(c) If a denying fellow-criminal is accused by a confession, the
interpretation of the latter becomes difficult. First of all, the pure
kernel of the confession must be brought to light, and everything set
aside that might serve to free the confessor and involve the other in
guilt. This portion of the work is comparatively the easiest, inasmuch
as it depends upon the circumstances of the crime. It is more difficult
to determine what degree of crime the confessor attached to himself by
accusing also the other man, because clearness can be reached in such a
case only by working out the situation from beginning to end in two
directions; first, by studying it without reference to the
fellow-criminal, second, with such reference. The complete elimination
of the additional circumstance is exceedingly troublesome because it
requires the complete control of the material and because it is always
psychologically difficult so to exclude an event already known in its
development and inference as to be able to formulate a theory quite
without reference to it.
If this is really accomplished and some positive fact is established in
the self-accusation, the question becomes one of finding the value seen
by the confessor in blaming himself together with his fellow. Revenge,
hatred, jealousy, envy, anger, suspicion, and other passions will be the
forces in which this value will be found. One man brings his ancient
comrade into jeopardy in revenge for the latter’s injustice in the
division of the booty, or in deliberate anger at the commission of some
dangerous stupidity in a burglary. Again, it often happens that he or
she, through jealousy, accuses her or him in order that the other may be
also imprisoned, and so not become disloyal. Business jealousy, again,
is as influential as the attempt to prevent another from disposing of
some hidden booty, or from carrying out by himself some robbery planned
in partnership. These motives are not always easy to discover but are
conceivable. There are also cases, not at all rare, in which the
ordinary man is fully lacking in comprehension of “the substitute
value,” which makes him confess the complicity of his fellow. I am going
to offer just one example, and inasmuch as the persons concerned are
long since dead, will, by way of exception, mention their names and the
improbability of their stories. In 1879 an old man, Blasius Kern, was
found one morning completely snowed over and with a serious wound in the
head. There was no possible suspicion of robbery as motive of the
murder, inasmuch as the man was on his way home drunk, as usual, and it
was supposed that he had fallen down and had smashed his skull. In 1881
a young fellow, Peter Seyfried, came to court and announced that he had
been hired by Blasius Kern’s daughter, Julia Hauck, and her husband
August Hauck, to kill the old fellow, who had become unendurable through
his love of drink and his endless quarrelsomeness; and accordingly he
had done the deed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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