For all the pain I cost her,
That she had borne the lad
That borne she had.
My father and my mother
Out of the light they lie;
The warrant would not find them,
And here, ‘tis only I
Shall hang so high.
O let not man remember
The soul that God forgot,
But fetch the county sheriff
And noose me in a knot,
And I will rot.
And so the game is ended,
That should not have begun.
My father and my mother
They had a likely son,
And I have none.
“No one knows what will be the fate of the child he gets or the child she bears; the fate of the child is the last thing they consider. This weary old world goes on begetting, with birth and with living and with death; and all of it is blind from the beginning to the end. I do not know what it was that made these boys do this mad act, but I do know they did not beget themselves. I know that any one of an infinite number of causes reaching back to the beginning might be working out in these boys’ minds, whom you are asked to hang in malice and in hatred and injustice, because someone in the past has sinned against them.
“I am sorry for the fathers as well as the mothers, for the fathers who give their strength and their lives for educating and protecting and creating a fortune for the boys that they love; for the mothers who go down in the shadow of death for their children, who watch them with tenderness and fondness and longing, and who go down into dishonour and disgrace for the children that they love.
“All of these are helpless. We are all helpless. When you are pitying the father and the mother of poor Paulie Kessler, what about the fathers and mothers of these two unfortunate boys, and the boys themselves, and all the fathers and all the mothers and all the boys and girls who tread a dangerous maze of darkness from birth to death?”
He lifted his head up from his soliloquy. “Do you think you can cure it by hanging these two? Do you think you can cure the hatreds and the maladjustments of the world by hanging them?
“What is my friend’s idea of justice? He says to this court, ‘Give them the same mercy that they gave Paulie Kessler.’
“If the state in which I live is not kinder, more humane, more considerate, more intelligent than the mad act of these two boys, I am sorry that I have lived so long.”
So ended the first session.
In the afternoon, Wilk resumed, speaking of the clumsiness, the ineptitude of the “carefully planned” crime. “Without the slightest motive, moved by nothing except the vague wanderings of children, they rented a machine, and about four o’clock in the afternoon started to find somebody to kill. For nothing.”
Wilk described how they picked up their victim. “… They hit him over the head with a chisel and kill him, and go on, driving past the neighbours that they knew, in the open highway in broad daylight. And still men say that they have a bright intellect, and as Dr. Stauffer puts it, can orient themselves and reason as well as he can.
“If ever any death car went over the same kind of route, driven by sane people, I have never heard of it. The car is driven for twenty miles. The slightest accident – anything would bring destruction. They go through the park, meeting hundreds of machines, in the sight of thousands of eyes, with this dead boy.
“And yet doctors will swear that it is a sane act. They know better.
“You need no experts, you need no X-rays, you need no study of the endocrines. Their conduct shows exactly what it was, and shows that this court has before him two young men who should be examined in a psychopathic hospital and treated kindly and with care…
“We are told that they planned. Well, what does that mean? A maniac plans, an idiot plans, an animal plans; any brain that functions may plan; but their plans were the diseased plans of diseased minds.” He walked close to the prosecution table, looking quizzically at his opponents. “My friend pictured to you the putting of this dead boy into this culvert – but, Your Honour, I can think of a scene that makes this pale into insignificance.” And gazing then at Judd and Artie, he described, in gruesome detail, the prospective hanging. “I can picture them, wakened in the grey of morning, furnished a suit of clothes by the State, led to the scaffold, their feet tied, black caps drawn over their heads, stood on a trap door, the hangman pressing the spring; I can see them fall through space – and – I can see them stopped by the rope around their necks.
“Wouldn’t it be a glorious day for Chicago? Wouldn’t it be a glorious triumph for the State’s Attorney? Wouldn’t it be a glorious illustration of Christianity and kindness and charity?
“This would surely expiate placing Paulie Kessler in the culvert after he was dead. This would doubtless bring immense satisfaction to some people. It would bring a greater satisfaction because it would be done in the name of justice.
“We hear glib talk of justice. Well, it would make me smile if it did not make me sad. Who knows what it is? Does Mr. Padua know? Does Mr. Horn know? Do I know? Does Your Honour know? Is there a human machinery for finding out? Is there any man who can weigh me and say what I deserve? Can Your Honour? Let us be honest.
“If there is such a thing as justice, it could only be administered by one who knew the inmost thoughts of the men to whom he was meting it out. It means that you must appraise every influence that moves them, the civilization in which they live, and all the society which enters into the making of the child or the man! If Your Honour can do it, you are wise, and with wisdom goes mercy.”
Judd smiled at the gracefulness of it.
“It is not so much mercy either, Your Honour. I can hardly understand myself pleading to a court to visit mercy on two boys by shutting them up in prison for life. Any cry for more roots back to the beasts of the jungle. It is not a part of man. It is not a part of that feeling of mercy and pity and understanding of each other which we believe has been slowly raising man from his low estate.”
He resumed the tale of the crime. “They parked the bloody automobile in front of Judd’s house. They cleaned it to some extent that night and left it standing in the street. ‘Oriented’, of course, ‘oriented’. They left it there for the night so that anybody might see and know. And then in a day or so we find Artie with his pockets stuffed with newspapers telling of the Kessler tragedy. We find him consulting with his friends, with the newspaper reporters; and my experience has been that the last person that a conscious criminal associates with is a reporter.” Wilk looked at us with an appeasing smile. “But he picks up a reporter, and he tells him he has read a great many detective stories, and he knows just how this would happen.
“Talk about scheming! But they must be hanged, because everybody is talking about the case and because their people have money.”
He turned then to a professional tone. He spoke of the traditional arrangements between prosecution and defence, the usual consideration accorded a plea of guilty. “How many times has Your Honour listened to the State’s Attorney come into this court with a man charged with robbery with a gun – which means from ten years to life – and on condition of a plea of guilty ask to have the gun charge stricken out and get him a chance to see daylight inside of three years? How many times?
“What about this matter of crime and punishment, anyhow? You can trace it all down through the history of man. You can trace the burnings, the boilings, the drawings and quarterings, the hanging of people in England at the crossroads, carving them up and hanging them as examples for all to see.