An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [392]
“Gentlemen of the jury, I have no doubt that you, as well as the district attorney and even the audience, have wondered how under the downpour of such linked and at times almost venomous testimony, I or my colleague or this defendant could have remained as calm and collected as we have.” (And here he waved with grave ceremoniousness in the direction of his partner, who was still waiting his own hour.) “Yet, as you have seen, we have not only maintained but enjoyed the serenity of those who not only feel but KNOW that they have the right and just end of any legal contest. You recall, of course, the words of the Avon bard—’Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just.’
“In fact, we know, as the prosecution in this case unfortunately does not, the peculiarly strange and unexpected circumstances by which this dramatic and most unfortunate death came about. And before we are through you shall see for yourselves. In the meantime, let me tell you, gentlemen, that since this case opened I have believed that even apart from the light we propose to throw on this disheartening tragedy, you gentlemen are not at all sure that a brutal or bestial crime can be laid upon the shoulders of this defendant. You cannot be! For after all, love is love, and the ways of passion and the destroying emotion of love in either sex are not those of the ordinary criminal. Only remember, we were once all boys. And those of you who are grown women were girls, and know well—oh, how very well—the fevers and aches of youth that have nothing to do with a later practical life. ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged and with whatsoever measure ye mete, it will be measured unto ye again.’
“We admit the existence and charm and potent love spell of the mysterious Miss X and her letters, which we have not been able to introduce here, and their effect on this defendant. We admit his love for this Miss X, and we propose to show by witnesses of our own, as well as by analyzing some of the testimony that has been offered here, that perhaps the sly and lecherous overtures with which this defendant is supposed to have lured the lovely soul now so sadly and yet so purely accidentally blotted out, as we shall show, from the straight and narrow path of morality, were perhaps no more sly nor lecherous than the proceedings of any youth who finds the girl of his choice surrounded by those who see life only in the terms of the strictest and narrowest moral regime. And, gentlemen, as your own county district attorney has told you, Roberta Alden loved Clyde Griffiths. At the very opening of this relationship which has since proved to be a tragedy, this dead girl was deeply and irrevocably in love with him, just as at the time he imagined that he was in love with her. And people who are deeply and earnestly in love with each other are not much concerned with the opinions of others in regard to themselves. They are in love— and that is sufficient!
“But, gentlemen, I am not going to dwell on that phase of the question so much as on this explanation which we are about to offer. Why did Clyde Griffiths go to Fonda, or to Utica, or to Grass Lake, or to Big Bittern, at all? Do you think we have any reason for or any desire to deny or discolor in any way the fact of his having done so, or with Roberta Alden either? Or why, after the suddenness and seeming strangeness and mystery of her death, he should have chosen to walk away as he did? If you seriously think so for one fraction of a moment, you are the most hopelessly deluded and mistaken dozen jurymen it has been our privilege to argue before in all our twenty-seven years’ contact with juries.
“Gentlemen, I have said to you that Clyde Griffiths is not guilty, and he is not. You may think, perhaps,