Meyer Levin - Compulsion

If the doors had been crowded before, the day of the great attraction brought an unimagined assault. Their shirts blotched with sweat, the linked bailiffs tried to hold back the charge, when suddenly there was a roar of pain. A bailiff’s arm had been broken.

For half an hour Wilk waited, until there was complete order. The judge nodded, and Wilk arose.

We think of a great speech in terms of an oration that has a rising structure and a shattering climax. And we were indeed to be moved, but not in a continuous line.

He spoke for two days, during four sessions.

In such a lengthy address there were of necessity times when his delivery was relaxed and when he seemed only to be shambling about the courtroom. But the total effect was of a piece. It was of a man talking from his heart, in an intimate and serious conversation.

He began in a low, almost tired key, touching at once upon the question that was on everyone’s mind – the avoidance of a jury.

“Your Honour, it has been almost three months since the great responsibility of this case was assumed by my associates and myself. I am willing to confess that it has been three months of great anxiety. Our anxiety has not been due to the facts that are connected with this most unfortunate affair, but to the almost unheard-of publicity it has received. Newspapers all over the country have been giving it space such as they have almost never before given to any case. Day after day the people of Chicago have been regaled with stories of all sorts, until almost every person has formed an opinion. “And when the public is interested and demands a punishment, it thinks of only one punishment, and that is death.

“In this stress and strain, we did all we could to gain the confidence of the public, who in the end really control, whether wisely or unwisely.

“It was freely published that there were millions of dollars to be spent on this case. Here was to be an effort to save the lives of two boys by the use of money in fabulous amounts, amounts such as even these families never had.

“We announced to the public that no excessive use of money would be made in this case, either for lawyers or for psychiatrists, or in any other way. We have faithfully kept that promise.

“There are times when poverty is fortunate. I insist, Your Honour, that had this been the case of two boys of these defendants’ age, unconnected with families supposed to have great wealth, there is not a State’s Attorney in Illinois who would not have consented at once to a plea of guilty and a punishment in the penitentiary for life. Not one.

“We are here with the lives of two boys imperilled, with the public aroused. For what?

“Because, unfortunately, the parents have money.

“I told Your Honour in the beginning that never before had there been a case in Chicago where on a plea of guilty a boy under twenty-one had been sentenced to death. I will raise that age and say, never has there been such a case where a human being under the age of twenty-three has been sentenced to death.

“And yet this court is urged, aye, threatened, that he must hang two boys contrary to precedents.

“Why need a judge be urged by every argument, moderate and immoderate, to hang two boys in the face of every precedent in Illinois and in the face of the progress of the last fifty years?

“Lawyers stand here day by day and read cases from the Dark Ages, where judges have said that if a man had a grain of sense left, and a child barely out of his cradle, he could be hanged because he knew the difference between right and wrong. Death sentences for eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, and fourteen years have been cited.

“As if this had something to do with the year 1924, as if it had something to do with Chicago, with its boys’ court and its fairly tender protection of the young.

“In as cruel a speech as he knew how to make, Mr. Padua said to this court that we plead guilty because we were afraid to do anything else.

“Your Honour, that is true.

“We have said to the public and to this court that neither the parents, nor the friends, nor the attorneys would want these boys released. They are as they are. They should be permanently isolated from society. We are asking this court to save their lives, which is the least and the most that a judge can do.

“We did plead guilty before Your Honour because we were afraid to submit our case to a jury. I can tell Your Honour why.

“I know perfectly well that where responsibility is divided by twelve it is easy to say, ‘Away with him’.

“But, Your Honour, if these boys hang, you must do it. You can never explain that the rest overpowered you. It must be by your deliberate, cool, premeditated act, without a chance to shift responsibility.

“Your Honour, I know that of four hundred and fifty persons who had been indicted for murder in Chicago in the past ten years and who had pleaded guilty, only one has been hanged. And my friend who is prosecuting this case earned the honour of that hanging while he was on the bench. But his victim was forty years old.” Wilk turned then to the prosecutor’s table. “I can sum up their arguments in a minute: cruel, dastardly, premeditated, fiendish, cowardly, cold-blooded.

“Cold-blooded!” And the long arm pointed. “Let the State, who is so anxious to take these boys’ lives, set an example in consideration, kindheartedness, and tenderness before they call my clients cold-blooded.

“Cold-blooded! Because they planned and schemed?

“Yes. But here are officers with all the power of the State, who for months have been planning and scheming and contriving to take these two boys’ lives.

“They say this is the most cold-blooded murder the civilized world has ever known. I don’t know what they include in the civilized world. I suppose Illinois. Now, Your Honour, I have been practising law a good deal longer than I should have, anyhow for forty-five or forty-six years, and during a part of that time I have tried a good many criminal cases, always defending. It does not mean that I am better. It probably means that I am more squeamish than the other fellows.

“I have never yet tried a case where the State’s Attorney did not say that it was the most cold-blooded, inexcusable, premeditated case that ever occurred. If it was murder, there never was such a murder.

“Why? Well, it adds to the credit of the State’s Attorney to be connected with a big case. That is one thing. They can say, ‘Well, I tried the most cold-blooded murder case that ever was tried, and I convicted them, and they are dead.’

“And then there is another thing, Your Honour: of course, I generally try cases to juries, and these adjectives always go well with juries – bloody, cold-blooded, despicable, cowardly, dastardly, cruel, heartless – the whole litany of the State’s Attorney’s office goes well with a jury.

“They say this was a cruel murder, the worst that ever happened. I say that very few murders ever occurred that were as free from cruelty as this.”

He waited for the chill of these words to pass through us. “Poor little Paulie Kessler suffered very little. There is no excuse for his killing. If to hang these two boys would bring him back to life, I would say let them go, and I believe their parents would say so, too. But

The moving finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

In the pause, Mike Prager remarked, “Ever hear of Wilk making a plea without Omar Khayyám?”

Wilk resumed, turning now to the State’s argument. Horn had taken pains to build up the ransom as the motive. This was almost too easy to ridicule, with their huge allowances, with Artie’s $3,000 bank account, with Judd’s $3,000 for a trip to Europe.