It was the morning of the day of the trial and I sat at my desk getting through some routine duties in an entirely perfunctory way prior to attending the opening of the court.
It had been determined that I was not to participate in the conduct of the case in any way: indeed, there was little alternative left the District Attorney in the matter after I had explained to him the course I had been pursuing and my views on the subject.
He had not appeared much surprised by my disclosures and was probably not unprepared for them, but he questioned me as to my opinions and I thought seemed not unimpressed. In any event he acquiesced in my request to be excused from participation and even added the assurance that Winters should have every opportunity of defence.
At this moment, however, I did not feel confident. Look at the facts as I would, they presented very little to encourage. Nothing had changed since Littell and I had paid our visit to the Tombs. Nothing new had been discovered: indeed we had made little attempt in that direction, recognizing the almost certain futility of any effort in the limited time available, and in the meanwhile public opinion and the expression of the press had been crystallizing into an abiding conviction of the prisoner's guilt.
I could not criticise the sentiment, for I recognized the strength of the State's case: and when I reviewed it, as I had done over and over again, it seemed all but conclusive even to me. The defence had absolutely nothing to present against an array of hard facts, but some ill-supported theories.
It was a quarter to ten o'clock, and I put away the work I had been affecting to attend to, and took my way to the court-house.
Only my official position gained me admission to the scene, and as it was, an officer had to make a passage for me through the crowd that had collected in and about the building.
The Judge had not yet taken his place upon the bench, but the lawyers, clerks, bailiffs, and reporters were in their accustomed places within the rail which held back from the sacred precinct a throng of spectators so dense that it could not make room for one more.
If one had been disposed for it, a lesson in the nether nature of man might have been studied in the faces of those pressing eagerly about the railing, alert with morbid curiosity.
In the crowd were both men and women and others little more than children: many who had themselves figured in the prisoner's dock in that same court-room: many more who would be there, and all, or nearly all, of that waste class that make the criminals and the crimes of a great community.