Compulsion

by Meyer Levin

  “He did it, obsessed of an idea, perhaps to some extent influenced by what has not been developed publicly in this case – perversions that were present in the boy.” Intimately, to the judge, he said,” Both are signs of insanity, both, together with this act, proving a diseased mind.

  “Why should this boy’s life be bound up with Friedrich Nietzsche, who died twenty-four years ago, insane, in Germany? I don’t know. I only know it is.

  “I know, Your Honour, that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that a pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without disturbing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame. I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it; neither has any other human brain. But I do know that if back of it is a power that made it, that power alone can tell, and if there is no power, then it is an infinite chance, which man cannot solve. Tell me that you can visit the wrath of fate and chance and life and eternity upon a nineteen-year-old boy! If you could, justice would be a travesty and mercy a fraud!”

  Then if it was the encounter with Nietzsche’s philosophy that had drawn out a capacity for evil in Judd, who was to blame for that encounter? Could the publishers of Nietzsche’s works be blamed? Could the university be blamed? “I do not believe that the universities are to blame. I do not think they should be held responsible. I do think, however, that they are too large, and that they should keep a closer watch, if possible, upon the individual.

  “But you cannot destroy thought because, forsooth, some brain may be deranged by thought. It is the duty of the university, as I conceive it, to be the great storehouse of the wisdom of the ages, and to let students go there, and learn, and choose. Every changed idea in the world has had its consequences. Every new religious doctrine has created its victims. Every new philosophy has caused suffering and death. Every new machine has carved up men while it served the world. No great ideal but does good and harm, and we cannot stop because it may do harm.”

  He paused there; he seemed to have done with Judd’s philosophy, and on Judd’s face there came a blank look – was he thus meagrely explained to the world? Was this all his life was worth?

  “Your Honour, there is something else in this case that is stronger still than the elements I have spoken of before. There is the element of chance. These boys, neither one of them, could possibly have committed this act except by coming together. It was not the act of one; it was the act of two.

  “Your Honour, I am sorry for poor Paulie Kessler, and I think anybody who knows me knows that I am not saying it simply to talk. I do not know what Paulie Kessler would have been had he grown to a man. But would it mean anything if on account of that death, these two boys were taken out and a rope tied around their necks and they died felons? No, Your Honour, the unfortunate and tragic death of Paulie Kessler should mean an appeal to the fathers and the mothers, to the teachers, to the religious guides, to society at large. It should mean an appeal to all of them to appraise children, to understand the emotions that control them, to understand the ideas that possess them, to teach them to avoid the pitfalls of life.”

  As he began again in the afternoon, he was once more the skilled lawyer making his points. He came to the sorest point, the testimony of McNamara about a “friendly judge”.

  “I want Your Honour to know that if in your judgment you think these boys should hang, we will know it is your judgment. It is hard enough for a court to sit where you sit, with the eyes of the world upon you, in the fierce heat of public opinion, for and against. It is hard enough, without any lawyer making it harder. I will say no more about it, excepting that this statement was a deliberate lie, made out of whole cloth, and McNamara’s entire testimony shows it.”

  Horn’s face was solid anger. If Wilk had planned this as a taunt, he could not have devised a more effective provocation, as we were to find in the very last moments of the trial.

  Wilk walked again toward the bench, resuming his plea. “Your Honour, I must hasten along, for I will close tonight. I know I should have closed before. Still there seems so much that I would like to say.

  “Crime has a cause as certainly as disease, and the way to rationally treat any abnormal condition is to remove the cause.

  “If a doctor were called on to treat typhoid fever he would probably try to find out what kind of water the patient drank, and clean out the well so that no one else could get typhoid from the same source. But if a lawyer were called on to treat a typhoid patient he would give him thirty days in jail, and then he would think that nobody else would ever dare to drink the impure water. If the patient got well in fifteen days, he would be kept until his time was up; if the disease was worse at the end of thirty days, the patient would be released because his time was out.

  “As a rule, lawyers are not scientists. They think that there is only one way to make men good, and that is to put them in such terror that they do not dare to do bad.”

  And then he spoke of an aspect of the crime that few had considered. Going back over the record of hangings, he showed that a recent change had taken place. For years, no minor had been hanged in Chicago, not even on a jury conviction. Not from 1912 until 1920. “In 1920, a boy named Viani was convicted by a jury and hanged, a boy of eighteen. Why did we go back to hanging the young? It was 1920; we were used to young men, mere boys, going to their death. It was 1920, just after the war. And that time is still with us, Your Honour.

  “We are anew accustomed to blood, Your Honour. It used to make us feel squeamish. But we have not only seen it shed in bucketsful, we have seen it shed in rivers, lakes, and oceans, and we have delighted in it; we have preached it, we have worked for it, we have advised it, we have taught it to the young, until the world has been drenched in blood and it has left stains upon every human heart and upon every human mind, and has almost stifled the feelings of pity and charity that have their natural home in the human breast.

  “I believed in it. I don’t know whether I was crazy or not. Sometimes I think perhaps I was. I urged men to fight. I was safe because I was too old to go. For four long years the civilized world was engaged in killing men. Christian against Christian, barbarians uniting with Christians to kill Christians; anything to kill. It was taught in every school, aye, in the Sunday schools. The little children played at war. Do you suppose that this world has even been the same since then?

  “We read of killing one hundred thousand men in a day. We read about it and rejoiced in it – if it was the other fellows who were killed. We were fed on flesh and drank blood. I need not tell Your Honour how many bright, honourable young men have come into this court charged with murder, some saved and some sent to their death, boys who fought in this war and learned to place a cheap value on human life.”

  Wilk turned toward Judd and Artie. “These boys were brought up in it. The tales of death were in their homes, their playgrounds, their schools; they were in the newspapers that they read; it was part of the common frenzy. What was a life? It was nothing. One of them tells us how he was haunted by a war poster, how he dreamed of rape and of killing.

  “It will take fifty years to wipe it out of the human heart, if ever. No one needs to inform me that crime has a cause. It has as definite a cause as any other disease. I know that growing out of the Napoleonic Wars there was an era of crime such as Europe had never seen before. I know that Europe is going through the same experience today; I know it has followed every war and I know it has influenced these boys so that life was not the same to them as it would have been if the world had not been made red with blood. I protest against the crimes and mistakes of society being visited upon them. All of us have our share in it. I have mine. I cannot tell and I shall never know how many words of mine during the war mi
ght have given birth to cruelty in the place of love and kindness and charity.”

  Again, he had mounted far beyond the case; the spell was upon him and upon us all as Jonathan Wilk spoke. “Your Honour knows that in this very court crimes of violence have increased, growing out of the war. Not only by those who fought, but by those who learned that blood was cheap, and human life was cheap, and if the State could take it lightly, why not the individual?

  “I do not know how much salvage there is in these two boys. I hate to say it in their presence, but what is there to look forward to? I do not know but what Your Honour would be merciful if you tied a rope around their necks and let them die; merciful to them, but not merciful to civilization, and not merciful to those who would be left behind. To spend the balance of their days in prison is mighty little to look forward to, if anything. Is it anything?

  “They may have the hope that as the years roll around they may be released. I do not know. I do not know.” He gazed at the defendants. “I will be honest with this court as I have tried to be from the beginning. I know that these boys are not fit to be at large. I believe they will not be until they pass through the next stage of life, at forty-five or fifty.”

  The words fell heavily, as if he had prophetically sentenced them.

  “I would not tell this court that I do not hope that sometime, when life and age has changed their bodies, as it does, and has changed their emotions, as it does, they may once again return to life. I would be the last person on earth to close the door of hope to any human being that lives, and least of all to my clients. But what have they to look forward to? Nothing.” He quoted again from Housman:

  Now hollow fires burn out to black,

  And lights are fluttering low:

  Square your shoulders, lift your pack

  And leave your friend and go.

  O never fear, lads, naught’s to dread,

  Look not left nor right:

  In all that endless road you tread

  There’s nothing but the night.

  Something had come over Wilk’s face, a complete and otherworldly beauty, as if he indeed were relieved of the shortcomings of mankind.

  He repeated: “‘In all that endless road you tread, There’s nothing but the night.’

  “I care not, Your Honour, whether the march begins at the gallows or when the gates of Joliet close upon them, there is nothing but the night, and that is little for any human being to expect.”

  He drew himself out of his spell and came to his peroration. “But there are others to be considered.

  “Here is Steiner’s father – and this boy was the pride of his life. He watched him, cared for him, he worked for him; he educated him, and he thought that fame and position awaited him, as it should have awaited. It is a hard thing for a father to see his life’s hope crumble into dust.

  “And Straus’s son, the same. Here are the faithful uncle and brother, who have watched here day by day while Artie’s father and mother are too ill to stand this terrific strain, and shall be waiting for a message which means more to them than it can mean to you or me.

  “Is there any reason, Your Honour, why their proud names and all the future generations that bear them shall have this bar sinister written across them? It is bad enough as it is, God knows. But it’s not yet death on the scaffold. It’s not that. And I ask Your Honour, in addition to all that I have said, to save two honourable families from a disgrace that never ends, and which could be of no avail to help any human being that lives. I have been sorry and I am sorry for the bereavement of Mr. and Mrs. Kessler, for those broken ties cannot be healed. But as compared with the families of Steiner and Straus, the Kesslers are to be envied, and everyone knows it.

  “Now I must say one word more and then I will leave this with you where I should have left it long ago. The easy thing and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud. The cruel will approve. It will be easy today; but in Chicago, and reaching out over the length and breadth of the land, more and more fathers and mothers, the humane, the kind and the hopeful, who are gaining an understanding and asking questions not only about these poor boys, but about their own – these will join in no acclaim at the death of my clients. These would ask that the shedding of blood be stopped.

  “I know the future is with me and what I stand for here; not merely for the lives of these two unfortunate lads, but for all boys and all girls; for all of the young, and as far as possible, for all of the old. I am pleading for life, understanding, charity, kindness, and the infinite mercy that considers all.”

  Tears flowed freely on old Steiner’s face; some said that Judd and Artie wept. We were all utterly held by some tragic sympathy in Wilk’s voice, in his whole being, that transcended any effect of words.

  “I am pleading that we overcome cruelty with kindness and hatred with love. Your Honour stands between the past and the future. You may hang these boys, but in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.”

  He walked back a little, partly releasing us.

  “If I should succeed in saving these boys’ lives and do nothing for the progress of the law, I should feel sad indeed. If I can succeed, my greatest reward and my greatest hope will be that I have done something to help human understanding, to temper justice with mercy, to overcome hate with love.

  “I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar Khayyám. It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all.

  So it be written in the Book of Love,

  I do not care about that Book above.

  Erase my name or write it as you will,

  So I be written in the Book of Love.

  We did not dare speak to each other, for our words might deride sentiment. We rather made the comments professional. A great plea. His greatest. His valedictory. It was a plea for every human life.

  The praise accorded Wilk, even in the papers that cried the loudest for blood, must have been the final goad to Horn, for he rushed into his hanging plea like a blinded fighter, flailing, hitting in every direction at once. It was Wilk that he attacked, as much as the murderers, for Wilk’s philosophy, he argued, would condone all crime, abandon all punishment, dissolve the basic rule that protected society. There were screaming, flailing periods when his voice went ridiculously high, and even Judd and Artie smiled sardonically, and this drove him to utmost fury.

  Horn began with sarcasm: “Before going into a discussion of the merits of the case, there is a matter I would like to refer to. The distinguished gentleman whose profession it is to protect murder in Cook County, and concerning whose health thieves inquire before they go to commit crime, has seen fit to abuse the State’s Attorney’s office. We all have hearts of stone.

  “We have dared to tell Your Honour that this is a cold-blooded murder. We ought not to refer to these two young men, the poor sons of multimillionaires, with any coarse language. We should have come up here and tried these kiddies with kindness and consideration!

  “Your Honour ought not to shock their ears with cruel references to the laws of the State, to the penalty of death. Why, don’t you know that one of them has to shave every day of the week, and that is a bad sign. The other one has to shave only twice a week, and that is a bad sign. One is short and one is tall, and it is equally a bad sign in both of them. One is over-developed sexually and the other not quite so good.

  “My God, if one of them had a harelip, I suppose Jonathan Wilk would want me to apologize for even having them indicted!

  “We are cold-blooded! We have planned, according to Mr. Wilk, for three months and we have conspired to take the lives of two little boys who were wandering in dreamland.”

  Padua was a decent, clean
-living man, he told us, and so was Czewicki; as for himself, “I believe that not even Mr. Wilk, who has known me for years, would say that Arthur Horn is a vicious, cruel, heartless monster.” Were he not State’s Attorney he would have no feeling of animosity against these two individuals. When they were in his custody he had treated them with “kindness and consideration”. When he had first received Judd’s name as a possible owner of the glasses he had interviewed him at a hotel, so as to keep the matter out of the newspapers. “I think the State’s Attorney of this county is as kindly a man as the paid humanitarian, the man who believes in doing his fellow citizens good – after he has done them good and plenty.”

  There was hesitant laughter.

  “But as a public official selected by the people, charged with the duty of enforcing the law of my country,” he shouted, “I have no right to forgive those who violate their country’s laws. It is my duty to prosecute them.

  “You have a right to forgive, and I know you do forgive those who trespass against Gilbert Matthewson personally, but sitting here as Chief Justice of this great court, you have no right to forgive anybody who violates the law! You have got to deal with him as the law prescribes!

  “Your Honour, in this case, with the mass of evidence presented by the State, if a jury were sitting in that box and they returned a verdict and they did not fix the punishment at death, every person in this community, including Your Honour and myself, would feel that the verdict was founded on corruption!”

  The judge’s face darkened, but he kept his composure.

  “And I will tell you why. I have taken quite a trip during the last four or five weeks. I thought I was going to be kept in Chicago all summer trying this case, and that most of my time would be spent in the Criminal Court Building. I did come up to Your Honour’s courtroom five weeks ago, but then Old Doc Yak – what is his name? The man from Washington – Oh, Dr. McNarry – Dr. McNarry took me by the hand and led me into the nursery of two poor, rich young boys, and he introduced me to a teddy bear. Then he told me some bedtime stories, and after I got through listening to them he took me into the kindergarten and he presented to me a little Artie and Judd.