Irish Love

by Andrew M. Greeley

  I quoted that paragraph verbatim in my dispatch tonight. Let them try to sue us in a court in Chicago! My parents tell me that my stories are being used by papers all over the country. In my own weak and ineffective way perhaps, I am bearing witness against the tyranny and hypocrisy of English imperialism, not that many Irish Americans would have any doubt about it.

  None of this will save Nora’s husband or Nora herself. I try to force myself to be as serene in my resignation as she is in hers. Irish American that I am, I find that very difficult.

  I still limit myself to one drink of whiskey, except on a rare occasion like tonight I will have two. In the pubs I have only one glass of stout.

  Dublin, November 13, 1882

  Today is the first day of the trials. Bolton has succeeded in putting them off until he had his turncoats well in hand. The problem was not that Philbin or Tom Casey were reluctant to testify. The problem was to manipulate their testimony so that they would say the same thing and confirm each other’s perjury. I gather from the talk around the courtroom that the principle problem for poor Tom Casey was that he had testified that Philbin was not at the crime scene, which cut the ground out from under the first witness that Bolton had turned. Bolton, they say, yelled at Tom Casey that he would come to trial after Myles Joyce and would hang unless he got his story right. Finally, Tom figured out what was wanted and did bring his story into line.

  Thus Philbin lied when he admitted to being at the crime scene, and Tom Casey lied when he said Philbin was there.

  The announcement of the fact that two of the accused had become witnesses for the Crown electrified the courtroom the day the trial of Patrick Joyce began. Even counsels for the Crown were surprised. We journalists were not surprised at all.

  “Bolton usually gets his perjury earlier than this,” Dempsey whispered to me.

  Defense counsel immediately asked for a transfer of the venue to Galway where the jury could actually view the crime scene. Motion denied. Then he asked for a delay to consider the new evidence that had been brought forth—an elementary right in the common law tradition. The judge, a wizened little man with wild tufts of white hair jutting out from the edge of his otherwise bald head denied that motion too. The Defense Counsel demanded access to the new evidence so that it might be considered overnight. “How else can we defend our clients?” Final motion denied.

  Then the jury was selected, a couple of shopkeepers, a stockbroker, a band manager, a jeweler, a major, a landowner, a “gentleman” from Merrion Square—probably not a Catholic among them. Peter the Packer had done his work well.

  The witnesses were excused and the attorney general himself, lead Counsel for the Crown when he bothered to show up, laid out the case against Pat Joyce. It was the same old stuff. The three witnesses’ story of their night-long trek following the murder party and the two approvers describing who among their group actually went into the house and did the killing. My colleagues stirred restlessly.

  “They heard there was a crowd out that night,” my friend Dempsey told me, “and since they knew who was likely to be in it they ran off to the Royal Irish Constabulary as soon as they heard about the killings. They were nowhere near the scene of the crimes. They thought they’d get money from the police and revenge against Myles.”

  “Even the police out in Maamtrasna have figured that out,” I replied.

  The performance of the five perjurers was pathetic. Their stories counteracted one another, the attempts of the Crown counsels to lead them through their torturous tales of lies so that they would sound plausible were ridiculous. Perhaps the most telling assault on the Anthony Joyce band was asked in cross-examination by counsel for the defense, John Stritch.

  “Now, Mr. Anthony Joyce, you were perhaps a hundred yards away from the house while the killings were taking place?”

  The same question as in Galway.

  And approximately the same answer. “A little less than that I would think.”

  “Are you aware that before he died, young Patsy Joyce testified that he could not recognize the three men who actually came into the house and did the killing because their faces were covered with dirt?”

  “I have been told that he said that, yes.”

  “Yet you were a hundred yards away from the house, the moon had set, and you were able to recognize Patrick Joyce when he went into the house.”

  “I’d know him anywhere!”

  “You have remarkable eyesight, sir.”

  My father has won cases on interchanges like that. In English Dublin, no one was the least fazed by it.

  “From that distance you were able to hear the shouts of pain and horror from the victims?”

  “Horrible they were, sir. I will hear them for the rest of my life.”

  “I’m sure you will, sir. And now, sir, we know from the testimony of the medical examiner that John Joyce was shot in the head. Yet, in your initial testimony to Sergeant, ah, Finnucane, you make no mention of hearing a gunshot. Is that not strange?”

  “The sounds were so terrible, I could not make out what was happening.”

  Pretty lame.

  “On reflection, however, and after learning of the medical report, you seem to have been able to recall that gunshot heard from a hundred yards away.”

  “I recalled hearing a sound which might have been a gunshot, yes, sir.”

  “How convenient.”

  Tom Casey, the approver, was an even worse witness, perhaps because Bolton had little time to prepare him. He listed the names of the men who were with him the night of the crime and added two more of whom no one had ever heard before. Patrick Kelly and Michael Nee, who joined them as they were approaching the house. Michael Nee had given him a gun. Though he had not gone into the house with Myles Joyce, Pat Joyce, and Pat Casey, he thought they were armed with guns. He had heard many shots.

  Counselors for the Crown were clearly disconcerted.

  “What did you do when you heard the shots?

  “I turned and ran.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to have no part of murder.”

  “And the gun this Mr. Nee had given you?”

  “He came around the next day, before we were arrested, and I gave it back.”

  More damning contradictions—Anthony Joyce had heard no gunfire, at least one gun was fired, the one that had killed Johnny Joyce, and now Tom Casey had heard several gunshots.

  Philbin had previously testified that he had seen no guns at all.

  “Philbin wasn’t there,” I muttered to Dempsey, “so he couldn’t see any guns. Casey was there and he heard many gunshots. My father could get a case thrown out in Chicago on such testimony.”

  Dempsey chuckled. “This isn’t Chicago, laddy-boy. This is Dublin in the reign of Queen Victoria.”

  “And my father would start a search for Patrick Kelly and Michael Nee.”

  “Defense Counsel doesn’t have the money or the time for such a search. They’ll try to get their clients off, but their hearts aren’t really in it.”

  Sure enough, neither Defense Counsel pursued the question of Kelly and Nee. They disappeared as soon as they had appeared.

  However, George Malley, the lead Defense Counsel, made a spirited presentation of his case in the afternoon. I scribbled down his words as he spoke:

  “Gentlemen, this is one of the most extraordinary cases that has ever been brought under the notice of twelve men in a jury, a case that makes no sense at all. To inquire into and probe the reasons for this betrayal of some of the men by others is essential. It is a false betrayal, a betrayal that contradicts in many important details the case made by the original witnesses, a case that suggests that the Crown had constructed, in its haste for a guilty verdict, a veritable house of cards. Patently, the new accusers have acted purely for their own selfish purposes to throw the guilt upon innocent men.”

  It seemed to me that his argument was masterful, one that should have been obvious, one of which my father would have
been proud. It was clear, however, that it had made no impression on those in the jury box.

  He then turned to his underlying argument:

  “The Crown has not presented the slightest hint of a motive for this slaying. Mr. Patrick Joyce, the defendant, is a close relative of the slain family. What possible motive could he have for such vile behavior? Why would he want to murder a cousin and innocent women and children?

  “The Crown has produced these dubious and contradictory witnesses, whom you are far too intelligent to trust. But no one has explained the motives for the killing. Unless the crown can find a motive, the case must be dismissed.”

  Not a juror stirred.

  As he went on he laid out all the weaknesses in the Crown’s case:

  “In murder cases, the defendant, in addition to being charged of a murder, is also implicitly, at least, charged of having a motive. In the case before you and I, gentlemen, is there a particle of foundation for suggesting a motive on the part of the prisoner? There was never the faintest whisper of a disagreement between Pat Joyce and the murdered man. For a Joyce to murder another Joyce and his family would be foul and unnatural … . It strikes as most peculiar that Anthony ‘individually’ recognizing them on the road, was incapable of giving any description of how they went along that road. He could not say who was the first or who was last, or in what order they went, but he gave a general answer that they were dressed in dark clothes. Yet the approvers will have us believe that the murderers wore bainins that were bright in color. In no way could they be described as ‘dark clothes.’

  “Anthony Joyce tells you that he was influenced to take this course of watching and pursuing those men out of pure curiosity. Is it not likely they would have been seen by the parties whom they were watching and pursuing? You are told that these three men, through pure curiosity, followed ten men in the dead of night, crossing rivers, going through an almost impassable swamp and up a steep mountain, a distance altogether of between two and three miles to the house of the victims, one of them shoeless!

  “Gentlemen of the jury, is it not strange—is it not exceedingly strange—that these three men went straight to that house? How did they know these other men were going there, for they sometimes lost sight of them? It is plain they arrived by a different route, but it is not plain that they arrived simultaneously at the house, or what length of time elapsed between the arrival of the two parties. There is an incoherence between the account given by these three Joyces, and it is inconsistent in any event with the account given by the two approvers. You are told they are sometimes parallel with and sometimes behind them. Gentlemen, if you were there and had an opportunity to see the place, you could form an opinion of the nature of these obstacles—boulders, swamps, stone upon the walls, streams, bogs, and so on. These mountain districts are celebrated for their almost impassability. Is it not possible that they must, at some time, have looked round?

  “Gentlemen, when men are going to perpetrate a crime of this character, they are always on the lookout for fear of detection. Gentlemen, it appears to me that in part of the story there is an inconsistency, an incoherency in the account that must necessarily lead to a disbelief in the story as concocted.

  “If these men, the ten assassins, came into the yard from the stile and came round and went into the door there, that corner of the gable of the cow house which is in front of the door would just shut out, not the door itself, but the entire part of the house, and, therefore, they would be seen disappearing only. Their story, I submit, does not hang together. If they were panic-struck, why did they not go to the police barracks, which was nearer? Instead they go to their own homes, indifferent as to the horrors of the night.

  “Patrick Joyce is married to a young wife, with no family as yet. His only companion on this night was his wife and she cannot give evidence for him … . I ask you to scorn the case made by these conspirators and to release that unfortunate man.

  “Consider that they wait until the afternoon of that day, Friday, before they gave the slightest intimation that this frightful murder had been committed. Their story was not concocted until they had gone over it together … . After they had ample time to make up their minds and find a coherent story between themselves, they then, at last, go and give information upon the subject.

  “As for the so-called approvers, such a pair as was never seen, they are the originators of this transaction, they are the persons who first seem to have the intention of doing something that night. It is impossible for me to show that my client had nothing to do with any organized lot except what follows from the deductions that you can reasonably make from the facts that have been proven before you.

  “Gentlemen, it unfortunately happens that Patrick Joyce is the first that has been arraigned, but being the first it throws the greatest responsibility upon you. In your hands are not alone the life of that unfortunate man himself, but following upon it, perhaps, the lives of seven others. Though the weapons that were used must have been wielded with the most fiendish malignity, which scarcely any cause for revenge can palliate or even suggest, let alone justify, yet be slow in this case to come to the conclusion, if ever you do, that the hand of Patrick Joyce ever wielded the weapons that inflicted these terrible wounds.

  “Gentlemen, I am obliged to throw myself principally upon the weakness of the case for the Crown. However, I shall be able to prove to you that feelings existed on the part of the Joyces that clearly showed that they were determined, if they possibly could, to fasten criminality for this offense and the imputation upon the head of the prisoner at the bar.”

  My hand was numb from scribbling his address. He had a powerful case. He made it reasonably well, though he wandered and hesitated How could defense counsel put his heart in the argument when only a couple of jurors were listening, some were patently asleep, others nodding—as was the judge.

  His witnesses were not very persuasive. Most of them were Irish speakers—shy, hesitant men whose honesty was lost in translation from a language that the jurors thought was both comic and barbaric. Moreover, James Murphy, the razor-sharp Queen’s counsel, was able to twist the testimony of the defense witnesses to mean exactly the opposite of what they were trying to say. Murphy was riding high. He too had seen the bored and sleeping jury. He had no doubt, Protestant that he was despite his name, that his Protestant jury was in his pocket. All they needed was a little more ridicule.

  At supper that night in the Royal Hibernian Hotel where I was staying, Martin Dempsey asked me, “What’s your lead tonight, boyo?”

  “Judge, jury sleeps through defense.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Great lead! Wish we were brave enough to do it here!”

  “What will happen tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow? Summations in the morning; judge’s instructions to the jury, mostly saying that it is not unreasonable for them to ignore the seeming contradictions in the stories and the absence of motives; jury verdict in less than ten minutes, sentence to hang by his neck until he’s dead. Next case in the afternoon.”

  “I can’t believe they can send a man to death without a motive for the crime.”

  “There are plenty of motives. The police and the Crown solicitor were too dumb to get them.”

  “And they were?”

  “If I tell you, and you print them, we’ll be playing into the hands of George Bolton.”

  “We wouldn’t dare print them anyway. It’s between you and me.”

  “Theft, politics, and jealousy.”

  “You can document that?”

  “I’ve already put something in a dispatch, obscure enough so the Crown can’t use it. Later, I will tell the whole story or let someone else tell it.”

  “Good on you … What do you think happened?”

  “It would be clear even to James Murphy if he’d try to consider the obvious. A group of men went to the John Joyce house on the night of the murder, probably acting under the excuse of a secret society vote, to kil
l John and Breige Joyce and Margaret and Peggy too, on the grounds that they were informers.”

  “Were they?”

  “Certainly not Peggy. Probably not Margaret either. When news of the deaths swept the valley the next morning, people were shocked, not at the murder, which many knew was coming, but at the violence of it. Anthony Joyce and his friends saw a chance to make some money and get revenge on Myles Joyce. So they put together a list of the men they assumed were involved and turned it over to the police. The people in the valley knew that most of the men on the list had actually been there, either inside or outside. They knew Myles Joyce was not.”

  “They didn’t come forward?”

  “Who would have believed them?”

  “Was Anthony Philbin involved?”

  “I’m sure not … . Would you want him in your band if you were planning a rural murder?”

  “Tom Casey?”

  “I think he was one of the actual killers.”

  “And you’re going to tell the story?”

  “One way or another.”

  “Won’t your life be in danger?”

  “Out there, maybe … I’ll know better when I finally find out who the killers were. Anyway, I’m not planning on spending time out there.”

  “Was Pat Joyce really inside the house?”

  “Probably … But he shouldn’t hang for the crime without proof that he was. The Crown has no proof.”

  “Pat Casey who will be up for trial tomorrow?”

  “Most likely, but they won’t have any more evidence against him than they did against Pat Joyce. He’ll hang too.”

  “I know you think Myles Joyce is innocent … . Home in bed with his wife.”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Yet he will hang?”