“Is not that the case here?” Horn demanded. “If this crime had not been committed, could any reasonable authority be persuaded to send either one of these men to an asylum as insane?”
Thus he ended his first day.
There remained Wilk’s plea of youthfulness. Was eighteen too young to die? Fresh in the morning, Horn began: “I submit, if Your Honour please, if we can take the flower of American manhood, take boys at eighteen years of age and send them to their death in the front-line trenches of France in defence of our laws, we have an equal right to take men nineteen years of age and take their lives for violating these laws that these boys gave up their lives to defend.
“The law that Your Honour is bound to enforce in this case declares that from fourteen years of age up a boy has the capacity to commit a crime and is entirely and thoroughly responsible for it.”
Then, like a litany, he began reading the names and ages of men who had been hanged. It seemed to go on for ever. Buff Higgins was hanged at the age of twenty-three. Henry Foster, twenty-four, Viana, seventeen…
And if but few of them had been hanged on a plea of guilty the reason was simple. Obviously, if a lawyer could not get assurance of a deal through the State’s Attorney, he would say, “Well then, I am going to take a chance on twelve men. They can’t do any worse to me, and I’m going to give my client a run for his money.”
Why hadn’t it been done this time? Because the crime was so subhuman, as the defence itself had admitted, that they simply could not go before a jury.
And Horn began his ultimate portrayal of the crime, the blows on the head, the suffocation, and working himself up to hoarse, staccato shrieks; “And then what did the fiends, the perverts, do to that dead boy in the car? Did not the coroner’s physician testify-”
To the banging gavel, Horn stopped. Quite calmly he dropped that point and said, “I think, if Your Honour please, I have now covered the three defences set forth by Mr. Wilk: the defence of mental disease, the question of motive, the defence of youthfulness. But the real defence in this case is Jonathan Wilk and his peculiar philosophy of life. When I was listening to Mr. Wilk plead for mercy for these two men who showed no mercy, it reminded me of the story of Abraham Lincoln, about a young boy of approximately their age, whose parents were wealthy, and he murdered both of them so as to inherit their money. His crime was discovered the same as this crime has been discovered, and the court asked him for any reason why the sentence of death should not be passed on him, and he promptly replied that he hoped the court would be lenient to a poor orphan.
“Mr. Wilk quoted considerable poetry to you, and I would like again to be indulged while I read a little bit of prose.”
He picked up a printed sheet. It was an address, he explained, delivered to the prisoners in the county jail by a distinguished criminologist. Horn read, “‘The reason I talk to you on the question of crime, its cause and cure, is because I really do not believe the least in crime. There is no such thing as a crime, as the word is generally understood. I do not believe that there is any sort of distinction between the moral condition in and out of jail. One is just as good as the other. The people here can no more help being here than the people outside can avoid being outside. I do not believe that people are in jail because they deserve to be.’”
The courtroom was abuzz as people told each other what Horn was quoting. He read more slowly, in an unmistakable imitation of Jonathan Wilk’s reflective, pleading manner: “‘I believe that progress is purely a question of pleasurable units that we get out of life. The pleasure-and-pain theory is the only correct theory of morality and the only way of judging life.’” Horn looked up. “Isn’t that exactly the doctrine of Judd Steiner? And that is the doctrine expounded last Sunday in the press of Chicago by Jonathan Wilk!”
This was scarcely an exact statement. The piece had been dug up by Mike Prager, from a report of a sensational talk given at the county jail by Jonathan Wilk, twenty years before.
Judd was glowing at Wilk. Yet it seemed to me that Wilk withdrew into himself, that he perhaps wanted to separate himself from these long-ago words that suddenly linked him to Judd. For even in this closing moment of the trial I had the impression that Wilk could not bring himself to any warmth toward Judd or Artie; he pitied them, he was their defender in all sincerity, but they had not entered his heart.
The judge was leaning forward, staring at Horn in a quizzical manner. He seemed on the point of asking, Was it Wilk, or the defendants, that Horn wanted to hang?
There was indeed a feeling that the judge was a man who tended to Wilk’s way of thought; all through the trial, Horn had made no effort to conceal that he saw the judge as a man like Wilk. And he seemed to be attacking the judge himself as he again shouted, “The real defence in this case is Jonathan Wilk’s dangerous philosophy of life!
“Society can endure, the law can endure, and criminals may escape, but if a court such as this court should say that he believes in the doctrine of Jonathan Wilk, that you ought not to hang when the law says you should, a greater blow has been struck to our institutions than by a hundred, aye, a thousand murders!”
The judge still eyed him with that curious, measuring look. And Horn, with a guttural growl of frustration and despair, flung in a last taunt, one that he had perhaps meant to hold back: “Mr. Wilk has preached in this case that one of the handicaps the defendants are under is that they are the sons of multimillionaires. I would not bring it up if Mr. Wilk had not brought it up. But he tried to make Your Honour believe that Sergeant McNamara lied about Judd Steiner’s statement that his father’s millions could find a friendly judge.”
There was that peculiar atmosphere in the room, foretelling that something ineradicable was on the way, something that Horn could no longer stop himself from doing.
Horn faced the judge, eye to eye. “Did Sergeant McNamara lie?” he demanded. “I don’t know whether Your Honour believes this officer of the law or not, but I want to tell you, if you have observed these two defendants sitting before you during this trial, if you have observed the conduct of their attorneys and their families with one honourable exception – and that is the old man who sits in sackcloth and ashes and who is entitled to the sympathy of everybody, old Mr. Steiner – with that one honourable exception, everybody connected with this case” – he drew breath and shrieked, his arms chopping the air – “they all have laughed and sneered and jeered! And if the defendant, Steiner, did not say that he would plead guilty before a friendly judge, why, his actions demonstrated that he thinks he has got one!”
The words hung in the hot, static air.
Judge Matthewson arose, stared at him, then sat down. “I will disregard what you have said.”
The shock of Horn’s running beyond the point of recall had been so great that those at the defence table did not even seem to enjoy their gain.
Horn finished hurriedly. “I believe that the facts and circumstances proven in this case demonstrate that a crime has been committed by these two defendants and that no other punishment except the extreme penalty of the law will fit, and I leave the case with you on behalf of the state of Illinois, and I ask Your Honour in the language of Holy Writ to ‘execute justice and righteousness in the land’.”
Judge Matthewson seemed not to have heard Horn’s final words, engaged as he had been in an effort of self-control.
“Before the State rests,” he said, “the court will order stricken from the record the closing remark of the State’s Attorney as being a cowardly and dastardly assault upon the integrity of this court.”