"Mr. McGiffert, have you any conscientious scruples against capital punishment?"
The suggestive possibility affected men strangely; they leaned forward, hanging on the reply. McGiffert shook his aged head again as if it were a gratuitous reflection on his character to hint at his being in any way unfit for this office.
Eades, having had McGiffert on many juries and knowing that he invariably voted for conviction, with a graceful gesture of his white hand, waved him, as it were, to Marriott.
Marriott, after an examination he knew was hopeless from the start, found no cause for challenge; and after Glassford, as if some deeper possibilities had occurred to his superior mind, had asked McGiffert about his age and his health, McGiffert, with the relief of a man who has passed successfully through an ordeal, climbed hastily into the jury-box and retreated to its farthest corner, as if it were a safe place from which he could not be dislodged.
One by one the venire-men were examined; several were excused. One old man, although he protested, was manifestly deaf, another had employed Eades, another rose and, hanging over the desk, whispered to Glassford, who immediately excused him because of physical disability; finally, by noon, the panel was full.
Marriott scanned the twelve bearded men. Viewed as a whole, they seemed well to typify the great institution of the English law, centuries old; their beards clung to them like the gray moss of a live-oak, hoary with age. But these patriarchal beards could lend little dignity. The old men sat there suggesting the diseases of age--rheumatism, lumbago, palsy--death and decay. Their faces were mere masks of clay; they were lacking in imagination, in humor, in sympathy, in pity, in mercy, all the high human qualities having long ago died within them, leaving their bodies untenanted. He knew they were ready at that moment to convict Archie. He had sixteen peremptory challenges, and as he reflected that these would soon be exhausted and that the men who were thus excused would be replaced by others just like them, a despair seized him. But it was imperative to get rid of these; they were, for the most part, professional jurors who would invariably vote for the state. He must begin to use those precious peremptory challenges and compel the court to issue special venires; in the haste and confusion men might be found who would be less professional and more intelligent. In this case, involving, as it did, the Flanagan case, he needed strong, independent men, whereas Eades required instead weak, subservient and stupid men--men with crystallized minds, dull, orthodox, inaccessible to ideas. Furthermore, Marriott recalled that juries are not made up of twelve men, as the law boasts, but of two or three men, or more often, of one man stronger than the rest, who dominates his fellows, lays his masterful will upon them, and bends them to his wishes and his prejudices. Perhaps, in some special venire, quite by accident, when the sheriff's deputies began to scour the town, there might be found one such man, who, for some obscure reason, would incline to Archie's side. On such a caprice of fate hung Archie's life.
"Mr. Marriott, the court is waiting," said Glassford.
"If your Honor will indulge us a moment." Then Marriott whispered to Archie.
"Je's," said Archie. "Looks cheesy to me. Looks to me like a lot o' rummy blokes. They've got it all framed up now. Them old hoosiers would cop the cush all right." Archie whispered with the sneering cynicism of one who holds the belief of the all-powerful influence of money. "That old harp back there in the corner with the green benny on, he looks like a bull to me. Go after him and knock him off."
Archie had indicated quite openly an aged Irishman who sat huddled in a faded overcoat in the rear row. He had white chin-whiskers and a long, broad, clean-shaven upper lip.