“He let her go,” explained the reporter judicially, “because he’s the wiliest old fox in Bellechester County. He knows perfectly well that while he has a fair sporting chance of instilling the suspicion in the twelve essential heads that Mr. Phipps is a libertine and a bribe taker and a perjurer, he hasn’t the chance of the proverbial snowball to make them believe that Sally Dunne could speak anything but the truth to save her life or her soul. That child could make the tales of Munchausen sound like the eternal verities. The quicker he can get her off the stand, the more chance he has of saving his case.”
“Save it? How can he save it?”
“Well, that’s probably what he’d like to know. As the prosecutor is supposed to be a seeker after truth, rather than a blood-hound after blood, he has rather a tough row to hoe. And here’s where he starts hoeing it.”
“The state has no comment to make on the testimony that you have just heard,” Mr. Farr was saying to the twelve jurors with an expression of truly exalted detachment, “other than to ask you to remember that, after all, these two last witnesses are no more than human beings, subject to the errors, the frailties, and the weaknesses of other human beings. If you will bear that in mind in weighing their evidence, I do not feel that it will be necessary to add one other word.”
Judge Carver eyed him thoughtfully for a moment over the glasses that he had adjusted to his fine nose. Then, with a perfunctory rap of his gavel, he turned to the papers in his hand.
“Gentlemen of the jury, the long and anxious inquiry in which we have been engaged is drawing to a close, and it now becomes my duty to address you. It has been, however painful, of a most absorbing interest, and it has undoubtedly engaged the closest attention of every one of you. You will not regret the strain that that attention has placed upon you when it shortly becomes your task to weigh the evidence that has been put before you.
“At the very outset of my charge I desire to make several things quite clear. You and you alone are the sole judges of fact. Any comment that the Court may make as to the weight or value of any features of the evidence is merely his way of suggestion, and is in no possible way binding on the jury. Nor do statements made by counsel as to the innocence or guilt of the defendants, or as to any other conclusions or inferences drawn by them, prove anything whatever or have any effect as evidence.
“It is not necessary for any person accused in a court in this county to prove that he is not guilty. It devolves on the state to prove that he is. If you have a reasonable doubt as to whether the state has proved his guilt, it is your duty to return a verdict of not guilty. That is the law of the land.
“Now, having a reasonable doubt does not mean that by some far-fetched and fantastic hypothesis you can arrive at the conclusion of not guilty because any other conclusion is painful and distasteful and abhorrent to you. There is hardly anything that an ingenious mind cannot bring itself to doubt, granted sufficient industry and application. A reasonable doubt is not one that you would conjure up in the middle of a dark, sleepless, and troubled night, but one that would lead you to say naturally when you went about your business in clear daylight, ‘Well, I can’t quite make up my mind about the real facts behind that proposition.’ Not beyond any possible doubt—beyond a reasonable doubt—bear that in mind.
“To convict either of the defendants under this indictment, the state must prove to your satisfaction beyond reasonable doubt: