The Turn of the Balance

by Brand Whitlock

Eades colored and was about to reply, but Marriott would not yield.

"I say that such tactics are unworthy of counsel; they would be unworthy of the veriest pettifogger!"

Eades flushed angrily.

"Do you mean to charge--" he challenged.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" Glassford warned them. "Address yourselves to the Court."

Eades and Marriott exchanged angry and menacing glances. The jury looked on with a passivity that passed very well for gravity. At the risk of incurring the jurors' displeasure, Marriott asked that they be excused while the question was debated, and Glassford sent them from the room.

The legal argument began. Marriott had countless precedents to justify Glassford's ruling in his favor, just as Eades had countless precedents to justify Glassford's ruling in his favor, but to the spectators it all seemed useless, tedious and silly. A murder had been committed, they thought, and hence it was necessary that some one be killed; and there sat Archie Koerner--why wait and waste all this time? why not proceed at once to the tragic dénouement and decree his death?

Glassford, maintaining a gravity, and as if he were considering all the cases Marriott and Eades were citing, and weighing them nicely one against the other, listened to the arguments all day, gazing out of the window at the scene so familiar to him. Across the street, in an upper room of a house, was a window he had been interested in for months. A woman now and then hovered near it, and Glassford had long been tantalized by his inability to see clearly what she was doing.

The next morning Glassford announced his decision. It was to the effect that the State would be permitted to show only that a felony had been committed, and that the officers had had grounds for believing that Archie had committed it; but as to details of that murder, or whether Archie had committed it, or who had committed it--that should all be excluded. This was looked upon as a victory for the defense, and, at Marriott's request, Glassford told the jurors that they were not to consider anything that had been said about the Flanagan murder or Archie's connection with it. All this, he told them, they were to dismiss from their minds and not to be influenced by it in the least. The jurymen paid Glassford an exaggerated, almost servile attention, and when he had done, several of them nodded. And all were glad that they were to hear nothing more of the Flanagan murder, for, during the long hours of their exclusion from the court-room, they had talked of nothing but the Flanagan murder, had recalled all of its details, and argued and disputed about it, until they had tired of it, and then had gone on to recall other murders that had been committed in the county, and finally, other murders of which they had heard and read.

Quinn, in telling again the story the jurors had heard so many times in court, and had read in the newspapers, frequently referred to the Flanagan murder, until Marriott wearied of the effort to prevent him. He knew that it was useless to cross-examine Quinn, useless to attempt to impress on the crystallized minds of the jurymen the facts as they had occurred. The jurymen were not listening; they were looking at the ceiling, or leaning their heads on their hands, enduring the proceedings as patiently as they could, as patiently as Eades or Quinn or Glassford. And Marriott reflected on the inadequacy of every means of communication between human beings. How was he to make them understand? How was he to get them to assume, if for an instant only, his point of view? Here they were in a court of justice, an institution that had been evolved, by the pressure of economic and social forces, through slow, toiling ages; the witnesses were sworn to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," and yet, such was man's puerility and impotence, such was the imperfection of his means of conveying ideas, that the whole truth could not possibly be told--a thousand elements and incidents must be omitted; the moods, for instance, of Archie when he talked to Quinn or to Kouka, the expressions on their faces, the light in their eyes, indications far more potent than mere words, words that might be lightly, trivially, innocently spoken one day and under one set of circumstances, but which, on some other day and under other circumstances, would take on a terrible, blasting, tragic significance. Above all, that intangible thing, the atmosphere of the occasion--this could by no possibility be reproduced even though Quinn made every effort to be honest. And how much greater the impossibility when Quinn was willing to be disingenuous, to allow the prejudices and the passions of his hearers to reflect on his words their own sentiments, so that the hatred in the hearts of this this jury, these prosecutors, might seem to be a hatred, instead, in Archie's breast! Realizing the impossibility, Marriott felt again the strong, occult influences that opposed him, and had scarcely the strength to cross-examine Quinn. And yet he must make the effort, and for two long hours he battled with Quinn, set his wits and his will against him, but it was all hopeless. For he was not opposing Quinn's mind alone, he was opposing the collective mind of this crowd behind him, and that larger crowd in the city outside.