Capital punishment -- Fiction; Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Criminals -- Fiction; Prisoners -- Fiction
“The lawyer wa’n’t a bad feller, and he seemed interested in the case,
and was the first person I’d seen since I done it who wanted to help me.
Of course I could see he was new at the business, like one of them
green-horns that comes in the yards the first time and brings a stick to
couple cars with; but I liked his face and seen he was honest. It didn’t
seem quite fair, though, that I should have a lawyer that hadn’t never
had a case. I didn’t believe they’d take a young feller who was just out
of a medicine-college and set him to cut off a leg all by himself, the
first thing, or even take a country-jake and let him kill steers at the
stock-yards, but I didn’t see no way to help it, and I thought mebbe if
I didn’t take him I’d do worse instead of better. He asked me all about
the case and seemed disappointed when I told him how it was; he said he
was afraid there wa’n’t much show, unless he claimed insanity. I told
him I didn’t see how he could make out that I was crazy; that I thought
self-defense or somethin’ like that would be better. He said he’d think
it over till tomorrow, and talk with some of the professors at the
college, and be in court in the mornin’. The next day they come for me
right after breakfast, and put on the han’-cuffs and took me to court
again. The same kind of a crowd was there as the day before, and I was
pretty badly scart; but my lawyer was at the table with me, and he spoke
to me real friendly, and that made me feel a little better. Then the
judge called the case, and asked if I had a lawyer, and my lawyer spoke
up and said he was goin’ to defend me; so the judge said all right, and
asked if the other side was ready. They said they was, and that they
wanted the case tried right off. Then the judge asked my lawyer if he
was ready and he said ‘no,’ that he’d just come into the case and hadn’t
had no chance to get it ready. Then the lawyer on the other side said
that I was notified yesterday that I must be ready today and I didn’t
have anything to do but get ready; that they wanted to try it now; that
next week he wanted to go to a picnic, and the week after to a
convention, and it must be done now; then, there had been so many
murders that no one was safe in Chicago, and the whole public was
anxious to see the case tried at once. Besides there wa’n’t any defense.
I had killed her and run away, and wa’n’t entitled to any consideration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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