The Gilded Age - Mark Twain [198]
The jury were visibly affected. Half the court room was in tears. If a vote of both spectators and jury could have been taken then, the verdict would have been, “let her go, she has suffered enough.”
But the district attorney had the closing argument. Calmly and without malice or excitement he reviewed the testimony. As the cold facts were unrolled, fear settled upon the listeners. There was no escape from the murder or its premeditation. Laura’s character as a lobbyist in Washington, which had been made to appear incidentally in the evidence, was also against her. The whole body of the testimony of the defense was shown to be irrelevant, introduced only to excite sympathy, and not giving a color of probability to the absurd supposition of insanity. The attorney then dwelt upon the insecurity of life in the city, and the growing immunity with which women committed murders. Mr. McFlinn made a very able speech, convincing the reason without touching the feelings.
The Judge in his charge reviewed the testimony with great show of impartiality. He ended by saying that the verdict must be acquital or murder in the first degree. If you find that the prisoner committed a homicide, in possession of her reason and with premeditation, your verdict will be accordingly. If you find she was not in her right mind, that she was the victim of insanity, hereditary or momentary, as it has been explained, your verdict will take that into account.
As the Judge finished his charge, the spectators anxiously watched the faces of the jury. It was not a remunerative study. In the court room the general feeling was in favor of Laura, but whether this feeling extended to the jury, their stolid faces did not reveal. The public outside hoped for a conviction, as it always does; it wanted an example; the newspapers trusted the jury would have the courage to do its duty. When Laura was convicted, then the public would turn around and abuse the governor if he did not pardon her.
The jury went out. Mr. Braham preserved his serene confidence, but Laura’s friends were dispirited. Washington and Col. Sellers had been obliged to go to Washington, and they had departed under the unspoken fear that the verdict would be unfavorable,—a disagreement was the best they could hope for, and money was needed. The necessity of the passage of the University bill was now imperative.
The Court waited for some time, but the jury gave no signs of coming in. Mr. Braham said it was extraordinary. The Court then took a recess for a couple of hours. Upon again coming in, word was brought that the jury had not yet agreed.
But the jury had a question. The point upon which they wanted instruction was this:—They wanted to know if Col. Sellers was related to the Hawkins family. The court then adjourned till morning.
Mr. Braham, who was in something of a pet, remarked to Mr. O’Toole that they must have been deceived—that jury-man with the broken nose could read!
CHAPTER 57
“Wegotogwen ga-ijiwebadogwen; gonima ta-matchi-inakamigad.”
The momentous day was at hand—a day that promised to make or mar the fortunes of the Hawkins family for all time. Washington Hawkins and Col. Sellers were both up early, for neither of them could sleep. Congress was expiring, and was passing bill after bill as if they were gasps and each likely to be its last. The University was on file for its third reading this day, and to-morrow Washington would be a millionaire and Sellers no longer impecunious; but this day, also, or at farthest the next, the jury in Laura’s case would come to a decision of some kind or other—they would find her guilty, Washington secretly feared, and then