On the opening day the court-room was packed, the halls and corridors of the Criminal Court building were filled to suffocation, the neighboring streets were jammed with people clamoring for admittance and hungry for news from within. Then began the long, tedious task of selecting a jury. Public opinion had run so high that this was no easy undertaking. As day after day went by in the monotonous examination and challenge of talesmen, as panel after panel was exhausted with no result, not only did the ridiculous shortcomings of our jury system become apparent, but also the fact that the Mafia had, as usual, made full use of its sinister powers of intimidation. In view of the atrocious character of the crime and the immense publicity given it, those citizens who were qualified by intelligence to act as jurors had of necessity read and heard sufficient to form an opinion, and were therefore automatically debarred from service. It became necessary to place the final adjudication of the matter in the hands of men who were either utterly indifferent to the public weal or lacked the intelligence to read and weigh and think.
A remarkable wave of humanity seemed to have overwhelmed the city. Four out of every five men examined professed a disbelief in capital punishment, which, although it merely covered a fear of the Mafia's antagonism, nevertheless excused them for cause. Day after day this mockery went on.
As the list of talesmen grew into the hundreds and the same extraordinary antipathy to hanging continued to manifest itself, it occasioned remark, then ridicule. It would have been laughable had it not been so significant. The papers took it up, urging, exhorting, demanding that there be a stiffening of backbone; but to no effect. More than this, the Mafia had reigned so long and so autocratically, it had so shamefully abused the courts in the past, that a large proportion of honest men declared themselves unwilling to believe Sicilian testimony unless corroborated, and this prevented them from serving.
A week went by, and then another, and still twelve men who could try the issue fairly had not been found. Some few had been accepted, to be sure, but they were not representative of the city, and the list of talesmen who had been examined and excused on one pretext or another numbered fully a thousand.
Meanwhile, Maruffi smiled and shrugged and maintained his innocence.
XXIII
THE TRIAL AND THE VERDICT
Blake did not attend these tiresome preliminaries, although he followed them with intense interest, the while a sardonic irritation arose in him. Chancing to meet Mayor Wright one day, he said:
"I'm beginning to think my original plan was the best after all."
"You mean we should have lynched those fellows as they were taken?" queried the Mayor, with a smile.