A Man's World

by Albert Edwards

The principal witness for the state was Mrs. Casey, the mother of the little boy who had been killed. She was a widow, a simple, uneducated Irishwoman, who earned her living by washing. She told her story with every appearance of truthfulness. During the morning of the tragic day, she had had a quarrel with Pietro in the backyard of the tenement, where both families lived. Pietro had thrown some dirt on her washing and she had slapped him. Instead of crying as she thought an ordinary boy would have done, he had said he would "get even" with her.

When she heard the noon whistles blow in the neighboring factories, she had gone out on the front sidewalk to get her baby for dinner. The youngster was sitting on the curbstone and as she stood in the doorway calling him, a brick, coming from the roof of the tenement, struck the baby on the head, killing him instantly. She rushed out and—she swore very solemnly—looked up and saw "the little divil's red head, jest as plain as I sees yer honor."

The counsel for the defense was unable to shake her testimony in the least.

Other witnesses swore that, on hearing Mrs. Casey's cry for help, they had rushed up to the roof and had met Mrs. Sippio coming down through the skylight with her two younger children, Felicia a girl of eight and Angelo, who was five. When they had asked her where Pietro was she said she had not seen him. But these witnesses were Irish and sided with Mrs. Casey. They testified that it was easy to pass from one roof to another. And it was evidently their theory that Pietro had escaped in this manner.

A few minutes after the tragedy, Pietro had come whistling up the street and had walked into the arms of the police, who were just starting out to search for him.

In his own defense Pietro testified that after quarreling with Mrs. Casey he had played about in the street for some time and then had gone down to the river with a crowd of boys for a swim. They had not left the water until the noon whistles had warned them of dinner time. They had all hurried into their clothes and gone home. He swore positively that he had not been on the roof during the morning. He evidently did not realize the seriousness of his position and was rather swaggeringly proud of being the center of so much attention.

Two or three other boys testified that Pietro had been swimming with them and had not left the water until after the whistles blew. This was an important point as the baby had been killed a very few minutes after noon. But the district attorney, in a brutal, bullying cross-examination, succeeded in rattling one of the boys—a youngster of eleven—until he did not know his right hand from his left. He broke down entirely, and sobbingly admitted that perhaps Pietro had left before the whistles blew.

Mrs. Sippio testified that she had not seen Pietro after breakfast. She had gone upon the roof about half past eleven to beat out some rugs. She had taken the two younger children with her. But Pietro had not been on the roof. She was a very timid woman, so frightened that she forgot most of her scant English. But she seemed to be telling the truth.

After the testimony was in the counsel for the defense made an eloquent, if rather bombastic plea. He turned more often to the desk of the reporters than to the panel of jurymen. No one, he said, had given any testimony which even remotely implicated Pietro, except the grief-stricken and enraged Mrs. Casey. He made a peroration on the vengeful traits of the Irish. He almost wept over the prospect of eternal damnation which awaited Mrs. Casey's soul on account of her perjury. No reasonable man, he concluded, would condemn a fly on such unreliable testimony.

The prosecutor commenced his summing up by referring to his position as attorney for the people of the state of New York. He said that his able opponent was technically called "The counsel for the defense," but that in reality he himself more truly deserved that title. He was engaged not in the defense of an individual offender, but in that of the whole community of law abiding citizens. And in the pursuance of this most serious function he could not allow his personal pity for the youthful murderer to deflect him from his public duty.