A Matter of Conviction

“Then we might just as well forget law and order,” Hank said. “We might just as well become barbarians.”

“No. The law was designed by men to fill the needs of men. If our justice is not pure, it is at least an attempt to maintain the inherent dignity of man. If someone has been wronged, it is the duty of society to give him redress. Your Rafael Morrez was allegedly wronged. An act of larceny was committed against him. The grandest sort of larceny. His life was stolen from him. And now Morrez, or society speaking for Morrez, is seeking redress. You are protecting the dignity of Rafael Morrez by prosecuting those who allegedly wronged him.”

“And this is justice,” Hank said.

“No, this is not justice. Because if we were truly seeking justice, the Rafael Morrez case would consume a lifetime. Don’t you see, Hank? In our courtrooms, we are concerned only with blacks and whites. Did these three boys commit this crime against this other boy? If so, they are guilty of first-degree murder and must be punished as specified by law. If not, they are free. But where are the grays? How can a man be fair, and truthful, and equitable, when he has only the most obvious black and white facts before him?”

“The county will present all the facts, Abe. You know that.”

“The facts of the crime, yes. And, of course, there will be psychologists presented by both sides, and the defense will try to show that these poor boys were misguided and a product of our times, and you will try to show that we cannot blame our times for the product, that a modern murderer is no different from a Colonial murderer. Three weeks from now, the jury will listen to all this, weighing the facts of the crime, and I will guide them as to points of law in the case. And then they will turn in their verdict. And if they decide the boys are not guilty, I shall free them. And if they decide the boys are guilty of first-degree murder, and if they do not ask for leniency, I shall do what I am duty-bound and sworn to do. I shall administer sentence as prescribed by the law. I shall send those three boys to the electric chair.”

“Yes,” Hank said, and he nodded.

“But will that be justice?” Samalson shook his head doubtfully. “Crime and punishment. A noble concept. But how much of our system of punishment is based on the guilt-ridden complexity of modern man? Are we satisfying our own hunger for self-punishment every time we level sentence on a so-called criminal?”

“You can’t apply modern psychology to laws conceived thousands of years ago, Abe.”

“Can’t I? What makes you think man has changed so very much in the past thousand years? We’re the guiltiest animals on the face of the earth. And we share a race memory of guilt. And we cover our shame with the high-flown notion that justice will triumph. But I’ll tell you something, Hank, and this I firmly believe, and it has nothing to do with my ability to judge a case as I’m supposed to. I do that very well within the specified confines of my job. But I do not believe that justice very often triumphs. There are more murderers loose than I’d care to count. And I’m not talking about the people who pull the trigger or plunge the blade. Until mankind can decide where the act of murder begins, there will be no real justice. There will only be men armed with rhetoric and — like our friend Mike Barton in his reporter role — they will only be playing at the game of administering justice. They will only be fakes.”

Samalson looked up at the stars.

Somberly he said, “Maybe it takes a God. We’re only men.”

He began preparing his case on Monday and, with the trial three weeks away, he found he could not get the judge’s words out of his mind.