might be hanged. “Juries invariably regard the insanity plea as a dodge. They discredit the experts.”

What, then, was to be done?

What about Wilk? Uncle Gerald reminded them that, after all, Wilk was the greatest jury lawyer in the world. Surely he could make a jury see it. Even one juror would be enough.

Wilk had gone to bed with a cold; the entire group moved into his bedroom.

It was then that Edgar Feldscher revived the thought of going to a judge with a plea of guilty.

His brother said, “I’ve never ruled it out, in my mind. But all you’ve got is a plea for mercy on the grounds of their youth.”

“No,” said Edgar, tentatively. “Why couldn’t we present the entire psychiatric evidence, as we would before a jury?”

The others looked at him as though he had forgotten his ABC’s. If a judge could be convinced of insanity, he was bound to call a jury.

“Yes, yes, but short of insanity-”

Wilk’s head had lifted. “Mitigating circumstances,” he croaked hoarsely, pulling himself up to a sitting position. “A judge is duty bound to listen to mitigating facts.”

“Yes, but how can you raise the question of their mental condition, in mitigation, without coming to the question of insanity? And the minute you touch on that…”

It was indeed the paradox, and McNarry did not hesitate to express his lifelong disgust with this curious situation in which a jury of laymen, the persons least equipped for it, were always the ones who had to decide whether a person was insane.

Uncle Gerald had a thought. “All right, suppose a judge does at some point call a jury. We’re no worse off. In fact, we’re better off, because this already shows the judge doubts their sanity.”

It was an impressive point. “And then, we’ve still got Jonathan, here, before a jury,” said Ferdinand Feldscher.

“We’re not doing this as a show for me,” Wilk said.

Edgar Feldscher drew them back to the original idea. “We don’t have to raise the insanity issue, temporary or anything. We claim they are suffering from a functional disorder, short of a psychosis. These boys are not responsible for their behaviour-”

“Who is?” Wilk interjected.

“And if we are careful to keep the argument short of insanity, isn’t it a mitigating condition?”

It would be a thin line to tread – to convince the judge that they were sick, but not sick enough to be called insane. The doctors would have to avoid the very word.

“Don’t worry,” said McNarry. “It’s not really a medical word. I never use it if I can help it.”

“There’s one thing I like about this plan,” said Max Steiner. “It’s honest to plead guilty. It’s the plain truth.”

Wilk drawled, “It’s no easier to make people believe the plain truth than a lie. But I suppose it is always more comfortable.”

Uncle Gerald was still uncertain. It was so risky to rest everything on one man instead of twelve.

“He’s a good man,” Wilk commented.

“He’s never hanged anybody,” Ferdinand Feldscher said.

And so they agreed, but with one condition. “We’d better make sure how the boys feel about it.”

Wilk wanted to see for himself how they reacted. Artie nervously agreed. They knew best. Judd had a touch of resistance. Pleading guilty, didn’t that mean merely going up to be sentenced? Then the case would never really be heard?

No, Wilk assured him; in the mitigating evidence, everything would be heard. All his ideas would be heard.

Thus it was that the defence made the astonishing announcement of a change of plea. In a quick, unspectacular hearing, the boys were brought into court, to declare themselves guilty.

The Hearst papers were the most blistering. So even Wilk was afraid to go before a jury! And then Mike Prager carried an “inside” story. The defence case had collapsed, he declared on “good authority”, because the thousand-dollar-a-day alienists for the defence refused to declare the boys insane.

We all found ourselves crowding into Wilk’s office. Wilk looked harrowed, his voice was hoarse. He gestured to the newspapers on his desk. On top was the American , with its scarehead: THEY’LL HANG, HORN VOWS.

“Now, fellows,” Wilk said, “if you want to know why we had to change the plea, there’s the answer. You’re all part of it. How can we hope to find even one unprejudiced citizen for this jury?” He would plead evidence in mitigation, merely that their lives might be spared.

What mitigating evidence? we all demanded.

If they had been boys from impoverished homes, Wilk pointed out, we would all agree there were mitigating conditions. But wasn’t there something beyond the social condition, a lower common denominator, something that forced the boys to kill? That was what the psychiatrists were trying to find.

A dozen voices demanded, Was it true that the psychiatrists had reported there was nothing wrong with the boys? The report of Dr. Allwin and Dr. Storrs was a private one, Edgar Feldscher put in sharply.

“Why?” demanded Mike. “What are you trying to hide?”

There might be some private family matters that had nothing to do with the crime, Feldscher said calmly.

Mike retorted, “There’s nothing private about murder.”

Wilk addressed Mike directly. “Now why do you want to go printing stuff you don’t know is true?” He slapped his hand down on the newspaper. “What do you want to make up stuff like this for?”

If anything was made up, Mike taunted, then let Wilk release the facts to disprove it.

“The facts will come out in court,” Wilk said, “and all of you will get them at the same time.”

“I’ll get them before that, if I can!” Mike snapped. “And I’ll get my own facts, not the facts you want us to have.”

There was a murmur, something like “Aw, play ball.” But Mike marched out.

On the secretary’s desk was a pile of documents, just delivered from a typing service. The secretary was in the main office with the rest of us. Mike’s eye took in the doctors’ names, on the top sheet. He picked up a copy of the Storrs-Allwin report and simply walked out of the office with it.

Mike’s paper was on the street in two hours, with a full page of sensational quotes from the confidential report. Instantly, we were called to come back to Wilk’s office. Even as I dodged across the Loop streets, I was skimming Mike’s scoop. Under “Sex Pact” there appeared for the first time the story of their curious agreement, after the Ann Arbour robbery. In a special box, I found Artie’s admission of additional crimes, A, B, C, D . What were they? the paper demanded. And on the inside page were columns and columns of quotations from their fantasies.

In Wilk’s office there was an atmosphere of outrage. Edgar Feldscher handed out all the available copies of the report, with one last attempt to caution us. “This should never have got out,” he said. “Not that we want to hide anything from the public, but because these studies are still incomplete. We’re pleading mitigation, mercy, because these studies show that the boys were not entirely responsible – indeed they were far from responsible – for what they were doing, in the sense that they were not in mental and moral health.”