Now it was Jim Reed’s turn. His courtroom style was different from that of his friend Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney. Big, broad-shouldered, and slightly stooped, Darrow often spoke with his thumbs tucked beneath his suspenders. And he often took cases for posterity. He had kept Leopold and Loeb from hanging in Chicago in 1924, and a year later, in the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, he placed on the witness stand William Jennings Bryan—and the believability of the stories in the Bible—to dramatic effect. In his courtroom orations, Darrow spoke to the press every bit as much as to the jury. His arguments were meant to be read, not heard. (They were often edited after he’d delivered them.) Reed did not need Dar-row’s homey suspenders, or the morning coat and striped trousers favored by some attorneys. He dressed in a black or blue serge suit. He spoke directly to jurors, up close, playing on their emotions. As a cross-examiner, he was intrepid, hostile, meanspirited. In defending Henry Ford against charges of libel and anti-Semitism, Reed, assisted by a team of seven attorneys, kept plaintiff Aaron Sapiro on the witness stand in cross-examination for thirteen days. He probed, badgered, and denigrated Sapiro, and consistently mispronounced his name. Mencken’s description of Reed as a maverick senator—“The forensic talents of the man are really almost unparalleled. He is, for our time, the supreme artist in assault”—applied to Reed in the courtroom as well.
Reed spent most of the first day of his defense introducing character witnesses who were, for the most part, well-heeled and who moved in impressive social circles. Reed announced that some “came all the way from Memphis,” or Little Rock, as if those cities were at the distant ends of the earth. Friends, old and new, and former bosses, from Texas, Illinois, New York, and South Dakota—places where Jack and Myrtle had lived or traveled—testified to Myrtle’s admirable qualities as a devoted wife, hard worker, and woman of high character and integrity. They testified to having played bridge or golf with Myrtle and Jack. For several hours, the lines of worry disappeared from Myrtle’s expression. Her face softened. In his slow, easy drawl, Judge Abner McGehee of Little Rock testified that he had known Myrtle for twenty-eight years. He evoked the life story of the rural Arkansas girl in pigtails. Mrs. Elmena Ebert of San Antonio described Myrtle as “a peaceful, quiet and ladylike woman,” and said Myrtle and Jack always appeared very much in love. From New York City came C. A. Pennock, Jack’s boss, general sales manager for the Richard Hudnut Company. Pennock said he had known Myrtle and Jack since 1919 and, with his wife, had socialized with the Bennetts in Kansas City and New York, and once on a fishing vacation in Wisconsin. He testified that Jack habitually carried a gun in his car, and once had shown a pistol to him. Pennock could not identify the murder weapon, though, since he said he knew little about guns. He said Myrtle seemed amiable, gentle. Reed asked if Jack had made a lot of money at Hudnut. “That depends what you term a lot,” Pennock replied. He said Jack, during the last four years of his life, had earned between $15,000 and $18,000 a year.
Reed attempted to show Jack’s high-tempered nature, with Page objecting at every turn. The prosecutor knew Reed was trying to put Jack Bennett on trial. Myrtle’s longtime friend Mrs. E. M. Houston of Memphis testified, “They always seemed greatly in love with each other and got along fine, except when he got ugly.” Reed asked for details about Jack’s ugliness, but Page cut him off. The prosecutor argued before the bench that since the defense was attempting to prove the shooting accidental, Jack’s character had nothing to do with this case. Latshaw ruled that defense witnesses could tell of Jack’s disposition but could not relate specific manifestations of his temper.
Reed had other ideas. His defense was elaborately constructed. Guy Baker, a wallpaper hanger, took the stand. He testified that, while hanging wallpaper in the Bennett apartment at Ward Parkway, he witnessed a quarrel between husband and wife. He saw Jack slap Myrtle in the face, and “slap her hard.” Page erupted with an objection, the attorneys bickered, and Latshaw again sent the jury from the room. In an impassioned plea, Reed said he intended to show that Myrtle had suffered violence from Jack before the night in question and that in a state of fear she retrieved his .32 Colt automatic to protect herself. “Because of the peculiar circumstances in this case it is necessary for the defense to show the relations of Mr. and Mrs. Bennett,” the senator said. He insisted the wallpaper hanger’s testimony was necessary and proper. It would show Jack’s temper, his violence, and that Myrtle had not fought back in the past. That was not her way. Reed was preparing four separate defenses for the shooting of Jack Bennett: accidental, emotional insanity, self-defense, and qualified self-defense, the latter generally meaning too much force was used by the defendant to repel an assault. He would demonstrate that Jack had struck Myrtle before the night of the bridge game and that Myrtle had not retaliated. He would demonstrate that these previous attacks amounted to communicative threats and caused Myrtle to fear for her life, so that either she wrestled with Jack for the gun to keep him from taking it, or shot him deliberately in an understandable act of self-defense. (O’Sullivan joined this argument, and explained to Latshaw, “She had a right to shoot under the theory of self-defense… She had the right to apprehend danger when he seized the gun.”) These theories connected neatly with the emotional insanity defense for, depending on the turns of the trial, Reed might also portray Myrtle as temporarily deranged from the humiliation of being struck in front of guests.
Page questioned Reed’s right to inject an irrelevant new motive into the trial. Latshaw told Page he was inclined to admit the testimony, which he viewed as relevant to the case. He gave Page until Monday to look up the law on the case. He also gave jurors a much-needed break. For a few hours Sunday afternoon, Latshaw announced, a bus would show them the newest paved roads in Jackson County, a respite from the interminable hours of sequestration at the Gladstone Hotel. There, fighting late-night boredom, one juror had been teaching two others how to play contract bridge.
A letter arrived at the law offices of James A. Reed, in it a mocking poem:
One Spade he bid,
Poor dud, he is dead.
She sits in widow’s weeds.
He went down one,
She got her gun.
One Spade is all he needs.
This is what we are up against, Reed said as he spat out his cigar tip.
That kind of rot!
On Monday, O’Sullivan told reporters the defense was seeking the right moment to put Myrtle on the stand. As anticipation built, bailiffs crammed extra chairs into the courtroom. Members of Boss Pendergast’s family, hoping to hear Myrtle’s testimony, got front-row seats. Tension was building within Jim Reed. News photographers bothered him until Reed obtained a ruling from Latshaw that forbade photographs during testimony. The spectators bothered Reed, too. “If this sightseeing crowd shows up tomorrow, I’ll have a brainstorm,” Reed told Page. “I’ll have it and give them a good cussing out when I do.”
Page had done his reading, and said, without explanation, he would withdraw his objections to allowing defense witnesses to discuss the manifestations of Jack’s temper. (Page might have concluded that the evidence was admissible and decided that to improperly exclude it would entitle Myrtle, upon conviction, to a new trial; or he might have determined that jurors would know that Jack’s prior misconduct had nothing whatsoever to do with Reed’s accident defense.)
Reed smashed ahead with his defense. Witnesses told stories about Jack’s temper and how, on two previous occasions, he had slapped Myrtle. Ernest Olrich of the National Bella-Hess Company in Kansas City testified how Jack had cursed and slammed his briefcase shut in anger in Olrich’s office after he refused to sell Hudnut perfumes at the prices Jack sought. Olrich also testified how Jack, in a huff about his poor shot-making on the golf course, had once heaved his golf bag over a fence. Mrs. E. M. Houston testified that in Memphis, while Myrtle was “in a delicate condition” (Reed clarified, “You mean in a family way?” and Houston said, “Ye
s”), they posed in her backyard for Kodak pictures. A small boy put a puppy in Jack’s lap. “Hold him, Jack,” Myrtle said, smiling for the camera. Jack became enraged over the dog, cursed, and stalked into the house where he remained, away from guests, all day. Guy Baker returned to the stand. Baker, the wallpaper hanger, testified that as he worked in the Bennett kitchen in September 1928, he saw Jack emerge from the master bedroom and ask Myrtle where to find a certain dress shirt. Check the closet, Myrtle replied. Jack said he “couldn’t find the damned thing.” Then wear another shirt, Myrtle told him, whereupon Jack scoffed, “Oh, to hell with it,” and slapped her in the face. Baker testified that he watched Jack grab his hat and coat and leave the apartment while Myrtle dashed into their bedroom and wept for thirty minutes. In the summer of 1929, a repairman named Nelson Duss had witnessed a similar scene: Jack strode into the Bennett kitchen holding a necktie. “Look,” he demanded, pointing at the tie. “What is it, Jack?” Myrtle said, with indifference. At that moment, Duss testified, Jack slapped his wife so hard she nearly fell over. “Damn you, I’ll knock some sense into your head,” Jack said, and strode off. Page did not cross-examine Baker or Duss.
Now Reed called Mayme Hofman to the stand to discuss the most relevant slapping of all. Dressed in a striking sport suit of burnt orange, with matching hat, sheer hose, and low-heeled pumps, Mayme testified in a voice small and timid. Reed brought her along gently: “Mrs. Hofman, describe the game. I do not mean how all of it was played, but how the game went and bring us up to the time of the last hand. Tell it in your own way.”
Mayme: “Well, we played Mr. and Mrs. Bennett partners and Mr. Hofman and I partners. During the course of the game, the last hand, the bid went around. Mr. Bennett opened the bid, a spade, I believe. Mr. Hofman bid two diamonds.”
Reed interjected: “Was that higher than a spade?”
Mayme: “Yes, and Mrs. Bennett raised him to four spades because in contract you have to have four spades to make game. Mrs. Bennett, of course, laid down her hand and was dummy and Mr. Bennett played the hand. He went set on the hand and Mrs. Bennett said that he should have made it. Mr. Bennett said she had no business raising it to four spades. She said that she laid down a beautiful hand, which she really did, and before we realized what was happening, Mr. Bennett reached across the table and grabbed her by the arm and slapped her hard and almost upset the card table. We were astounded and—”
Reed: “How many times did he slap her?”
Mayme: “I cannot say exactly, four or five times.” She said they rose from the card table as Myrtle sobbed uncontrollably. “She seemed stunned and hardly knew what to do. She was embarrassed, naturally, at being slapped in front of guests and we were embarrassed, too.… [Jack] began running here and there about the apartment. I don’t know what he was doing.”
Reed introduced Myrtle’s two-piece sport suit with vest and skirt, and when Mayme identified it her voice choked with emotion. (From her defendant’s chair, Myrtle, seeing her outfit, wept loud enough to be heard across the courtroom.) Reed showed Mayme a long rip near the arm hole and another in the sleeve. Mayme said she had noticed these rents when she and her husband accompanied Myrtle to the Country Club police station the night of the killing; Latshaw admitted the outfit as evidence. (Reed intended to tell jurors it was torn in the struggle for the gun with Jack.) Reed asked Mayme to recall the last moment she saw Jack alive. Again, Mayme fought tears, and across the room so did Myrtle. Mayme needed several moments to compose herself. Then she told of seeing Myrtle bent over her dying husband and hearing her plead, “Jack, talk to me.”
On cross-examination, Page peppered her with questions, with Mayme often answering that she didn’t remember. Page asked, “You said, didn’t you, that you heard Mrs. Bennett say she would not have any man hitting her?”
Mayme: “I can’t say.”
Page: “You didn’t answer the question.” Page repeated his question.
Mayme: “I don’t remember the exact words. I may have.”
Page: “Answer the question.”
Mayme: “I don’t remember.”
Page asked about the statement she had signed at the Country Club police station on September 30, 1929, only hours after the killing. “Did you read the statement before you signed it?”
Mayme: “I glanced through it. I was too frightened to read much of it.”
Page asked if she had made any written corrections to that statement.
Mayme: “I don’t remember any that I made.”
Page: “Did you make that correction in it?” He pointed to a correction made in pen and ink on the copy of her statement.
Mayme: “No, I didn’t.”
Page smiled. “Will you take a pen and print the words ‘rear bedroom’?”
Reed objected, and was overruled.
Mayme Hofman sensed a trap. “Let me see the statement a moment, just to refresh my memory,” she said.
Page: “No, just print the words ‘rear bedroom’ on this sheet of paper. I want to see if you did or did not make this correction.”
Reed protested and Latshaw told Page to let Mayme Hofman see the statement. “I don’t remember,” she said after a quick review, “whether I made this correction or not.”
As Page began to read from a transcript of Mayme’s statement to police, Reed objected and Latshaw warned the prosecutor, “You can’t impeach a witness’s memory. You can impeach if they answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and the answer is false. But when she says she doesn’t remember, you can’t impeach.”
Page roared back, “I object to your honor’s telling the witness how she can avoid impeachment.”
Latshaw rolled his eyes. “Proceed. You can’t impeach memory.”
With the witness Mayme Hofman, the prosecutor had hit a wall.
Edward Hickman, pistol expert for the defense, testified he had performed tests, firing Jack’s pistol into a cloth similar to that in Jack’s shirt from a distance of one foot, two feet, and three feet. Only the bullet fired from one foot left powder marks around the hole similar to those left in Jack’s shirt, Hickman said. To Reed, this expert testimony confirmed that the shots had been fired during a physical struggle between husband and wife. On cross-examination, Page asked Hickman if he would participate in more tests with the state’s own pistol expert, firing the .32 Colt automatic into Jack’s shirt from a distance of three inches, six inches, nine inches, fifteen inches, eighteen inches, and twenty-five feet. Hickman said he would happily participate in such tests, and Page told the judge and jury he would abide by the results.
Then, with Hickman still in the witness chair, Page suddenly turned on his heels and said: “Now I want you to come down here in front of the jury and show me how you could shoot me in the back if I had hold of your wrist.”
Reed leaped from his chair to object.
Page, ready for battle, said, “Here, then, senator, you take the gun and show me. You said it could be done. You tried to show the jury last week, but the jury didn’t see it because your back was turned. Take the gun and show me. I’ll stand with my back to the jury.”
Caught off-guard, Reed replied, “That’s all nonsense.”
From the bench, Latshaw said, “Proceed, gentlemen.”
Reed fired back, “I’m willing to proceed if Mr. Page will sit down and act like a lawyer.”
Page, glowering at Reed and O’Sullivan, said, “I’m acting like a lawyer. I’m trying to act like two lawyers.”
Now Page’s voice exploded with a challenge: “I’m willing to make the test with the senator, with the judge, with the witness, any member of the jury”—Page looked around the room—“or anyone in the courtroom.” The judge told him that only a witness could make a demonstration, no one else. “All right then,” Page said. “Mr. Hick-man, come down here and take this gun and try to shoot me in the back while I have hold of your wrist.”
Hickman stood to comply, but
Reed waved his hand and objected. He said, “I’ll show Mr. Page how it can be done if he’ll sit down.” His objection was sustained.
Page jabbed an index finger at the senator and said, “Fine. I’m going to hold you to that promise.”
“The defense calls Mrs. Alice Adkins.” Whether it was the sound of those six words or the appearance of the old Mississippian walking in small steps toward the witness chair, or the very idea of her mother coming to her rescue, Myrtle went to pieces. Tears stormed down her cheeks and fell to the table. Her anguished sobs filled the courtroom. Quietly, Page asked Latshaw to send the jury from the room “until the defendant can calm herself.” “I’ll be all right,” Myrtle protested as jurors walked out, but her sobs grew deeper. Jim Reed’s eyes filled with tears. O’Sullivan threw his arm about Myrtle’s shoulder as she slumped over the table. O’Sullivan waved for Myrtle’s bridge friend Mrs. Benjamin Shires. In her wide-brimmed hat, Shires sat beside Myrtle until finally she quieted.
On the witness stand defending her only child, wearing a dark overcoat with fur collar, and a bulky wool hat that perched curiously atop her head like a thick biscuit, Alice Adkins seemed a tower of strength. Each day, she came to court prepared to testify, mounting two flights of stairs, jostled by curiosity seekers in the hallways. Her craggy face suggested the rocky soil of Arkansas, her voice the rural rhythms of her native Coahoma County, Mississippi. The sympathies of spectators were with her.
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