The Criminal Court Building in New York City is a huge square block of yellow brick with an incongruous cornice and grandiose trimmings. It is of the Tammany period. Among architectural aberrations, architects give it a leading place. It was run up on the site of an old pond, and was no sooner up than it threatened to fall down again. There was a great scare at the time, but that has long ago been forgotten. The monument still stands, secure in its ugliness.
It is one of the busiest places in the city. It knows no long vacations during the heated term. Day in and day out the mills of justice grind feverishly without ever quite catching up with the grist that is offered. Judges from quieter jurisdictions up state have continually to be imported to relieve the overworked metropolitan incumbents.
Within the building there is a vast enclosed court surrounded by wide, cement-paved galleries tier above tier. Every day during court hours these galleries are thronged with what is surely the most diverse collections of humanity ever brought together under a roof; witnesses principally, or friends of the accused. Every walk of life is represented; every stratum of society. But among the countless types four are repeated over and over; wary-eyed initiates of the underworld, weeping women, shabby insinuating lawyers looking for business, and detectives with eyes as wary as the gunmen, but better fed men and full of a conscious rectitude. Dozens of little dramas are going on simultaneously.
On a certain stifling morning in mid-summer, amongst the dozens of court-rooms the interest of the building was focused in General Sessions, Part One, where the case of the People versus Counsell was being tried under Stockman, J. A murder trial. Common as they are in that building a murder trial never quite loses its zest, and this, owing to the prominence of the persons concerned, was a celebrated case. Every morning a great crowd struggled to get into the courtroom, though the evidence was not of a sensational nature. There was no woman in the case. It was a foregone conclusion too; one of those cases which had been tried out in the newspapers before being brought into court, and a verdict of guilty rendered. Nobody had a good word for the defendant except the morbid women who stormed the court-room doors, and who secured a majority of the seats inside, simply because they were more persistent than the men. These women always sympathize with the prisoner, particularly if, as in this case, he happens to be young and comely.
As a result of the furore in the newspapers many days had been taken up in the effort to secure an impartial jury. But once the taking of evidence began the proceedings moved swiftly enough. Only two days had been required by the prosecutor to present his case. Hackett, the particular star of the district-attorney's office, handled it. He had scarcely been obliged to exert himself; everything was going his way. In three days more the defendant's direct testimony was all in. Counsell was his own principal witness. He had told a straightforward story on the stand, and a ruthless cross-examination had failed to shake it. Unfortunately for him he had no witnesses to support his story. Proof of it rested with the dead man. There had been no witnesses to the final scene between them. The trial had now reached the stage of rebuttal testimony offered by the People.
When Court adjourned for the noon recess, Corveth of Defendant's counsel made his way out of the building with a heavy air of dejection. He was a young man, the same age as the prisoner, an old friend it was said, and he had full charge of Counsell's case. He had put up a strenuous fight for his friend, but not perhaps a brilliant one. He was a first-rate lawyer, but he lacked the art of certain famous pleaders who, when they have a bad case, set out to charm and dazzle judge and jury with moving if irrelevant eloquence. Corveth was in deadly earnest. He passionately believed in his client's innocence, but he had scarcely succeeded in proving it. And he had often irritated the Bench by his dogged fight on points of law which took up time without apparently getting anywhere. Even now it was a mistake of tactics for Corveth so clearly to betray his discouragement to the inquisitive observers in the galleries.
Two hours later when he returned, the man's whole bearing had changed. Dejection had given place to an air of excitement so great that it was impossible to tell whether it was a pleasurable excitement or the reverse. His pale skin seemed to gleam with excitement; his clothing was a little disarranged; the man looked slightly stunned.
He was escorting a heavily veiled woman, a young woman judging from her figure and carriage, and they were followed by such an oddly-assorted group as you could only find walking together in that building. Witnesses obviously. It included two other women, one a flashy, pretty little thing, with hard, assured eyes, the other a domestic servant apparently. The men ranged all the way from a highly prosperous gentleman, a banker possibly, down to a couple of taxi-drivers and a farm laborer. The word went around the galleries like wildfire that there was something up in the Counsell case, and a new crowd pressed to the doors of the courtroom. It was too late to get in. Corveth left his witnesses outside where they remained guarded by a couple of young men from his office against the questions of the curious.
Within the court-room Corveth was seen to enter into an excited, whispered discussion with the defendant. Corveth was the excited one. Counsell appeared to be trying to soothe him. Their talk was interrupted by the entrance of the Judge.
When the proceedings were opened Corveth rose and in a voice that trembled oddly said: "If it please your Honor since we adjourned important new evidence has been offered to me."