Ben Hecht

“ His manner as well as his words repeated itself in my mind and I saw that Diennik, who had spent eleven years in jail for crimes he had never committed, had become unbalanced. He had been able to survive the injustice society had inflicted upon him only by succumbing to the illusion that he was guilty of the crimes for which he had been imprisoned. The innocent Diennik had become a phantom and during the years of loneliness the poor man had yielded himself to a delusion. ”

“ The manner in which the police learned of Diennik’s innocence is in itself a very strange story. A middle-aged man named Breitschide, arrested on suspicion of having robbed a grocery store, announced during a stern interrogation by the police that he was unable to bear the burden of his guilt any longer. He was innocent of robbing the grocery store, but fifteen years ago he had committed a series of crimes for which a man named Diennik had been arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years in jail. ”

“ Breitschide explained to the police that the abnormality which had made a criminal of him had left his nature and that, having become religious, he felt unable to live without expiating his early wrongs, among which he numbered as the greatest the unjust imprisonment of Diennik. In his confessions Breitschide supplied the police with intimate details of his crimes, which, corroborated by his astonished victims, removed all doubt of the man’s guilt. ”