If he hoped (as he wrote in his preface) to “appeal to a fair-minded American public for a suspension of judgment” and a “free and fair trial,” he was rapidly running out of time.
46
The Holmes case, whose shocking details have had world-wide notoriety, has from the time of the discovery of Benjamin F. Pitezel’s corpse in the old house on Callowhill Street been conspicuous for one feature. In the unfolding of its mysteries, in the exploration of its dark windings and turnings from city to city, it has always been the unexpected, the sensational, or the dramatic that has happened. The opening of the trial was no exception.
—The Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1895
“The Trial of the Century,” as it was touted by the press, opened on a brilliant fall morning, Monday, October 28, 1895. For the six days of its duration, it held the nation in thrall. Only the murder trial of Lizzie Borden, two years earlier, had generated comparable excitement. America would not see the like again until 1924, when Clarence Darrow defended a pair of pampered, teenaged “thrill killers” named Leopold and Loeb.
With Holmes’s notoriety having spread overseas, newspapermen from every corner of the country were joined in Philadelphia by a contingent of European correspondents. Local dignitaries, including Mayor Warwick himself, occupied front-row seats or—in the case of such “guest jurists” as ex-Chief Justice Paxson—places of honor beside the presiding judge. A number of Philadelphia’s most prominent clergymen were also in attendance, drawn, perhaps, by the unprecedented opportunity to get a firsthand glimpse of the Adversary in his most up-to-date guise.
A crowd of onlookers—large enough (as one newsman observed) to “pack the Academy of Music”—began gathering outside the courthouse at daybreak, hoping for seats in the gallery. But the trial was the hottest ticket in town. Those without some political pull found it almost impossible to gain admission. A squad of police officers under the command of Sergeant Newman was stationed at the entranceway to maintain order and screen aspiring spectators.
For the most part, ordinary citizens had to content themselves with the newspaper accounts. Day after day, the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer read like the program for a popular melodrama: HOLMES PLACED ON TRIAL: PROCEEDINGS ARE FILLED WITH INTERESTING INCIDENTS AND UNUSUAL SCENES! HOLMES FIGHTS FOR HIS LIFE: QUICK AND STARTLING CHANGES MARK THE SECOND DAY OF THE REMARKABLE TRIAL! MRS. PITEZEL’S SAD STORY: A SCENE OF DRAMATIC INTEREST!
And indeed, the Holmes case would offer the public a full range of theatrical experience, from tragedy to farce, with a star performance “that kept the onlookers spellbound” (as the Inquirer reported). The opening-day audience was prepared for a sensation—and no one went home disappointed.
Even before the first witness was called, the histrionics began.
With his silky white hair, bushy black brows, and grave demeanor, the Honorable Michael Arnold was the very picture of judicial solemnity as he entered the courtroom—an impression heightened by his new, flowing black gown, a ritual vestment that the Philadelphia judiciary had only recently adopted. (Indeed, the proceedings were a minor milestone in this regard, marking the first time in the city’s history that a gowned judge presided at a murder trial.)
No sooner had Judge Arnold seated himself than another, equally compelling figure appeared in the room, led in through a side door by a pair of grim-faced bailiffs. All eyes turned to Holmes as he took his place in the prisoner’s dock, a waist-high enclosure of heavy wire mesh positioned beside the defense table.
In the six months since he last stood in the courtroom to answer the charge of conspiracy, Holmes had undergone a striking transformation. Now thin to the point of frailness, he wore a black double-breasted suit that emphasized his jailhouse pallor. His fierce, heavy mustache had been carefully trimmed and the squareness of his jawline softened by a neat Vandyke beard. With his fine features and wan complexion, he projected an air of almost feminine delicacy—though one reporter remarked on the distinctive shape of his nose, “sharp and marked with those peculiar indentations that Dickens always ascribed to characters with cruel natures.”
As to Holmes’s frame of mind, opinions varied. After placing his derby on the floor beside his chair and lowering himself onto the seat, he cast a sweeping glance around the crowded courtroom. Some observers perceived in that look a flash of his old audacity and defiance. Others took note of the heavy volume he kept clutched in one hand. Believing it a Bible, they speculated that perhaps Holmes had found religion during the dark days of his imprisonment. (In fact, the book was a copy of Stephen’s Digest of the Laws of Evidence.)
And some detected uncharacteristic signs of agitation in the notoriously unflappable archcriminal. His tapered fingers twitched, his eyes shifted nervously about, and he could not seem to position himself comfortably in his seat. Fidgeting with the chair, he accidentally set one of its legs onto his derby, hopelessly crushing the hat out of shape.
But if Holmes was feeling anxious, he quickly recovered his sangfroid. Indeed, he was about to put on one of the most remarkable displays of self-assurance his audience had ever witnessed.
Jury selection was the first order of business. Before the first talesman could be questioned, however, one of Holmes’s lawyers, William A. Shoemaker—who had come rushing into the courtroom only moments before, having somehow contrived to be fifteen minutes late for the most important occasion of his career—sprang to his feet. Speaking in a thin, reedy voice that barely carried to the bench, Shoemaker requested a continuance, arguing that “the time allowed for the preparation of the defense in this case, commencing with the indictment, has been hopelessly short and inadequate.”
Judge Arnold turned his gaze toward the prosecutor’s table and addressed District Attorney George Graham. “Do you agree to this postponement?”
Graham rose from his seat. “I do not,” he answered emphatically. With his black frock coat and abundant mustache, Graham—a tall, clean-favored forty-five-year-old—was an imposing figure. He was also an extraordinarily popular one, currently serving his fifth three-year term as Philadelphia’s district attorney. “This motion comes within no rule of the court, except that it may be an appeal to Your Honor’s discretion, and I strenuously oppose the motion for a continuance.”
Unlike Shoemaker—who had been told repeatedly by the judge to “speak louder”—Graham required no such admonition. His sonorous voice carried to every corner of the room. “Witnesses have been gathered from states far distant from here who are voluntarily in attendance and have come simply because of their duty to the cause of justice,” he argued. “I cannot compel their attendance, and I am quite sure I will never be able to get these witnesses here again. If a continuance is granted, it means absolute destruction of the Commonwealth’s case.”
His voice took on even more dramatic shadings. “There is one person who has been subjected to an unusual—nay, an awful!—strain, and that is Mrs. Pitezel, the widow of the deceased. Her condition is such that it is absolutely perilous to the Commonwealth’s case to permit it to go over again. These gentlemen have had full and complete time for preparation. No legal grounds have been laid, and therefore I object to the continuance.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than Holmes’s other attorney, Samuel Rotan—a moon-faced young man with a florid complexion made even rosier by the flush of emotion now spreading across it—leapt to his feet. “May it please this honorable court,” he began. “This man is charged with a crime which is the highest known to the law! It is the purpose of the district attorney, as stated in the newspapers—”
“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Graham. “My purpose has not been stated in the newspapers. On the other hand, the statements of the defense have been numerously and copiously quoted.”
“I have only to say,” Rotan retorted, “that I will leave it to those who read the newspapers to say where those purposes come from.”
Judge Arnold’s gavel came down sharply, cutting short this di
spute. “We are not trying the newspapers,” he snapped. “The motion to continue the case is overruled. Let the jury be called.”
With that, Lawyer Shoemaker cleared his throat and addressed the bench. His voice was still so soft that many of the spectators had to strain to hear him. But in the quiet of the courtroom, his words exploded like a bomb:
“The step we are about to take fills us with the greatest pain and regret. We are profoundly sensible of its seriousness, of its unusual occurrence. But with respect to this court, in justice to our client, and in consideration of the duty we owe to ourselves, we must ask Your Honor to permit us to withdraw from this case, however painful it may be. We cannot continue in it.”
At this extraordinary pronouncement, the audience broke into an astonished buzz. Banging his gavel for silence, Judge Arnold looked sternly at Shoemaker. “Counsel in a case like this have no right to withdraw. Your duty is to remain. Of course, I cannot force you to stay and do your duty. The remedy of the Court is—if counsel withdraw upon the eve of a murder trial without consent—to enter a rule on them to show cause why they should not be disbarred.”
Standing beside his senior colleague, Lawyer Rotan took up the argument. Without a “reasonable” delay to permit them to gather the necessary witnesses, the trial, he insisted, would be “a farce.”
“It will be no farce,” Judge Arnold replied grimly. “Call a jury!”
Barely thirty minutes had elapsed since the trial had started. But the atmosphere was already so charged that even District Attorney Graham seemed unsettled by the tension. Uncharacteristically, he allowed his impatience to flare during his examination of the first prospective juror, a street-car conductor named Enoch Turner.
In response to Graham’s lead question, Turner acknowledged that, based on his newspaper reading, he had already formed an opinion as to Holmes’s guilt.
“Could you, notwithstanding that opinion, enter the jury box, and under your oath as a juror, try this case upon the evidence as you hear it in the courtroom, aside from what you might have read in the papers?” inquired Graham.
“Well, I might,” offered Turner.
“Don’t you know whether you could or not?”
“I don’t know that I could.”
“You are called as a juror in this case to try it according to the evidence,” Graham continued, sounding more exasperated by the moment. “What I want to know is this: Can you not take your place under the obligation of your oath and try this man fairly and impartially according to the evidence as you hear it in the courtroom?”
Turner thought this over for a moment before replying, “Well, I hardly know.”
“Haven’t you strength of mind enough,” Graham snapped, “to try this case according to the evidence as you hear it in court and lay aside these outside objections?”
“Yes, sir,” Turner said sheepishly.
Having finally managed to say the right thing, Turner was approved by the Commonwealth.
All during this interrogation, Holmes had been huddling with his attorneys. Now, Rotan turned to the bench and announced that his client wished to make a statement.
Standing in the dock, Holmes addressed the judge in a tone of humble entreaty—the voice of a man who has no thought for himself, only the welfare of others. “May it please the Court, I have no intention to ask Mr. Rotan and Mr. Shoemaker to continue in this case when I can see that it is against their own interests. Bearing that fact in mind, I ask to discharge them from the case. These gentlemen have stood by me during the last year, and I cannot ask them at this time to stay when it is against their interest—”
“We do not want the Court to receive the impression we are deserting this man,” Rotan interrupted. “He now states that he would rather go on with the case himself.”
Ignoring the rotund attorney, Judge Arnold spoke directly to Holmes. “You cannot discharge them, Mr. Holmes. That is for the Court, and if they decide to withdraw from this case, they will be punished.”
“If Your Honor will only give me until tomorrow to secure additional counsel,” implored Holmes in a tremulous voice.
“We will have no more debate, Mr. Holmes,” the judge replied, then turned to Shoemaker and Rotan, who were holding a hurried, whispered parlay with their client. “Are you going to examine this juror?” Arnold asked with some asperity. “If not, he goes into the jury box.”
Rotan glanced up at the judge. “May it please the Court, the defendant says that he intends to examine these talesmen himself, that he does not want us to interfere with the examination of them, and that is what he is going to do.”
Judge Arnold looked at Holmes. “If you wish to do your own examining, you may do so. It is your constitutional right to try your own case.”
While Rotan and Shoemaker reseated themselves at the defense table, Holmes placed his hands on the dock rail and leaned toward the witness stand. After putting a few questions to talesman Turner—who reaffirmed that he had “formed an opinion as to the probable guilt or innocence of the defendant”—Holmes used one of his twenty peremptory challenges to have the man dismissed.
At that point, Rotan spoke up again. “May it please Your Honor, there is no use at all for Mr. Shoemaker and me to stay here. The defendant is going on and will not allow us to do anything. We ask leave to withdraw. We do so reluctantly, and at the same time, it is with full appreciation of what we are doing.”
The judge gave a sigh of resignation. “Very well. But you will have to bear the consequences—and you know what they are.”
Then, while the spectators gasped in amazement, Holmes’s attorney’s picked up their briefcases, put on their hats, and marched from the room.
It took a moment for Judge Arnold to restore the court to order. When the audience finally settled down, he turned to the prisoner and said, “Mr. Holmes, you have discharged your attorneys. We intend to go on with this case, and you may as well cease your efforts to force a continuance. You are now your own lawyer.”
With that, Holmes armed himself with pencil and paper and proceeded to put on a show. The audience sat spellbound as he underwent an amazing transformation. From the emotion-choked supplicant of a few moments before, he turned into a “cool, collected” figure (as one eyewitness reported), “handling his own case with a readiness that would have done credit to the most experienced lawyer at the bar.” Examining each of the talesmen in turn, he displayed a canniness and skill that brought grunts of grudging admiration even from a few representatives of the Commonwealth.
His questions focused largely on the publicity surrounding the case. Each prospect was asked if he had visited the “sensational display” at the Dime Museum on Ninth and Arch streets or arrived at a conviction based on his newspaper reading. Judge Arnold was obliged to point out to Holmes that “an opinion formed on the basis of what appears in the public print is no longer a sufficient cause for challenge. It was at one time. It was found impossible to enforce it as a reason for excluding jurors. Newspapers are so numerous that everybody now reads them, and, of course, they obtain impressions from them. Therefore, unless his opinion is so fixed as to be immovable, the juror is competent.”
“Is it my privilege to take an exception to that rule?” Holmes inquired.
“Yes,” said the judge. “You are entitled to that.”
“Then I wish one noted,” the defendant replied. Describing Holmes’s demeanor at that moment, one commentator observed that “Blackstone himself could not have handled the situation with more aplomb.”
In another instance, Holmes challenged a prospect for the opposite reason—not because the juror, a railroad watchman named James Collins, had been influenced by the newspapers but because he strained credulity by insisting that he had never read a single word about the case. After the man was dismissed, Holmes turned to the audience with an expression of exaggerated disbelief that brought appreciative chuckles from the gallery.
The Commonwealth, meanwhile, reserved most of its challenge
s for those with a bias against capital punishment. A paper-bag manufacturer named Harry S. Coles, for example, was denied a place on the jury after admitting to “scruples on the subject of capital punishment”—a position he himself clearly regarded as a somewhat embarrassing character flaw.
“You are now called upon to act here as a juror,” District Attorney Graham reminded him, “where you have nothing to do with the question of punishment, but simply the guilt or innocence of this prisoner. Can you not enter the jury box and discharge your duty according to the evidence?”
“No, sir,” Coles replied. “Not if it was murder in the first degree. I could not conscientiously do it.” A self-reproachful note entered his voice. “It is a weak point of mine.”
“When did you first form that opinion?”
“That has been a fault of mine ever since I have been married, for the last fifteen years.”
Graham’s eyebrows rose. “Surely your being married has nothing to do with it.”
“Well, I know,” Coles acknowledged with an apologetic shrug. “It has always been my fault.”
Having admitted to such a shameful weakness, Coles was challenged for cause and dismissed.
By two o’clock, the jury had been impaneled and sworn. It consisted of a blacksmith, a paymaster, a carter, a soapmaker, a farmer, a liveryman, an engineer, a shoemaker, a housepainter, a florist, a yarn manufacturer, and a wagon builder.
The senior member of the group was named jury foreman. This was Linford Biles, the gray-whiskered, sixty-four-year-old widower whose house had nearly caught fire on the very day of Holmes’s arrest when a shower of electrical sparks had rained onto his roof from the crossed wires overhead.
At precisely three P.M., following a one-hour lunch recess, District Attorney Graham began his opening address. His speech went on for close to an hour and forty-five minutes. All during this time, Holmes listened intently from the prisoner’s dock, taking copious notes and occasionally consulting his volume of Stephen’s Digest of the Laws of Evidence.
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