Criminals -- Fiction; Social problems -- Fiction; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918 -- Fiction
There were few persons in the court-room besides the clerk and the
bailiff, Marriott and Pennell, Eades and Lamborn. It was a bleak day;
outside a mean wind that had been blowing for three days off the lake
swept the streets bare of their refuse and swirled it everywhere in
clouds of filth. The sky was gray, and the cold penetrated to the
marrow; men hurried along with their heads huddled in the collars of
their overcoats--if they had overcoats; they winced and screwed their
faces in the stinging cold, longing for sunshine, for snow, for rain,
for anything to break the monotony of this weather. Within the
court-room the gloom was intensified by the doom that was about to be
pronounced. While they waited, Eades and Lamborn sat at a table,
uneasily moving now and then; Marriott walked up and down; no one spoke.
Glassford was scowling over his calendar, pausing now and then, lifting
his eyes and looking off, evidently making a calculation.
When Bentley and Danner came at last with Archie, and unshackled him,
Glassford did not look up. He kept his head bowed over his docket; now
and then he looked at his calendar, the leaves of which rattled and
trembled as he turned them over. Then they waited, every one there, in
silence. After a while, Glassford spoke. He spoke in a low voice, into
which at first he did not succeed in putting much strength:
"Koerner, you may stand up."
Archie rose promptly, his heels clicked together, his hands dropped
stiffly to his side; he held his head erect, as he came to the military
attitude of attention. But Glassford did not look at him. He was gazing
out of the window again toward that mysterious window across the street.
"Have you anything to say why the sentence of this court should not be
passed upon you?" he asked presently.
"No, sir," said Archie. He was looking directly at Glassford, but
Glassford did not look at him. Glassford waited, studying how he should
begin. The reporters were poising their pencils nervously.
"Koerner," Glassford began, still looking away, "after a fair and
impartial trial before a jury of twelve sworn men you have been found
guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree. The trial was
conducted carefully and deliberately; the jury was composed of honest
and representative men, and you were defended, and all your rights
conserved by able counsel. You have had the benefit of every immunity
known to our law, and yet, after calm deliberation, as the court has
said, you have been found guilty. We have, in addition to that, here
to-day heard a motion for a new trial; we have very carefully reviewed
the evidence and the law in this case, and the court is convinced that
no errors were committed on the trial detrimental to your rights in the
premises or prejudicial to your interests. It now becomes the duty of
the court to pass sentence upon you."
Glassford paused, removed his glasses, put them on again; and looked out
of the window as before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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