“This case is greater than us all, more important to the country than you conceive; the case itself and what it involves is more important than all their lives, than all the lives of the unfortunate officers who bit the dust that night in defense of our laws.
“Some of these people, we sincerely and honestly believe, should receive at your hands the extreme penalty of the law. Spies, Fischer, Lingg, Engel, Fielden, Parsons, Schwab, Neebe, in my opinion, based upon the proof, is the order of the punishment. It is for you to say what it shall be. You have been importuned, gentlemen, to disagree. Don’t do that; don’t do that. If, in your judgments, in the judgment of some of you, some of these men should suffer death, and others think a less punishment would subserve the law, don’t stand on that, but agree on something. It is no pleasant task for me to ask the life of any man. Personally I have not a word to say against these men. As a representative of the law I say to you, the law demands now, here, its power. Regardless of me, of Foster, of Black, or of us all, that law which the exponents of Anarchy violated to kill Lincoln and Garfield, that law that has made us strong to-day, and which you have sworn to obey, demands of you a punishment of these men. Don’t do it because I ask you. Do it, if it should be done, because the law demands it. You stand between the living and the dead. You stand between law and violated law. Do your duty courageously, even if that duty is an unpleasant and a severe one.”
CHAPTER XXXII.
The Instructions to the Jury—What Murder Is—Free Speech and its Abuse—The Theory of Conspiracy—Value of Circumstantial Evidence—Meaning of a “Reasonable Doubt”—What a Jury May Decide—Waiting for the Verdict—“Guilty of Murder”—The Death Penalty Adjudged—Neebe’s Good Luck—Motion for a New Trial—Affidavits about the Jury—The Motion Overruled.
ON the conclusion of State’s Attorney Grinnell’s review of the arguments made by the defense, Judge Gary proceeded to charge the jury. The hour was after the noon recess of Thursday, August 19, and the presentation and reading of the instructions consumed a goodly portion of the afternoon. When the court had finished the jury retired, and the fate of eight men was in their hands.
The instructions given were as follows on behalf of the people:
“The court instructs the jury, in the language of the statute, that murder is the unlawful killing of a human being in the peace of the people, with malice aforethought, either expressed or implied. An unlawful killing may be perpetrated by poisoning, striking, starving, drowning, stabbing, shooting, or by any other of the various forms or means by which human nature may be overcome, and death thereby occasioned.
“Express malice is that deliberate intention unlawfully to take away the life of a fellow-creature which is manifested by external circumstances capable of proof. Malice shall be implied when no considerable provocation appears, or when all the circumstances of the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.