Horn’s voice was half-choked with chagrin, rage, defeat. “It was not so intended, Your Honour.”
The judge disregarded him. “It could not be used for any other purpose except to incite a mob and to try and intimidate this court.”
“If Your Honour please, the state’s attorney had no such intention.”
The entire courtroom was electric, the boys sitting up with a frightened hope, a realization that something entirely extraneous was happening, perhaps a break that would save their lives.
“I merely wanted to put my personal feelings plainly before the court,” Horn insisted. “It was my intention as the State’s Attorney-”
“The State’s Attorney knew that his words would be heralded all through this country and all over this world.”
“It was not my intention.”
“This court will not be intimidated by anybody at any time or place as long as he occupies this position.” The judge sat back.
After a moment he announced, “I am going to take this case under advisement, gentlemen. I have practically two thousand pages of exhibits. It will take some time to prepare to decide this matter and to render judgment in this case. I think I ought to have ten days or so, and I will fix the day as September ten.” He arose. “We will adjourn this case now until September the tenth at nine-thirty o’clock.”
During those ten days the intense and fantastic absorption with the case increased rather than abated. We were beset with rumours; there were threats to bomb the judge’s home, to kill him should he fail to hang the criminals.
Nor was Judd silent. If the sentence were death, the execution, according to the Illinois law, could take place in a few months’ time. His mind seemed to be churning at greater speed, to produce some proof of the importance of his life.
He released, now, the list of questions he would attempt to solve from the other side of death, should there prove to be an after-life. These were his questions:
Is human experience carried on in any form of consciousness after death?
Is there complete omniscience?
Are the cultural experiences of the earth necessary? What of the savage mind?
Is the absence of a physical being an advantage?
Does one retain reactions registered on the mind previous to death?
Is life on earth correct in judgment, or is there a higher judgment?
What is happiness?
ON THE MORNING of the sentencing, mounted police circled the building. The crowd was immense. Precisely at nine-thirty all were in their places in the courtroom, and Judge Matthewson appeared. Among us of the press, Prager and his friends were loud with dire predictions. That was a real mob out there. If the verdict proved short of death the boys would never get out of the building alive.
I could not feel it as a lynch mob, though I was not without uneasiness. Since then, I see it more like a crowd waiting for the outcome of a desperately fought election. In it there was a feverish having-to-know. I’ve talked about it with wiser and more learned men than myself, and I realize that it was not so much the act of decision that was awaited, not so much the who-wins, but the disposition, in terms of our own selves. In each there must have been identification; in each, the hidden sense that the disposition would symbolically apply to his own darkest impulse. If I let myself do something even as awful as this, how much would I be punished? Would I die for it?
We all rose for the entry of the judge. After the swift formalities, the boys stood before him, between Wilk and Ferdinand Feldscher, and as the judge met their eyes it was still impossible to know whether he brought them death or life. Artie was utterly pale, his cheeks twitched. Judd was impassive.
Judge Matthewson read:
“In view of the profound and unusual interest that this case has aroused not only in this community but in the entire country and even beyond its boundaries, the court feels it is his duty to state the reasons which have led him to the determination he has reached.
“It is not an uncommon thing that pleas of guilty are entered in criminal cases, but almost without exception in the past such pleas have been the result of a virtual agreement between the defendants and the State’s Attorney; and in the absence of special reasons to the contrary, it is the practice of the court to follow the recommendations of the State’s Attorney.
“In the present case the situation is a different one. A plea of guilty has been entered by the defence without a previous understanding with the prosecution, and without any advance knowledge whatever on his part.” Moreover, the judge pointed out, the plea of guilty in this case did not make the task of the prosecution easier “by substituting the admission of guilt for a possibly difficult or uncertain chain of proof”. For in this case the State already had ample proof of guilt, besides full confessions.
Death, then?
There were two crimes – murder and kidnapping for ransom. In both, he pointed out, it was the court’s duty under the statute to examine witnesses as to aggravation and mitigation. “This duty has been fully met. The testimony introduced, both by the prosecution and the defence, has been as detailed and elaborate as though the case had been tried before a jury.”
Then came the disposition of another point – was it for Horn? “The testimony has satisfied the court that the case is not one in which it would have been possible to set up successfully the defence of insanity as insanity is defined and understood by the established law of this state for the purpose of the administration of criminal justice.
“The court, however, feels impelled to dwell briefly on the mass of data produced as to the physical, mental, and moral condition of the two defendants. They have been shown in essential respects to be abnormal; had they been normal they would not have committed the crime.”
The very words of Wilk!
“It is beyond the province of this court, as it is beyond the capacity of humankind in its present state of development, to predicate ultimate responsibility for human acts.
“At the same time, the court is willing to recognize that the careful analysis made of the life history of the defendants and of their present mental, emotional, and ethical condition has been of extreme interest and is a valuable contribution to criminology.”
Surely, it was a decision for the defence.
“And yet the court feels strongly that similar analyses made of other persons accused of crime will probably reveal similar or different abnormalities. The value of such tests seems to lie in their applicability to crime and criminals in general.
“Since they concern the broad question of human responsibility and legal punishment and are in no wise peculiar to the individual defendants, they may be deserving of legislative but not of judicial consideration. For this reason the court is satisfied that his judgment in the present case cannot be affected thereby.”
Then it was for Horn; it was over.
“The testimony in this case reveals a crime of singular atrocity. It is, in a sense, inexplicable, but is not thereby rendered less inhuman or repulsive. It was deliberately planned and prepared for during a considerable period of time. It was executed with every feature of callousness and cruelty.” He raised his eyes, and spoke with another kind of pain, of the man who must touch some of the filthiest things of life. He spoke “not for the purpose of extenuating guilt, but merely with the object of dispelling a misapprehension that appears to have found lodgment in the public mind”. It was on the most gruesome point of all. He was convinced “by conclusive evidence that there was no abuse offered to the body of the victim”.
He returned to his paper. “But it did not need that element to make the crime abhorrent to every instinct of humanity, and the court is satisfied that neither in the act itself, nor in its motives or lack of motives, can he find any mitigating circumstances.”