The Anatomy of Murder. Helen Simpson

had taken his warnings too closely to heart, and announced that the matter must be re-tried with another jury.

      On Friday, just a week after the first trial began, proceedings were recommenced before the same judge. The evidence was heard again, summed up again, and the jury again dismissed to consider it at six in the evening. Two hours later they returned with the unanimous verdict: Guilty.

      The prisoner, asked in the usual formula if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed on him, uttered a long and coherent protest; his voice, the newspapers thought, “betrayed no trepidation, and perhaps only a natural weakness.” This statement was so long and circumstantial that the Judge, in his final address, felt called upon to reply to it point by point. Said His Honour:

      It is no infrequent thing for me to hear protestations of innocence after conviction; but I have never found it consistent with duty, truth, or the interests of society to accord them any serious consideration. Even under the gallows I have known their innocence protested by men of whose guilt I have felt as certain as of anything I have known personally myself, and whose guilt was demonstrated by evidence so clear that no human being possessed of the power of reason could doubt for an instant that the result arrived at had been right. Of course these protestations with many persons go for much, but by those with more experience, equal feeling, more responsibility, who desire to see justice and nothing more, they really pass unheeded.

      You are evidently a person of great ability, acuteness, and considerable cunning, with sufficient cleverness to seize upon weak points and make them appear an excuse, which to reflecting persons could be no palliation whatsoever.

      You say you are not afraid to die, and I trust you are not, but believe me that in the opinion of the majority of thinking men, wherever this evidence will go, you ought not to hope for forgiveness here.

      You say you desire only to clear your character. For whose sake? For the sake of your wife and children. Can it be possible that any human being that has heard what has passed at this trial, who has read the diary, who knows your intercourse with that abandoned woman, supposes that you attempt to clear your character for the sake of your wife and children? How can you, who in the same breath utter a falsehood, be believed in this?

      The jury having now pronounced their verdict, I am now at liberty to look at other matters I did not think proper to refer to before. I did not read one line of that to which I am now going to allude. I was informed that Mrs. Kinder might possibly have been tried upon evidence to be given by your wife. Upon inquiry I then made I found that she had indeed given some information that she was stated to have given to your sister in a confession, but having been permitted to see you, I believe she has receded from it.

      BERTRAND: I have never seen my wife since I have been in gaol.

      HIS LORDSHIP: Then it may be possible she has not receded from it. I shall feel myself called upon after your addresses to lay before the public that statement. If she was not called as a witness with the intelligence that you possess you must have known that she could not be called. She has made a statement which, unless your sister is perjured, positively confirms the verdict of the jury.

      BERTRAND: My sister is perjured.

      HIS LORDSHIP: Then the case displays unparalleled wickedness, but this, the deepest in dye—that a sister, for no object of her own, should falsely state that your wife admitted to her that you had shot Kinder. She may have some remains of affection for your children, and even for the character of their father, but can I doubt that your sister spoke the truth when she said she heard this extraordinary statement from you?

      I do not believe you are an insane man, but a perfectly sane man would never have made the declaration you have made; and I thoroughly believe your sister when she related this: “I said to his wife, Good God, has Henry really shot him”; and she answered, “Yes, he has.” Her details, too, are consistent with my idea of the mode in which the deed was done.

      Can anyone doubt the guilt when a man is accused by his wife and sister, and their statement sustains and accords with all the probabilities of the case? I hear your declaration with sorrow and with pain, but I place not the slightest dependence upon it.

      I have a greater responsibility than the jury and I declare to you now, before God, I believe you thoroughly guilty, and I have no more doubt of it than that you are before me at this moment; When I first heard the case I did entertain doubts, and I have lain awake hours thinking over the various points involved, and determined if those doubts were not moved not to try you again. But now I have not the slightest doubt of your guilt, and I believe I can demonstrate to any man that you are guilty.

      I think it utterly impossible for a rational person to believe that that man shot himself. You say he had intentions. I have had great experience in criminal trials, extending over thirty-two years, and have tried perhaps more cases than any judge in any country, and I have never known a case clearer than your own; nor have I known a single case in which a man who was really determined to kill himself talked about it to his friends. If a man talks of committing suicide, it is almost a proof that he never intends to take his life. Is there the slightest probability that without any temptation and with his pipe in his mouth—having only half an hour before been playing with his child, and just bought oysters for his wife and given them to the servant to prepare for supper—this unfortunate man should, no pistol having been seen in his possession about that time, go into the drawing-room in your presence, in the presence of your wife and his own, and commit a bungling attempt at suicide like that described by you? No person ever heard of such a thing in the annals of crime.

      He might have been embarrassed and addicted to drinking.

      Had he not been a drunkard his wife probably would not have been seduced by Jackson, and you would not have debauched her. If drink did not give the temptation to crime by him, it afforded opportunities for crime in others. All the records of Criminal Courts show repeated instances of crime being committed through the agency of drunkenness—the victim being a drunkard, and affording opportunities for crime against himself. I do not think Kinder was drunk on that day, but whether drunk or sober it is inconceivable that he could have intended to take his life in that bungling, stupid, incredible manner. I find you had every temptation, every motive, for destroying him. You were madly in love with this woman, with a passion eating into your vitals, and you would have committed any crime to have her as your own. Half mad I believe you to be, for you never could have talked as you did, unless there was a partial disturbance of your mind—wild, eccentric, strange, to an utterly unprecedented degree, your mind was overshadowed by the influence this unhappy woman had acquired over you.

      I hear you say that at the time of writing the impassioned sentences to her, burning with love, you had no other intent than to satisfy the cravings of her romantic feelings. Why, you admit you wrote them as a deep and abandoned hypocrite. I do not believe it. I believe that, maddened by the passion of your attachment to her, you did this terrible deed, and your statements previous were to be accounted for by the idea that in saying his death was likely to occur, when it eventually took place you as his friend would not be looked on with suspicion. I do not make any excuses for Jackson; his conduct was extremely bad. But I feel some sympathy for him, believing that he spoke the truth. I think he deserves punishment, but the law was never meant for a case like his, but for persons who wrote threatening to accuse persons of crimes they never committed, I am satisfied that he believed what he said you did to him in uttering dark, mysterious, dangerous hints, and used expressions justifying him in the belief that you intended to commit the murder; and, therefore, I think the man should be pardoned. He has had sufficient punishment for writing that imprudent letter. But he did not demand money by threatening to accuse you of crime without having grounds for believing you committed it.

      You allude to what you call a prejudice against you, yet you must see that it arises in an abhorrence of your proved crimes, and which is the most universal feeling of the country, and this verdict will, I believe, be received with perfect approval.

      Nothing can pain a Judge so much as the assumption that a verdict is unjust. I believe you to be guilty, and I shall feel deeper pain than I express if I thought there were anything wrong in the verdict, because I am satisfied you will suffer death. I am sure you deserve