Manslaughter

by Alice Duer Miller

"Yes, my friend," thought Lydia, "that's the way it's done. I wonder how many times you've skidded your own car to know so much about it."

"This procedure," O'Bannon's voice continued, "which is always a somewhat reckless performance, was in this case criminal. With the officer known to be overlapping her car on the left, she might as well have picked up her car and struck him with it. Her car did so strike him, smashing his motorcycle to bits and causing the hideous injuries of which he died within a few hours."

Lydia closed her eyes. She saw that mass of bloodstained khaki and steel lying in the road and heard her own footsteps beating on the macadam.

"The People will prove that the defendant was committing a misdemeanor at the time. By Section 1950 of the Penal Law it is a misdemeanor to render the highways dangerous or to render a considerable number of persons insecure in life. The defendant in approaching the village of Wide Plains along a highway on which there were buildings and people at a rate of forty miles an hour was so endangering life. Gentlemen, there never was a simpler case as to law and fact than this one."

Lydia glanced at Wiley under her lashes. It seemed to her that O'Bannon's manner was almost perfect. She believed he had already captured the jury, but she could read nothing of Wiley's opinion in his expression. He rose more leisurely, more conversational in manner. The defense would show, he said—and his tone seemed to add "without the least difficulty"—that the motorcycle of the unfortunate young policeman had skidded and struck the automobile of the defendant, causing, to the deep chagrin of the defendant, the death of that gallant young hero. They would show that the defendant was not committing a misdemeanor at the time, for to attain a speed of twenty-five or thirty miles on a lonely road was not even violating the speed law, as everyone who owned a car knew very well. As for the indictment of manslaughter in the first degree, really—Wiley's manner seemed to say that he knew a joke was a joke, and that he had as much sense of humor as most men, but when it came to manslaughter in the first degree—"a crime, gentlemen, for which a prison sentence of twenty years may be imposed—twenty years, gentlemen." He had never in a long experience at the bar heard of a bill being found at once so spectacular and so completely at variance with the law. The defense would show them that if they followed the recommendation of his learned young friend, the district attorney, to consider the facts and the law——

His manner to O'Bannon was more paternal than patronizing. He seemed to sketch him as an eager, emotional boy intoxicated by headlines in the New York papers. Wiley radiated wisdom, pity for his client, grief for the loss of Drummond and an encouraging hope that a young man like O'Bannon would learn enough in the course of a few years to prevent his making a humiliating sort of mistake like this again. He did not say a word of this, but Lydia could see the atmosphere of his speech seeping into the jurors' minds.

Yes, she thought, it was an able opening—not the sort of ability that she would have connected with legal talent in the days when she knew less of the law; but it seemed to be the kind of magic that worked. She was pleased with her counsel, directed a flattering look at him and began to assume the air he wanted her to assume—the dovelike.

The prosecution began at once to call their witnesses—first the doctors and nurses from the hospital, establishing the cause of death. Then the exact time was established by the clock on the motorcycle—3:12, confirmed by the testimony of many witnesses. Then the ante-mortem statement was put in evidence. A long technical argument took place between the lawyers over this. It occupied all the rest of the morning session. The statement was finally admitted, but the discussion had served to impress on the jury the fact that the testimony of a witness whose credibility cannot be judged of by personal inspection, and who is saved by death from the cross-examination of the lawyer of the other side, is evidence which the law admits only under protest.

Wiley scored his first tangible success in his cross-examination of the two men who had come to Lydia's assistance. On direct examination they had testified to the high rate of speed at which Lydia had been going. Wiley, when they were turned over to him, contrived to put them in a position where they were forced either to confess that they had no knowledge of high rates of speed or else that they themselves frequently broke the law. Wiley was polite, almost kind; but he made them look foolish, and the jury enjoyed the spectacle.

This success was overshadowed by a small reverse that followed it. The prosecution had a long line of witnesses who had passed or been passed by Lydia just before the accident. One of these was a young man who was a washer in a garage about a mile away from the fatal corner. He testified in direct examination that Lydia was going forty-five miles an hour when she passed the garage.