Searle continued, lapsing now into an argumentative strain.
"The defendant himself has said that the case against him is without a
flaw. He has had the effrontery to urge that your Honor accept the
testimony against him as true testimony. He has only argued that if we
are to believe the witnesses for the prosecution, we are also to believe
him. I say—I affirm with all the force at my command—that we are not to
believe him at all!
"I ask your Honor to consider first the motive for his testimony. The
man is hopelessly involved. The charge of burglary is a simple one,
compared with the broader indictment of moral profligacy which the whole
community is at this moment prepared to find against him. Ruin stares
him in the face. His pose is shattered. His disguise is penetrated.
If he goes from this court room to the identification bureau of which he
has spoken in his mawkish plea for sympathy, as I believe he will go, he
goes to be catalogued with criminals, and to be damned forever in the
esteem of his neighbors.
"To avert that, would not your Honor expect this defendant to be willing
to perjure himself without a qualm? Will a man who has lived a lie
before a whole community for five years hesitate to add another in an
endeavor to avert his impending fate? Will a man who has stolen the
jewels of his trusted friend hesitate to swear falsely in denial of such
an act? Will a man who has worked upon the sympathy of his friends to
secure large sums of money for a purpose so doubtful that it is
undisclosed— Will he hesitate to work upon the sympathies here by words
and implications, by innuendoes that are as false to religion as to
fact?
"Your Honor knows that he would not so hesitate. Your Honor knows,
through long familiarity with the law of evidence, that the testimony of
a defendant in his own behalf, because of his intense interest in the
outcome of his case, is always to be weighed with extreme care.
"I believe under such circumstances not only the motives, the springs of
action, but the probable mental processes of the witness are to be taken
into account. I ask your Honor what a defendant involved in the mesh of
circumstantial evidence here presented would probably do under these
circumstances. Your own judgment answers with mine that he would
probably lie, and exactly as this defendant has lied!"
Again Searle turned and shook his long arm with insulting undulations in
the direction of the defendant, after which he continued:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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