IV The Home of the Free
There is a city which vaunts itself because in its laws oppression and injustice are not; where the popular shibboleth is freedom; whence liberty throughout all the land hath of old been proclaimed; where the proudest boast writ upon its monuments is of the sublime quality of its justice.
A great bell booms the hour of ten, and at the last reverberation the judge of the Quarter Sessions of the Peace advances from his retiring room and takes his place upon the bench. The crier raps the chamber to silence and delivers the customary invitation of the Commonwealth to the Falstaffian company being marshalled into the receiving docks.
“Oyez! oyez! oyez! All manner of persons who stand bound to appear before this honorable court, holden here this day, come forward, and ye shall be heard. And may God save the Commonwealth and this honorable court.”
Instantly a felon starts forward to the bar. An officer restrains him. The benchers laugh. He has accepted the invitation of the Commonwealth too literally. He cannot come forward and be heard.
The grand jury must first second the invitation of the State.
This body now files into its place.
“Gentlemen of the grand jury, have you any bills of indictment to present to the court?” the crier asks, and is rewarded with a considerable parcel.
The clerk scrutinizes these, the court does likewise, and then they come into the hands of the prosecuting officer, who briskly takes one from the top and calls a name:
“Christof Nielsen!”
Meanwhile, in seeming confusion, the grand jury is discharged and the petit jury called, and sworn.
“You, and each of you, do swear that you will well and truly try, and a true deliverance make, between the Commonwealth and the prisoner at the bar, whom you will have in charge, and a true verdict render, according to the evidence, so help you God.”
Again the crier calls:
“Put Christof Nielsen in the dock!”
At the name a haggard face emerges from the herd in the dock. The head is hooped about with blood-stained bandages—the face is bruised and swollen—one arm hangs limp and helpless at his side—with the other he steadies himself at the spiked railing as he obeys the court officer’s gesture to stand.
He no longer wears the wolfskin tunic—but a worn “sack-coat” too small for him. His neck and the circlet of wolf’s teeth are concealed by the collar of a flannel shirt. Trousers are on his legs instead of the skins and cross-garterings, and on his feet, where once were the great shoes of furred wolfskin, are hard shoes “made in America,” which torture his feet. His hair has lost its sunlustre and is cut short. In his hand he carries a small cloth cap.
“Christof Nielsen,” reads the clerk, “you are charged in this bill of indictment with the larceny of one silver watch, of the value of four dollars, the property of John Hall. How say you, guilty or not guilty?”
The prisoner lifts his dull, sick eyes, for the first time, when the voice of the clerk ceases, and stares inquiringly at the officer at his side.
“Not guilty,” answers the officer for him.
“Put him in the small dock,” commands the prosecuting officer, and the prisoner is marched, staggering, from the one dock to the other, the gate clangs to behind him, and he is upon his trial by his “peers”—the twelve “good men and true” yonder.
There are no challenges. The prosecutor of the pleas challenges only for the Commonwealth, and the prisoner is not assisted by counsel. Instead, the Commonwealth’s officer opens his case to the jury.
“Gentlemen of the jury, the charge is pocket picking. In the mêlée consequent upon the arrest the prisoner assaulted an officer. For that, also, he is indicted upon a separate bill. I shall try both together. It will be for you to say upon such evidence as I shall produce whether or not he is guilty and, if so, of which or both offences. Officer Gorman, take the stand.”
Gorman is emulous to oblige the attorney for the State.
“You made this arrest. Tell the jury all about it.”
There is much jockeying before Gorman is brought to his pace. He would wander into the enchanting by-paths of his adventure, to show his heroism. But the prosecuting officer will not permit this, and so the gist of his testimony is in this answer:
“I arrested that man there and run him in.”
“You searched him, of course, and what did you find?”
“These here.”
He holds up a letter with a curl dangling from its broken end.
The benchers laugh.
“Nothing else? No watch?”
“No. I expect he throwed that into a sewer. They mostly do when we git after ’em.”
“Did he escape from you?”
“He tried to. I had to both club and shoot to git him. He’s strong.”
“You were obliged to call for assistance?”
“Yes.”
“Has he ever been arrested before?”
“Yes. Served a term of seven months five years ago.”
“Do you identify the man?”
“Yes.”
“Let an officer inform the prisoner of his rights,” says the district attorney, in the meantime calling Officer Jaspar to the stand.
The “rights” of the prisoner are to cross-examine the witness. The officer who gives him this information must lift the prisoner’s wounded head from his bosom to do it. And, when he releases it again, it returns there.
Officer Jaspar is the one who assisted Gorman to make the arrest, and, when he can be brought into his narrative, knows nothing which Gorman does not. He, however, had also used his club and his pistol to subdue the prisoner.
“It seems to me,” cries the Commonwealth’s officer, “that it took an extraordinary quantity of shooting and clubbing to take one man.”
“He’s a big un!” grins the witness.
“You seem to have used your pistols first?”
“Yes,” admits the officer.
“You are the prosecutor,” says the district attorney to Mr. Hall, when he is brought to the stand. “We have not, thus far, proved that a watch was taken out of your possession by this man, and without that I shall not ask for a conviction. Are you sure that it was?”
“Perfectly certain, sir,” answers Mr. Hall.
“Well, tell the facts as briefly as possible to the jury,” says the law officer, whose hope of an early adjournment and some golf begins to grow doubtful.
“Well, sir, I first saw the man at Chestnut and Tenth streets. He was walking fast, talking to himself, and he staggered. He ran against me and said something I could not understand, then went on rapidly down Chestnut Street. A moment after, when I looked what time it was, my watch was gone.”
“And the chain—was there a chain?”
“Yes, that was gone, too.”
“Broken?”
“No, the whole chain was taken.”
“Are you sure of that? It is not easy for a thief to do.”
“I am quite sure of that.”
“Then, that’s my case,” yawns the happy officer of the forum. “I shall play golf at Bala this afternoon till six,” he says to his assistant.