The End of the Night

Ten

It is curious to note that during the weekend recess which was followed almost immediately by the summations of the prosecution and the defense and the judge’s charge to the jury, Riker Deems Owen, the attorney for the defense, used precious time and energy in the preparation of his final informal memorandum on the Wolf Pack Case.

Certainly the same time devoted to his summation would have resulted in a more effective job, but it is possible that Owen realized by that time, as did most of the perceptive spectators and communications people, that he had already lost his case. Even with a lost case, however, it would seem more in keeping with Owen’s evident egomania and distorted sense of history to have worked up a summation which he would hope would rank with the deathless ones of Darrow, one of his household gods.

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.

They have made me feel less safe in the world. Deep in my heart is the wish they may come to great harm. But I cannot permit that emotion to affect the professional competence I am contributing to their defense.

These four I defend do not concern themselves with the slightest romantic rationalization in their personal relationships. And so their only differentiation from beasts of the field is that they stand on two legs rather than four. One hundred years ago animals were still being tried for murder, condemned and executed.

I have discovered no exercise of logic which can soften my distaste for these defendants. That is one handicap I face. The second handicap is the lucidity and shrewdness of the prosecutor, John Quain. The third crucial factor is the impression these people make upon the jury — a thing now out of my control. Lastly, there is the philosophy of my defense. I keep stressing, at every opportunity, the accidental pattern of this whole thing.

In my summation I shall use an analogy which I hope will not be too crude. It should be effective. I have dismantled my hedge clippers and I shall take them into court. Two blades, two handles. One blade will represent the girl, the other one Hernandez. One handle will represent Stassen, the other Golden. I will assemble it before the jury and show them that any three parts, assembled together, can do no damage. It is only when the four parts are brought together that you have an instrument which can clip a hedge, or a throat. So does it make sense to take the four parts, now disassembled and hence of no danger, and destroy those parts separately? The thing responsible for the crime was these four, acting as a new entity, doing things which any three of them would not and could not have done. So is not society satisfied merely to make certain that these four pieces can never again be assembled into an instrument of destruction? If hedge clippers should destroy a beautiful shrub, can you blame one handle? Or one blade?

If I have any pride at all in this situation it is in my earnest desire not to try to use this case, as many men would, to further my own career. I was selected for it only because they happened to take a highway through this area, because they happened along when a lovely girl lay helpless on the road, and because two young lovers watched a murder take place. It was a web of accident.

My duty is to fight for life imprisonment for these people, for a verdict of guilty with a recommendation of mercy. That is the ultimate I can hope to attain. Had I cared to use this public exposure, indeed this national exposure, for my own purposes, I would have selected a line of defense with less chance of succeeding, but offering more range for me to display my competence at this sort of work.

It would help me in times such as these if I had one human being very close to me to whom I could talk with the utmost frankness, to whom I could reveal my hopes and fears, my joys and my sorrows. I cannot speak to my wife of such things. She has no training in, no knowledge of, and no curiosity about the law. I cannot talk fully and deeply to my associates in the office. This would have to be a special relationship, resolutely intimate, close and unafraid. Perhaps all troubled, lonely men have yearned for this difficult goal, and perhaps have had the good fortune to attain it.

I suspect that Dr. Paul Wister is one of those. In his hour of blackness I saw in him that kind of strength that cannot be maintained and sustained in the ways of loneliness.

I doubt that I could endure the blow that fell upon him...