Part 50 (2/2)
Two men lounged in from the clerk's office and took their places at the defendant's table, as the selection of the jury began. Pelham watched their activity in bewilderment; as each name was called, they bent over long lists, and consulted with the lawyers while the talesmen were being examined. He noticed the deference with which their whispers were received.
At the first chance, he spoke to Spence again. ”Who are those--more lawyers?”
Ben flashed him a sudden glance. ”Don't you know 'Chicory' Jasper, and Bill Letcher? They're two of the company's 'jury strikers'--'jury fixers.' They have the dope on each man; interview them in advance, and all. If a man's ever said anything against a corporation, off he goes.”
”But is that ... legal?”
”Supreme Court has ruled that it is.” He turned back, to insist on Chippen's challenging a venireman who had worked in the company's office before getting state employment.
Three panels were exhausted, before twelve good men and true could be found who knew, Pelham judged from their answers, nothing whatever about unions or strikes; who had never heard of this strike; who did not read the papers. Eight were farmers from distant edges of the county, one was a bookkeeper as anemic as prosecutor Chippen himself, two were small business men, and the last a nondescript nonagenarian who called himself a ”watchman.”
Once the jury was chosen, the trial went swiftly enough. The State called the policemen, and made out a prima facie case against the negro.
In answer to old Hilary's glib questions, the officers confessed that the negro had claimed self-defense; that Dawson's discarded pistol had an indented sh.e.l.l in it. McGue's evidence as to the fake telephone call helped; but the case for the State could have been stronger.
The defense evidently intended to take no risks. First they put on several of those present at the ma.s.s meeting when Dawson had denounced the negro, sympathizers with the _Voice of Labor_ machine. Invariably these swore to the big strike leader's unreasonable anger against the expelled member. The radical union men in the room could hardly be restrained from hissing; but the testimony went in, and, Pelham noted, Spence's attack lacked some of his usual vigor. At last Cole himself was called. He gave his evidence with that easy circ.u.mspection that told to the initiated that he had been thoroughly coached. Nor could cross-examination twist any of his statements.
In reb.u.t.tal several of the sincerer strikers were put on; but this last minute recourse did not impress the jury.
The final speeches for the defense were masterly. Colonel Pugh led off, and in vulture-like gyrations pictured the incursion of this carpet-bagger from the North who had thrown good Adamsville men out of their jobs, and damaged all the business of the district; of his senseless persecution of this negro; of Cole's loyalty to the miners'
union, and the death of his brothers on the mountain; and finally, of the negro's own act, a simple defense of the life which G.o.d gave him.
”They claim that this defendant received a bribe from a man then an ex-employee of the company. Who says so? One John McGue, who admits he is now under indictment in connection with this strike. There is no corroboration; Cole denies it, Jim Hewin, a deputy sheriff, denies it.
Believe a jail bird against two witnesses like that? Why, they cannot even invent a motive to account for the fict.i.tious presence of this fict.i.tious money!...
”Are we to have it written down forever in the annals of Adamsville that a black man comes into our courts, and does not get justice? Will you make Ed Cole swing because of the color which his Creator imposed on him? Will you gentlemen be connivers at the legal lynching of an innocent man? Will your decision be that a white scoundrel can attempt to murder a negro, and that the negro must die for a man's first duty, self-protection?”
He ended with oratorical sky-rockets, and sank, seemingly exhausted, into the considerate arms of his legal twin brethren, Garfunkel and Leach.
Spence came next. When he reached the cause of the strike, his words rang convincingly; but the jury were unsympathetic to this. As he proceeded to the case before him, he tried to tear the careful web of evidence which backed up the negro's claim; the talesmen seemed impressed.
Zebulun Hilary's concluding speech for the negro found him in his most telling mood. He had been a leading pleader at the bar sixty years before; and the momentum of that stretch of time had multiplied his powers of persuasion until even Pelham had to confess his weird mastery of the emotions of men. He riddled the case for the State; there was no evidence to contradict the defendant's candid story. He pictured the desolate Cole home, now sought to be robbed of its last bread-winner; he wrung the hearts and the consciences of each juryman with powerful emotional onslaughts. When he finished, an acquittal, unless the last speaker could change the trend, seemed inevitable.
Chippen's lame summing up only made the case worse for the memory of John Dawson.
Pelham went out into the sunlight, Harvey Cade joining him. ”It's sheer mockery of justice,” came the lawyer's outraged outburst. ”Lies, lies, lies! And Ben Spence soldiering on the job.... He represents the official union movement, remember.”
”You don't think he would----” Pelham's honest horror was written all over his face.
”He could have done better. As for that Chippen, it's the rare case where he's smart enough to know that a 'not guilty' will help him more than a conviction. This is justice--in Adamsville!”
”And always so bad?”
”Why, our Supreme Court,” went on the other bitterly, ”has granted a new trial, because the letter 's' was left off the word 'defendants,' and again because an 'i' was omitted from 'malice.' In another case, where the indictment charged that 'A did embezzle from B his money,' the case was reversed, because the Court could not determine who the 'his'
referred to. 'To make it refer to B,' said the learned court, 'would imply that the Grand Jury intended to charge A with a crime.' What an implication!... A leading magazine recently said that the criminal administration in this state is more scandalous than in any state in the union. It's unspeakable!”
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