The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [252]
By the time all twelve seats in the jury box had been filled, there was no real way to determine which side had the upper hand in terms of the personal inclinations of the men in the chairs. But if I’d been forced to bet on it, I would’ve said that the balance was leaning in Mr. Darrow’s favor—and the fact that Mr. Moore brought word back from the Casino that night that the odds against a conviction had gone up to sixty to one seemed to bear this feeling out. For Mr. Picton, the battle would start out as an uphill one.
Still, we did have witnesses and evidence in our favor, and there wasn’t any real reason yet to believe that these wouldn’t change the opinions of even those jurors what were privately inclined to view the charges against Libby Hatch with some doubt; after all, Sheriff Dunning had started out skeptical about the prosecution’s case, but’d had his mind thoroughly changed by the grand jury proceedings. Knowing all this, Mr. Picton stayed in his office very late on Monday night, going over his opening statement (to be delivered the next morning) and also the schedule according to which he planned to reveal circumstantial evidence and call witnesses. Mrs. Hastings asked me to take some food up to the court house at about midnight, and I found Mr. Picton still going like a madman, smoking, reading, rehearsing, and once again having at the hair on his face and head like he was intent on doing himself some injury. The sight made me marvel all the more at how he was able to come across so cool and collected in the actual courtroom: I knew that there was no telling where a particular person might feel the most at ease with the world, but the difference in this case between the anxious, slightly peculiar man we knew outside the courtroom and the steady, brilliant lawyer we saw pursue the case against Libby Hatch was so extreme as to be confusing.
But confusing or not, Mr. Picton was always impressive in court, especially the following morning, when he opened the case against Libby Hatch. At ten o’clock Judge Brown gaveled the proceedings to order, and Iphegeneia Blaylock got her quick hands ready to record Mr. Picton’s statement. When the assistant district attorney rose to address the jury, there was no sign on his face of the devilish smile what had been in evidence throughout the arraignment and the jury selection: he was all seriousness, knowing, it seemed to me, that his change in mood would cause the jury to sit up and take special notice from the start. Wearing a dark suit what seemed to reinforce the idea that he’d come before them on business what he had no personal wish to pursue, Mr. Picton paced in front of the jury box for a minute or so before speaking; only when he saw the faces of the twelve men inside that box grow completely attentive and what you might call receptive did he open his mouth.
“Gentlemen,” he began, in a much slower and more melancholy way than was his habit, “you have heard the state’s charges against the defendant. But there are facts outside the indictment of which you should be aware.” Mr. Picton lifted a hand toward the defense table without looking over at Libby Hatch. “This woman has recently been deprived of her husband, a man of great bravery who earlier in life sacrificed his health to the noble causes of Union and emancipation. You must none of you think that the state is unaware of this fact, or that it would, as the counsel for the defense has intimated in the local press, disturb the mourning of such a woman simply for the sake of solving an old and troubling crime. I tell you honestly, we would not do it. Even had we the time to pursue such private, perverse agendas, the memory of a man who was one of his country’s many heroes at a critical hour would block our path, as surely as the felling of a mighty tree would block the passage of traffic on the Charlton road.”
I was leaning forward in my chair, not only to make