The Sporting House Killing: A Gilded Age Legal Thriller

by G. Reading Powell

  He ambled back to his table, glancing toward Catfish. “Here’s something Catfish and I happen to agree on. In his opening statement to you, he said, ‘Killers lie, don’t they?’ They sure do, gentlemen, especially when their lives depend on it. This young man would do anything to save his own skin. Cicero Sweet lied when he swore he didn’t remember what happened. He thought you’d take him at his word. When he decided you didn’t, he tried something else. He admitted that he lied but told a new lie: He shot her, but he didn’t mean to. Can you trust his new story?”

  A juror shook his head.

  Blair went to the court reporter’s desk and lifted the gun. “He lied about some other things too. I handed him this derringer and asked him if he’d ever touched that gun before. At first he swore to you he didn’t, but I brought you scientific proof he did.” He showed them the bloody print. “So finally, he admitted he did touch it, but he came up with a new story: He tried to knock it away and it went off. His new story—it was an accident.”

  He shook his head slowly. “The defendant lied under oath about something else. After he said he wasn’t the kind of man who’d hurt a working girl, I asked him if he’d ever been in any fights before, and he said no, he hadn’t—swore to it right there in that witness chair. I brought Peter DeGroote in here, and he sat in the same chair and told you all about the day the defendant got mad about a college debate and beat him for it, knocked him into the creek. Sweet had been drinking that day, too. The defendant didn’t want you to know he’s the kind of man who’d do that, so he lied about it.”

  He looked from juror to juror. “Just as his own lawyer told you, killers lie. And just like his own lawyer told you, he did put the killer in the witness chair.”

  And Cicero fessed up to it.

  “Gentlemen, the evidence is overwhelming. Cicero Sweet is guilty of first-degree murder. Don’t let a murderer go unpunished just because the victim was a working girl in the Reservation. It’s still murder. Thank you.”

  Catfish nodded at Blair as he returned to his seat: Very eloquent, my friend.

  He shut his yes. Lord, may I find my voice. Words are my only weapons now. If they can’t save this boy’s life, what use are they? What use am I?

  “Mr. Calloway,” the judge said, “you may proceed.”

  He was the only man in the muggy courtroom who hadn’t shed his coat at the judge’s invitation. The buttermilk suit he’d changed into after the rain showed sweat stains already. A bead trickled down his forehead.

  He approached the jury, nodding to the bench. “May it please the court.”

  “Counsel,” the judge replied.

  “Gentlemen of the jury.” He rolled the witness chair over in front of them. “One thing before I begin.”

  He sat in the chair and leaned forward, arms resting on his knees, right in front of the jury. He stared down briefly, then looked up at each juror. Every eye was fixed upon him.

  “I owe you fellas an apology and an explanation. This morning, I said some things I’m ashamed of now. I acted poorly. I used vulgar language. I was disrespectful of the judge and of Captain Blair and of you, and none of you deserved that. My old teacher, Professor Sayles, would be disappointed in me because I dishonored our profession, and I pray forgiveness. But whether you can forgive me or not, I hope you won’t hold my failing against my client. I don’t really have much of an explanation for my behavior. You see, Cicero’s father, Henry Sweet”—he nodded toward his pal—“he’s an old friend. We rode together in the war. I owe him my life, and so I’m afraid I let my emotions get the best of me. I’m truly sorry.”

  Would they forgive him?

  He stood.

  “But this trial isn’t about Catfish Calloway or Henry Sweet. It’s about Henry’s boy, a young man perched precariously on the edge of life. He’s a young man who should be eagerly anticipating a happy future, but instead fears the hangman’s noose. We don’t ask you to set him free. Respectfully, Captain Blair, we don’t think the killing of any person should go unpunished. No, gentlemen, we ask you to punish him fairly and wisely. We ask you to render your verdict from the noblest impulse of the Christian heart.”

  He glanced at President Burleson in the second row. “A very wise man reminded me recently how important that is. It’s what gives us humanity in a world of wicked impulses.”

  He stood behind the chair, resting his hands atop its back. “Cicero takes responsibility for what he did and stands ready to pay the price, whatever you see fit. He was weak, and he knows it. He had a weakness for strong drink, and he gave in to it. He had a weakness of the flesh, and he indulged it. He had a weakness of courage, too. He hid the truth from you at first. In the end, though, he was man enough to sit again in that chair, under the same oath before God and law which he had by human frailty transgressed, and found courage to admit he lied. To admit his guilt. To face you and invite your punishment.”

  He faced Blair. “Captain Blair says this young man would do anything to save his own skin. Well, sir, I agree that Cicero Sweet lied to save himself. To survive. He lied to save himself. It’s not very admirable. No virtue in that lie.” He deliberately paced the breadth of the jury box. “But I ask you, gentlemen, where has virtue been in this trial? Where did you see a noble heart? Was it Miss Jessie when she lied to protect Peter and Sterling DeGroote? Did a noble impulse emanate from Peter or from Miss Sadie or Big Joe, who told the same lies? Where in the prosecution case did we see nobility?”

  He searched the spectator gallery. “Was there a noble impulse from Detective Palmer? Was he forthright with you when he led you to believe he got his science from scientists when in truth he got it from Mark Twain’s yarn?” He picked up the magazine. “A storybook lawyer named Pudd’nhead Wilson told a storybook jury this: ‘Upon this haft stands the assassin’s natal autograph, written in blood. . . . There is but one man in the whole earth whose hand can duplicate that crimson sign.’ No, there’s no nobility in Palmer’s deceit. Gentlemen, there was little true character displayed in this case on either side, I’m afraid. Had he watched this trial, Preacher Jones might well have said, ‘Let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone.’”

  Catfish walked behind Cicero and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “This boy sinned. He caused Georgia Gamble’s death. But does he deserve to die for it? Judge Goodrich instructed you that he must be guilty of first-degree murder before you may condemn him to death. The question for you is this: What crime is he guilty of? Is it murder in the first degree, or is it manslaughter?”

  He patted Cicero’s shoulder and moved on. “Judge Goodrich instructed you that first-degree murder requires you to believe, beyond reasonable doubt, he acted with malice aforethought. What’s that? The judge told you. Cicero must have formed a decision to take the life of Georgia Gamble with a sedate and deliberate design. His mind must have been cool in forming this purpose. You heard Peter’s testimony, and Cicero’s too. Those two boys exchanged heated words. It happened suddenly and unexpectedly. Peter slugged him, and Cicero fell back on the bed, dazed. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He opened his eyes and saw her pointing a gun at him, and he knocked it away. It went off. It hit Miss Georgia.”

  He wasn’t sure any of them believed it.

  “Does that sound cool and deliberate? Sedate? Or was what he did something different? Was it manslaughter?” He retrieved the judge’s jury charge from the bench and read it: “‘Manslaughter is voluntary homicide, committed under the immediate influence of sudden passion, arising from an adequate cause, but neither justified nor excused by law.’ Remember what Judge Goodrich told you about sudden passion. It could be anger, rage, sudden resentment or terror, rendering him incapable of cool reflection.” He returned the charge to the judge. “Cicero Sweet, in sudden terror at facing a gun, reacted instantly. He might have caused the gun to go off, but he didn’t intend it. It was hardly cool reflection.”

  He passed the prosecution table and paused. “Captain Blair is one of t
he very finest lawyers I know. I’m sure he’ll say Cicero acted deliberately because Miss Georgia laughed at him—‘insulted his manhood’ is how he put it. Peter DeGroote told you that story, and Cicero swears it never happened. Who’s telling you the truth? Both told you lies about that night. Who do you believe? Does it make sense that Georgia and Cicero had been together in that bed since just after eleven, but it was only hours later after Peter arrived that she insulted Cicero’s manhood? Where had his manhood been before Peter arrived?”

  One juror smiled.

  He rubbed his hands together. “Why do people lie, gentlemen? Peter lied for the most dissolute of reasons, to protect the DeGroote family from the shame of their indiscretions. They were willing to send a boy to the scaffold to save themselves from public embarrassment. What a sorry thing to do.”

  He faced Cicero. “Why did Cicero lie? I don’t aim to excuse him. There’s no excuse. All I ask is you understand it. He told you why. He lied to save himself. To survive.”

  It was time.

  Fear not death, men. The day goes to the bold.

  He picked out the five jurors who were on the veteran’s list from the Cleburne Camp office and made eye contact with each, one by one, as he spoke. “I’ve thought a lot about survival lately. Earlier today I was in the cemetery among the graves of men who served in the war. Today is July fourth. Thirty-one years ago, thousands of young men were worried about their survival—at Gettysburg, at Vicksburg. Henry Sweet and I rode behind Captain Cicero Jenkins, this young man’s namesake. We were in middle Tennessee about then, all Cicero’s age. Some of you worried about survival three decades ago, too.”

  He locked eyes with juror Sam Powell. I know you remember the Red River swamps. And the bloody ground at Mansfield.

  “In war, we did terrible things in the name of survival, didn’t we? We killed other boys. We did it before they could kill us. That’s the way it was in those terrible days, in that terrible war. What are men willing to do when their survival is threatened? Captain Blair condemns Cicero for lying to survive, and I say men do terrible things to survive. Condemn him to death because he lied, if you choose—but you must live with that decision.”

  One of the five looked down.

  “It will soon be your responsibility to deliver the most solemn decision that any human is ever obligated to make. I know you don’t take that duty lightly. Cicero Sweet will leave this courtroom today living or dying by your choice. You hold his life in your hands. After you make your decision, each of you will go back to your lives—to your loved ones, to the farm or the drugstore or the railyard or wherever you live or work. You’ll go about life as before. But every night when you lie in bed, as your loved ones slumber, you’ll ask yourself—did I do right?”

  More looked down. Others watched Cicero. One glanced at his parents. Another fanned himself and stared off into the air. Wade Morrison listened, arms crossed.

  “Each of you must make that choice for yourself. You must decide in your own heart what’s right, and you must live with your choice all the rest of your days. You are each strong men; that’s why you were selected. You’re not the kind of men who’ll let someone else overbear your own convictions about right and wrong. You’re not the kind of men who’ll surrender your beliefs just so deliberations will end and you can go home.”

  He let that sink in. If a hung jury was all that was possible, so be it. Was he reaching them at all?

  “What is the right thing to do? What punishment is just? Judge Goodrich instructed you that you may punish manslaughter by a verdict of two to five years in prison.”

  He rolled the witness chair back across to the stand. All eyes followed him. He felt old and tired.

  The bell in the clock tower above struck five times. Outside, Colonel Terry bayed at it from the courthouse steps.

  Catfish stared upward, waiting. When bell and hound fell silent, he took from the court reporter’s desk the Bible used to swear witnesses and placed it on the witness rail. He braced himself on the rail and went to his knees, straining as he did. His knees popped loudly.

  “I’ve been fortunate in my lifetime never to have to beg anyone for anything”—his voice cracked—“but gentlemen, I’m not proud. If I can save a boy by begging, I will beg, and I do so now. Please, with God’s grace, spare Cicero’s life. I beseech you: Hear the other side. There’s been too much killing in our time. When we were young, foolish old men sent us to war to kill other young men. Now we’re the old men. Have we learned any better? Did we not see enough dead boys on the bloody battlefields of our youth? Is making another mother and father grieve really the right answer today? As we near the end of the bloodiest century in human history, is more killing still the answer to wrongdoing? A jury has the right to deliver its verdict with a mighty hand of retribution.”

  He raised his right hand above his head and clinched his fist. “But might doesn’t always make right.” He released the fist and placed his hand over his heart. “Is retribution the best impulse of the Christian heart?”

  He pinched his spectacles onto his nose and opened the Bible, turning pages until he found what he wanted. “‘He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?’”

  Not even human breath made a sound. He shut the book, removed his spectacles with a trembling hand, and struggled to his feet. Lord, help this old warrior rise one more time.

  He returned the Bible to its place and brushed himself off. “If we kill one more boy, will folks be any kinder to one another? Will the world be any better? Any safer? Must young men of this modern age still die so that fearful, foolish old men feel righteous? Will we all be at peace then?”

  He walked slowly back to his table, beads of sweat streaming down his face. His soggy white hair clung to his forehead. His eyes were moist. He placed his hands on Cicero’s shoulders.

  “The question is not so much what kind of young man Cicero is; it’s what kind of men are we. Walk humbly, gentlemen.”

  He sat.

  Blair’s rebuttal came swiftly. “Cicero Sweet wasn’t a soldier in war. He didn’t shoot Georgia Gamble in self-defense. He murdered her because it suited him. If you don’t condemn this killer, you send a message by your verdict to other men who think they can murder at their will in the Reservation. You’d condemn to death other people—whores or innocent people, anyone who angers them. Gentlemen, stand up for the law. Against anarchy. Stand up for decency. Save lives by your verdict. The defendant, Cicero Sweet, is guilty of murder in the first degree. And the penalty for death is death.”

  The courtroom remained subdued as the twelve jurors filed out for deliberation. Catfish stood as they went, a trickle of sweat stinging one eye closed.

  Blessed are the merciful.

  Chapter 42

  At seven forty-two, the jury knocked.

  Catfish tightened his tie.

  The courtroom refilled—Cicero, Harley, and Miss Peach joined him at the defense table. Captain Blair was at his. In the gallery, the Sweets bent in prayer with Jasper beside them, head bowed, all three with hands clasped.

  At eight, the clock tower bell pealed.

  “All rise!”

  Solemn silence settled upon the courtroom. First judge, then jury took their seats.

  “Mr. Morrison, I understand you’ve been elected foreman?” the judge asked.

  He rose. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Has the jury reached a verdict?”

  “Yes, we have.”

  “Very well, I’ll now read through it.”

  Catfish prompted Cicero to rise. They stood side by side, facing the court as the judge leafed through the pages. Cicero’s fingers clenched the edge of the table. Catfish folded his hands behind his back, eyes fixed on Judge Goodrich. It always ended thus—this moment, this inward breathlessness, this outward calmness. This quiet crest of disquiet.

  Judge Goodrich finally spoke. “It app
ears you’ve found the defendant, Cicero Sweet, guilty”—a mother’s gasp—“of manslaughter.”

  A rippling murmur passed across the room.

  “Is that correct?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Blessed are the peacemakers.

  “And you’ve assessed punishment at the maximum?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s our verdict.”

  “Cicero Sweet, I pronounce you guilty of manslaughter and sentence you to five years confinement in the state prison.”

  Chapter 43

  It was a fine day to rock on his front porch, smoking a cigar and reading a newspaper. The colonel’s head popped up when a hack rolled up on the street.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Calloway,” called a familiar voice. “Mind if I stop by?”

  Catfish waved. “How do, Jasper. You’re always welcome. Come on up here.”

  Jasper paid the driver and hopped down, pulling his bag after him. He sat in the other rocking chair and rubbed Colonel Terry’s ear. “Catching up on the news?”

  “Story in the Dallas paper about the trial.” He laughed. “Comes out the same way, but it sure sounds different the way Brown tells it.”

  Jasper nodded. “Cicero’s really going off to prison?”

  “He is. He’s decided not to appeal.”

  “I’m downright sorrowful for him, but I reckon that’s better than hanging.”

  “Cicero thinks so.”

  Jasper looked pensive. “So he really shot that girl, Mr. Calloway? Is that the truth?”

  “That’s what the jury says. They said Cicero killed her but didn’t do it with malice in his heart.”

  “Were they right?”

  “Juries don’t often get one wrong. They’re generally better than that.”

  “I ain’t never thought about that.”