Roland Burnham Molineux

“ For three months he will be allowed to pour expert testimony into the jury box. And by the way, if a man is guilty, does it take a matter of a quarter of a million and a quarter of a year to show it? At this trial proper—or rather improper—the caricaturist with drawing-board, the jackal reporters—all the cannibals of Park Row, join in the man hunt. Nothing is sacred. ”

“ Osborne’s attack upon the prisoner’s wife paved the way for his most telling defeat. It opened the door for Molineux. It permitted him to recount the romance of the ring. It gave him an opportunity to show that there was more in him than a keen and wary brain—that there was a heart. And that went home to the jury. All the world loves love, and a 261juryman is like the rest of us—part of the world.
He gave Molineux his opportunity, for the man who defends a woman is always in the right. ”

“ No man, however innocent, can successfully combat the fourth degree. Everything has worked like a charm; but at last, after two years, perhaps, or more, the case reaches the Court 136of Appeals. Then the master stroke is given, the finesse of which is startling even to old criminal lawyers. That the conviction has been obtained illegally is universally admitted. How will the attorney for the people induce the Court of Appeals to sustain it? Of course, the method will be in the nature of an innovation; for the fourth degree is a new thing, and just as certainly will it be something unjust. ”

“ On one side is life—such as it is—on the other instant death.
To pass through will be an experience 25surely. It is seldom opened; I have observed it so just seven times; but when it is ajar—things happen. Whenever we look out of our cages we see it; we close our eyes—we still see it. When exercising in the corridor one passes and repasses it; though we walk away, we know we are going towards it. Thinking by day and dreaming by night, it is always with us, and irresistible is its fascination. All else here is insignificant; and to us the Death-Chamber is but “The Room with the Little Door.” ”

“ A shadow, and a voice which calls to us, that is his identity. There are no windows in these cells; three sides are solid wall; their fronts face the corridor, and are barred like cages. In them one can easily imagine himself a bear in a menagerie, even to the sore head that animal is afflicted with more or less occasionally. ”

“ Is there anything to tell about this living death—this sort of noiseless purgatory in which, as the months go by, past experiences, the hopes and fears and happinesses which were, grow fainter and fainter, till, like the future, they inspire us with nothing but indifference, leaving only the present to be endured? ”

“ For this reason experts in handwriting cannot even agree together on their own specialty. They lack the unity of even a trade. Experts in handwriting have no guild—no society. Why is this? Because this class of professional witnesses can never formulate their conflicting theories; they cannot agree on any one point; they have no common standards, no principles laid down and agreed to, no mutual foundation or basis for their theories to rest upon. Again why? Because they would have to violate them in the very next case into which they might be called. ”

“ I think of the prosecution’s case. They will convict me, of course. I reconsider it from my point of view. No, they cannot! No jury in the world could convict on such theories. But on what will they base an acquittal? There was no defence. I remember the surprises 218the district attorney’s office has sprung upon me—the unanswered witnesses, the fervent experts swearing to the impassioned hypothetical questions of the prosecutor, and his closing address, scathing, unjust. There is no chance for me—the odds are thousands to one against acquittal. ”

“ It is a continuation of the others, after the affair reaches the hands of an Assistant District Attorney with an ambition for a record for securing convictions—one looking for a reputation. It is made possible by twin evils of recent birth: yellow journalism 126and expert testimony. Summed up, it is the use of slander and perjury. In the “fourth degree” the pen is mightier than the night stick—the victim is not pounded with the “locust,” but in the press. Like the fourth dimension of space, if there is one, this state of affairs is invisible; but invisible only because we will not observe. ”

“ Anything, 205everything is better than existence in the Death-Chamber.
During the night, if you have lain awake, and one has been known to be so foolish, you may have felt a very slight vibration, perhaps it is imagination; perhaps it is the dynamo. If you have slept, and do not hear the death-watch draw down the curtains in front of all the cells when the night outside turns gray, you will surely be awakened by the noise of many feet. It is the priests who have entered. Their ordinary shoes on the flagging of the corridor sound like thunder, thunder moving away. ”

“ We seek to appropriate his experience, and naturally turn in our inquiry to those who seem best qualified to supply our wants. The true expert should be, then, a very particular specialist. In the field of industry and art we should require that he be experienced and successful. In science, that he possess definite knowledge—exactness.
So far, no complaint whatever can be made against the employment of experts (specialists) . It is a necessary thing; it occurs every day in everyday life, and their testimony is very properly allowed in criminal and other court proceedings. ”

“ And where to if not this little space the earthly part had occupied so long and where every emotion had been known? Surely this cell 74would be the first place to attract the released spirit. Here for the deceased had been the dreamings of past days, the horror of the realized present, the torture of the anticipated future. Long days and longer nights in which the inmate had burned with the fever of hope or shivered with the chill of despair. In this room his mind had been the home of every emotion. ”

“ A Dissertation on the Third Degree That the present condition of affairs regarding the administration of justice in New York City is unsatisfactory, will hardly be denied, while such glaring instances of recent incompetency are fresh in the public mind. The many comments and editorials appearing in the best metropolitan newspapers attest that our citizens are conscious of the defects in this department, while the press of other cities throughout the country, and even abroad, reminds us in no uncertain tones how we are regarded by our neighbors. ”

“ You stole the jewelry yourself, you know you did! Your hidden sins stand revealed in all their repulsiveness. The finger of sensational journalism has torn the mask of hypocrisy, so long and successfully worn, from your repellant countenance at last. Confess, miserable wretch! Pictures of Judas Iscariot, Captain Kidd, and others of their type appear in the hysterical press. They are all labelled with your name. How you will be roasted! “It is said,” etc., that on dark nights you steal forth to exhume deceased infants from their tombs—and to eat them. ”

“ But it is undoubtedly wrong when used unjustly; as, for instance, by the State or a very rich man against 183an opponent too poor to protect himself—and the testimony of experts in handwriting is often so used. It is especially unjust when an expert on a scientific subject holds no other commission or diploma than one bestowed upon him by—himself—an expert in handwriting has no other.
No one would employ a self-instructed physician, retain a self-taught lawyer, or a chemist who never went to school; in fact, the self-educated are almost excluded from the higher professions. ”

“ In these cases the guilty man, whoever he may be, never comes forward to admit his crime, so that the expert can blame whom he pleases or, rather, whom he is paid to blame. It is simplicity itself—similarities are to be pointed out. It is self-evident that all writings must contain similarities, for were there no resemblances the art of writing would be useless. In fact, that one person can read another person’s writing, is based on this principle. ”

“ The guards pace up and down night and day, always watching. There is no sound while they do this, as their shoes, like ours, are soled with felt. It is like living, eating, sleeping, and bathing in a search-light. It is like being alive, yet buried in a glass coffin. ”

“ Molineux acknowledged that he knew the husband. The prosecutor nodded significantly to the jurymen. They, being men of the world, and some of them bull-necked men of the world, did not seem to take it very seriously. Molineux seemed rather ashamed of it. Osborne, however, would not let go. Three times he went over it, as a woman wipes a dish, turning it first on this side and then on that. At last the good gray judge wearied of it. ”

“ Sometimes when an important trial is closing and the jury is out till midnight 98perhaps, we, the inhabitants of the Tombs, sit up and listen for the little bell which rings in the prison, because one of us is being brought back across the “Bridge of Sighs.”
Here he comes! “What did you get?” calls out a friend from the top tier, and there is a clutch at every heart, a horror that you on the outside will never be able to appreciate, when we hear the answer, the sentence most dreaded—“Life.” ”

“ From the moment we arrive the monotony begins, and continues always, broken now and then by such excitement as a half hour’s exercise in the corridor, the weekly bath and shave, and, best of all, a visit, which must be from some member of our immediate family. ”

“ Think of it; as long a life-time as you will, is composed of what? Of course I mean mentally—not what happens; that is hardly worth chronicling. What constitutes our interest in life? Surely it is because we cannot tell what the next day—or the next moment, for that matter—may bring forth. We hope, but uncertainty gives that hope its zest. ”

“ There were strong men there, determined men, who had done and would do desperate things. But there was one song ever in our minds and in our hearts that never came to our lips, and which not one of us would have dared even to hum. ”

“ We see our guest through those miserable bars and netting which divide us. A keeper must hear everything we say. These things are all that ever happen in that chamber of death, except greeting new arrivals, and saying good-by now and then to a fellow we have suffered with. No newspapers come to us, but books from the excellent library, as many as one 23wants, are supplied. ”

“ This is American, this is fair play, it is a helping hand to the under dog. Under, because the fearless prosecutor can spend, and has often spent, hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain a conviction. His limit is the sky, for it costs his pocket nothing, and when the prosecution makes the issue on expert testimony, the odds on conviction will be two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which the State may perhaps spend, to this five hundred dollars granted to the defendant. ”

“ In front of the bars and curtains are wire nettings to keep our visitors from coming too near us. There are no hand-clasps, no kisses. The corridor and cells constitute the 21Death-Chamber. It has two doors; an entrance—few of the condemned ever use that door for any other purpose; and an exit—a final one—leading into the Execution Room and to the “Chair.”
It is very light indeed in the Death-Chamber. Glass skylights by day, and gas and electric light by night, throw their beams into every corner of our cages of steel and stone. There is no privacy. ”

“ If upon his trial the rogue should plead that an illegal confession had been wrung from him, and the police should deny it, would you go to court and corroborate the thief, or would you “lie like a gentleman”?
The question is, Is the “third degree” ever used to compel a confession from an innocent person, or to satisfy a grudge? In either case the abuse, not the use, is to be condemned. Are theories made up without evidence, and some poor victim made to fit the case by means of torture? Was “Frenchy” 124really innocent and in prison all those years? ”