Significantly enough Mitch made no direct mention of the rape or of Laura’s lie-detector test. About the only mention of this argumentative area he made was in asking the jury to ponder why Barney would ever have driven Laura to the tourist-park gate in the first place if he had meant her any harm. At that point I scribbled my first fresh note: “Slam damn gate!” I wrote.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there has been a violent killing in this county,” Mitch continued soberly, “and we believe that the People have shown beyond any doubt that that killing was done by the defendant here. We further believe we have shown beyond any reasonable doubt that the killing was done deliberately, maliciously, and in a fit of homicidal anger, and that it was done without legal justification or excuse.
“If you tell this man he has done nothing wrong,” Mitch continued soberly, “aren’t you thereby telling the forty-nine thousand people of Iron Cliffs County and indeed all of Michigan that they may safely go and do the same thing?”
Mitch turned and gathered up his notes and marched to his table where Mr. Dancer rather ostentatiously arose and congratulated him; the little man was always in there pitching, he never missed a trick. The Judge looked down at me and nodded. “We will now hear the argument of the defense,” he said quietly.
“May it please the court and ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” I began, advancing before the jury rail. I lowered my voice and solemnly launched my argument. “When, in Kipling’s phrase, the tumult and the shouting dies, and this tall old courtroom empties and falls silent, and our patient long-suffering Judge returns to his concerns in lower Michigan, and, yes, when Mr. Dancer goes back to Lansing—when all this has happened, ladies and gentlemen, I wonder what will have become of Lieutenant Manion?
“This is the time when we lawyers, we men of many words, continue to indulge the amiable fiction that anything we can say here will possibly change your minds. For in all truth if we have done our work well there should really be nothing more to say. I sometimes think in these cases that if at this point counsel would retire and play cribbage or go fishing—and I can scarcely wait to do both with Mr. Dancer—while the Judge gave you his instructions on the law, all of us might be saved considerable time, and you certainly infinite boredom. But our system is otherwise, this is the time when we lawyers must traditionally trot out our little verbal wares, however tarnished; and I only hope that I can suggest a point or two which you might otherwise have possibly overlooked. For surely it is impossible in the brief time allotted us here to cover all the facts and angles of this tangled case.
“Most of you know that I was formerly a prosecutor of this county. During that time, under the wise guidance and example of our own Judge Maitland, I conceived it to be the duty of the People in a criminal case to bring out all relevant and admissible evidence bearing upon the guilt or innocence of the defendant, the bad along with the good. I had been led to understand that it was not the duty of the People to at any price convict all defendants charged with crime, but rather to lay the entire transaction fairly before the jury so that they, guided by the Court’s instructions, might try to reach a sensible and just verdict. Our own good Judge here will correct me if I am wrong. I may add that so firm was my belief in this procedure that never in my ten years as prosecutor did I once ask a jury to convict a defendant charged with crime. And I don’t think anyone ever fairly accused me of being a softie.
“Now I do not think it is necessary for me to rescue the American jury system from Mr. Claude Dancer, but under it no one is either freed or rushed to the gallows without a full and free inquiry. But that means inquiry to all the facts, not just part of them, not just the part that helps one side or hurts the other.”
I glanced at the People’s table. “It seems that my views, if not wrong, are at least not entirely shared by the strolling representative of our Attorney General’s department. Speaking of Mr. Dancer, there is no question that your young prosecutor, Mr. Lodwick, had a right to ask for assistance in trying this case. His right is clear and plain and I make no issue whatever about that.” I paused. “But I say that that assistance should be that and not usurpation. You have sat here for days now and watched this case stolen away from our young prosecutor before his very eyes. You have watched a deliberate and at times brilliant effort made here by the People—but not the police officers, I hasten to add—to suppress or pervert evidence that it was the clear duty of the People and not the defendant to produce. Now I am not talking about routine objections on procedural matters or the form of a question or about evidence which the court has ruled inadmissible. I am talking about the studied and deliberate suppression of truth, about fundamental and important matters of truth which it was the People’s clear duty to bring out, not keep out.”
I turned to watch my time and observed Parnell sitting white-faced and grave over near the door. The old boy must have driven to and from the airport like a demon. “But enough of vague generalities, let us get down to cases. The unfair tactics of the prosecution have been double-edged: to keep out the truth, where possible, and to insinuate that certain things were so without bothering to prove them. In fact this latter tactic seems to be getting quite a settled procedure—almost an act of patriotism—in some quarters these days … . As a glaring example of the first tactic, let us take the People’s biggest and sorriest fiction of all, the grotesque assumption that Laura Manion was not brutally beaten and raped by Barney Quill that night. Yes, for days now you have watched Mr. Dancer fight the fact of that rape tooth and nail, with all the pettifogging and delaying brilliance of a filibustering Southern senator. But more of that later.
“As a lovely example of the second tactic of perversion and sly insinuation let us take the incident of Hippo Lukes having supposedly danced with Laura Manion with her shoes in his pocket. Yet I ask you now: who in this whole courtroom has ever once testified she did that? Who alone has inferred it but Mr. Dancer himself? You will recall how he clawed away endlessly at Mrs. Manion on that score. The waltz of the dancing shoes, one might call it. Yet if that had actually happened could not the great Hippo Lukes have testified to it when he was first called? Would the clever Mr. Dancer have missed that chance to smear our lady? And if he forgot to then could not Mr. Hippo have been called in rebuttal after she had denied it?” I turned and pointed out into the body of the courtroom. “Behold Hippo Lukes sitting there now,” I said. “Temporarily forsaking the dance, for which nature has so splendidly endowed him, he has been sitting here all week as a witness paid by the People. If this thing actually happened Hippo should remember it. Or if he forgot, surely there was someone in that barroom that night who would have recalled it.
“But the most interesting thing about these tactics is the why of them. So what, you may be tempted to ask yourselves, so what if she did or didn’t dance that way? Well, I’ll tell you why. Because the clever Mr. Dancer was trying slyly to plant in your minds the picture of a Laura Manion as an abandoned and willful slut who would drink whisky neat and dance barefoot with beefy strangers and thus presumably go out and lay up with the first man that came along. Because Mr. Dancer, who dares not meet this rape issue head on, seeks subtly to confuse you and make you think this brutal rape was a mutual affair, that is why.
“Consider if you will his terrier cross-examination of her personal life while she was on the stand: his gallant raking over of her background, bringing out the fact that she was divorced, the awful revelation that she once sold cosmetics and worked as a saleslady and even dared answer telephones. What does the little man mean by all this? What does it signify? Does he mean to stamp all divorcées as immoral? Does he infer that all beauty and telephone operators are abandoned sluts? If he didn’t mean that, then why did he buzz away at her like a gnat to bring all that out?
“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he hammered and clawed away at this woman in every clever and insinuating way he could—and his talents for insinuation are impressive—to show her up as a bag and a flirt and, more, a casual
and easy lay. But, remark you, never once did this knight exemplar of the law refer to anything as coarse as the brutal assault and rape she suffered at the hands of the dead man. Never once did he mention anything as crass as a lie test. If he didn’t and still doesn’t believe her rape story then why in Heaven’s name didn’t he examine her about the rape? Do you think for a moment he was gallantly trying to spare her feelings? Do you think he wouldn’t have assaulted her with every offensive weapon in his arsenal if he didn’t know full well that she had told us the brutal truth?
“What does Mr. Dancer need to become convinced of this rape —Technicolor? I wonder how much proof he would need if, with his fine sense of detachment, he were instead defending this case? Ah, then the proverbial shoe might be on the other foot—or perhaps I should say, in Hippo’s other pocket.”
I turned and pointed scornfully at Claude Dancer just as Amos Crocker used to point at me. “Ah yes, this is the able little man who has come up here into the brambles to show us bumpkins some of the sly city tricks he has learned so well from experts. Have any of you so soon forgotten how, when the Judge was not looking this morning, he several times got between me and the testifying Lieutenant? Why? I’ll tell you why. In order to get me angry—in which he so richly succeeded; then in order that I might incur the Judge’s wrath, which I so beautifully did; but mostly in order to plant in your minds the sinister notion that I was signaling lies to my client.” Still pointing. “For shame, Mr. Dancer! You brought only discredit and tarnish on your own considerable talents.” I turned back to the jury. “You may have also observed that the man didn’t do it again.”
I paused. “But after all this case is not a gladiatorial contest between Mr. Dancer and me. Your verdict is not a television giveaway prize to be awarded the side that puts on the best show. No, ladies and gentlemen, the stakes here are far bigger than Mr. Dancer and Paul Biegler. They have to do with some old-fashioned things, big things like truth and justice and fair play. They have to do with the fate and future of a tormented lonely man who sits here so uncertainly among us strangers.”
The Sheriff brought a glass and pitcher and put it on the court reporter’s table, and I nodded gratefully and poured and hurriedly gulped a glass of tepid water—courtroom water is always tepid—and turned back to the jury, again eying my favorite juryman. “I wonder if any of you would ever have known that anyone had been raped in this case if I had not kept hammering away through the buzz-saw objections of Mr. Dancer? And what purpose has all his objections served? Jurymen, we could have been done with this case many hours if not days ago if the People had faced up to the reality of this rape, which like dwellers in a sort of enchanted dream world they still do not admit. We didn’t and we won’t deny the shooting; we have never denied it. That was obvious from the start of this case and the People knew it long before that, ever since we filed our written plea of insanity ’way back in August. Yet they have spent hour after hour and witness after witness—and incidentally dollar after public dollar—nailing the gory details of that dead and undisputed issue. Just as Mr. Dancer has used up hour after dreary hour trying to hide and suppress this rape, the rape that surely no fair-minded person in this courtroom can any longer doubt took place.”
I then reviewed in detail the evidence pointing toward rape, reminding the jury that practically all of it had got in the case over the repeated objections of Mr. Dancer. I advanced close to Mitch’s table and again pointed down at Mr. Dancer. “You still do not admit this rape! You still want to picture Mrs. Manion as a slut! You are still obsessed with your pathological lust to go home with the Lieutenant’s carcass lashed to the fender of your state-owned car. Well, Mr. Dancer, I dare you to admit the rape!”
I returned before the jury and took up and reviewed the harmful portion of Detective Sergeant Durgo’s testimony. That had frankly to be faced; it would not go away by ignoring it. “People,” I continued, “maybe the Lieutenant did say these things. The fact that Sergeant Durgo says so is pretty good proof that they were said. We cannot have our cake and eat it, too: we cannot fairly pick out the parts of the Sergeant’s testimony that please us and reject the rest. Only the hardy Mr. Dancer seems able to undertake that miracle. But supposing the Lieutenant did say these things? Was he still not in the shock of his mental lapse, still gripped by the massive blast to his psychic personality, still groping his way back to reality, still trying to put a rational face on the dreadful thing he was slowly realizing he had done? In any case I believe that the Judge will instruct you that you may acquit this man, even if he said these things and realized he was saying them, if at the actual time of the shooting you believe he was in the grip of what is known as irresistible impulse.”
I again checked my time and hurried on. I pointed out that Mitch was right in warning the jury not to invoke the defense of “natural law” (the Judge would do so anyway); and how, under our law, if the Lieutenant had awakened and come upon Barney raping his wife and had killed him, there would doubtless have been no trial and the Lieutenant would instead have got a new medal to add to his combat decorations. “But here,” I went on, “the difference is that the woman was not discovered in any act of adultery or while being raped, but had, however mistakenly, trusted a wolf who had offered to drive her home. Ah yes, instead she was assaulted, pounded, choked, raped, mauled, tripped, kicked, repeatedly struck—the last time practically within a stone’s throw of her sleeping husband—but now the killing becomes murder.
“Ladies and gentlemen, some of you may be asking yourselves why?—why have I been spending so much time here trying to show the obvious truth, namely that the dead man Barney Quill was drinking heavily, that he was acting peculiarly, that he was an awesome physical specimen who knew Judo and all manner of the dark arts of self-defense and offense, that he was an expert who possessed pistols and knew well how to use them? Some of you may also have been wondering why our friend Mr. Dancer has so strenuously sought to keep these truths out.”
I paused. “Well, I’ll try to tell you. If Mr. Dancer could suppress these truths he could then argue that Barney Quill was unable physically to overpower and rape this woman and do to her the things he did; that in any case she should have put up more resistance and that therefore this sexual collision was not rape; that Lieutenant Manion did not need to take a gun when he went to grab and hold this man for the police; that he therefore did so solely to slay him; and, last but not least, that the little old unarmed caretaker, Mr. Lemon, was just the man he instead should have sent to gather in this dangerous wild man.” I again paused. “These I believe are the answers in a nutshell; this is why our Mr. Dancer has spent days here trying relentlessly to baffle and block any attempt by me to show Barney Quill as anything other than a nice quiet harmless outdoor boy.”
I hurriedly gulped another glass of water. “Yes,” I ran on, “the People, so zealously represented by Mr. Dancer, will doubtless argue that the Lieutenant should have hunted the little old unarmed caretaker out of his midnight bed to go over and arrest this man crouching in his lair, behind his bar with his arsenal of weapons he so well knew how to use. Wouldn’t that have been the fine, manly, legal thing to do?
“People,” I said, “to be competent jurors you need not check your brains in the jury cloakroom. There is no mystery about your role here—it is to use your heads and also your hearts. If Barney Quill did this thing to Laura Manion there were exactly three courses open to him. One, he could have given himself up. He didn’t. Two, he could have run away or destroyed himself. He didn’t. Three, he could have stayed and determined to brazen it out. He did. The great Barney Quill, running true to form, chose the latter role, he returned to his lair and sent his bartender scuttling, whether as lookout or whatnot we shall probably never know. He quickly surrounded his bar with a protective cordon of unsuspecting humanity—his buffer as well as his witnesses—and waited confidently for the showdown, primed by his whisky and his enormous ego, surrounded by all his pals and his pistols and
medals and his ever-faithful lookout. Barney could not stand behind the bar staring at the door—he had desperately to play the part of the cool and calm one. That is why he had to give his tired bartender a “rest” so he could stand nearly an hour over by the door and give him the signal.
“But, you may ask yourselves, if Barney was waiting for the Lieutenant to come, with or without a lookout, why didn’t he plug the Lieutenant the moment he entered the door? Ah, folks, that would not only have been murder, but murder added to a tacit confession of rape. That would have given the show away. Barney was on the spot. Barney knew what he had done but the others didn’t. Had Barney mounted a Tommy gun on the bar and shot the Lieutenant down as he entered the door he would by that very act have confessed his rape. Don’t you see? Barney had to wait for the Lieutenant to advance into the room so that when the expected showdown came, the big scene, the accusation, the argument, the attempted laying on of hands, even a hostile move for a gun, then the great marksman Barney could shoot the man down in front of witnesses and plausibly claim the whole thing was done in self-defense. He had to gamble that he was faster on the draw than Lieutenant Manion. Can’t you see—this tense barroom drama was all carefully staged?” I lowered my voice. “The only thing that went wrong was that Barney forgot, or didn’t know, the Lieutenant was left-handed—that and the fact that at last he had met his match. He lost his grim gamble, he at last lost his first pistol shoot. This time the medal he lost happened to be his own life.”
Anatomy of a Murder Page 48
