Sampson had been uncommonly successful in evading jury service. By some hook or crook he always had managed to “get off,” and he had begun to regard his trips down to General or Special Sessions—coming with monotonous regularity about three times a year—as interruptions instead of annoyances. Wise men advised him to serve and get it over with for the time being, but he had been so steadfastly resourceful in confining his jury service to brief and uneventful “appearances,” and to occasional examinations as to his fitness to serve as a juror, that he preferred to trust to his smartness rather than to their wisdom. Others suggested that he get on the “sheriff’s jury,” a quaintly distinguished method of serving the commonwealth in that the members perform their duty as citizens in such a luxurious and expensive way that they never appear in the newspapers as “twelve good men and true” but as contributors to somewhat compulsory festivities in which justice is done to the inner man alone. But Sampson, though rich, ab-hored the sheriff’s jury. He preferred to invent excuses rather than to have them thrust upon him.
Having escaped service on half-a-dozen murder trials by shrewd and original responses to important questions by counsel for one side or the other—(it really didn’t matter to Sampson which side it was so long as he saw the loophole)—he found himself at last in the awkward position of having exhausted all reasonable excuses, and was obliged to confess one day in court that he had reconsidered his views in regard to capital punishment. This confession resulted, of course, in his name being dropped from the “special panel,” for the jury commissioner did not want any man in that august body who couldn’t see his way clear to taking the life of another. He “got off” once on the ground that he was quite certain he could not convict on circumstantial evidence, despite the assurance of learned experts that it is the best evidence of all, and he escaped another time because he did not consider insanity a defence in homicidal cases.
Then they drew him for Special Sessions and eventually for the humiliating lower courts, the result being that his resourcefulness was under a constant and ever increasing strain. Where once he had experienced a rather pleasing interest in “getting off” in important cases, he now found himself very hard put to escape service in the most trifling of criminal trials.
He began to complain bitterly of the injustice to himself, an honest, upright citizen who was obliged to live in a constant state of apprehension. He felt like a hunted animal. He was no sooner safely out of one case when he was called for another.
It was all wrong. Why should he be hounded like this when the city was full of men eager to earn two dollars a day and who would not in the least mind sitting cross-legged and idle all day long in a jury box—snoozing perhaps—in order to do their duty as citizens? Moreover, there were men who actually needed the money, and there were lots of them who were quite as honest as the prisoners on trial or even the witnesses who testified.
He was quite sure that if he ever was sworn in as a juror, his entire sympathy would be with the prisoner at the bar, for he would have a fellow feeling for the unhappy wretch who also was there because he couldn’t help it. The jury system was all wrong, claimed Sampson. For example, said he, a man is supposed to be tried by twelve of his peers. That being the case, a ruffian from the lower East Side should be tried by his moral and mental equals and not by his superiors. By the same argument, a brainy, intelligent bank or railway president, an editor, or a college professor, should not be tried by twelve incompetent though perfectly honest window-washers. Any way you looked at it, the jury system was all wrong. The more Sampson thought about it the more fully convinced was he that something ought to be done about it.
He had been obliged to miss two weddings, a private-car jaunt to Aiken, one of the Harvard-Yale football matches, the docking of the Olympic when she carried at least one precious passenger, the sailing of the Cedric when she carried an equally precious but more exacting object of interest, a chance to meet the Princess Pat, and a lot of other things that he wouldn’t have missed for anything in the world notwithstanding the fact that he couldn’t remember, off hand, just what they were. Suffice it to say, this miserable business of “getting off” juries kept Sampson so occupied that he found it extremely difficult to get on with anything else.
He was above trying to “fix” any one. Other men, he knew, had some one downtown who could get them off with a word to the proper person, and others were of sufficient importance politically to make it impossible for them to be in contempt of court. That’s what he called “fixing things.”
Shortly after the holidays he was served with a notice to appear and be examined as to his fitness to serve as juror in the case of the State vs. James W. Hildebrand. Now, he had made all his arrangements for a trip to California. In fact, he planned to leave New York on the twenty-first of January, and here he was being called into court on the twentieth. Something told him that the presiding justice was sure to be one of those who had witnessed one or more of his escapes from service on previous occasions, and that the honourable gentleman in the long black gown would smile sadly and shake his head if he protested that he was obliged to get off because he had to go to California for his health. The stupidest judge on earth would know at a glance that Sampson didn’t have to go anywhere for his health. He really had more of it than was good for him.
If he hadn’t been so healthy he might have relished an occasional fortnight of indolence in a drowsy, stuffy, little court-room with absolutely nothing to do but to look at the clock and wonder, with the rest of the jurors, how on earth the judge contrived to wake up from a sound sleep whenever a point came up for decision and always to settle it so firmly, so confidently, so promptly that even the lawyers were fooled into believing that he had been awake all the time.
Sampson entered the little court-room at 9:50 o’clock on the morning of the twentieth.
He was never to forget the morning of the twentieth.
Fifteen or twenty uneasy, sour-faced men, of all ages, sizes and condition sat outside the railing, trying to look unconcerned. They couldn’t fool him. He knew what they were and he knew that in the soul of each lurked the selfish, cruel prayer that twelve men would be snatched from among them and stuffed into the jury box to stay before the clerk could draw his own dreaded name from the little box at his elbow.
Other men came in and shuffled into chairs. The deputy clerk of the court emerged from somewhere and began fussing with the papers on his desk. Every man there envied him. He had a nice job, and he looked as though he rather liked being connected with an inhuman enterprise. He was immune. He was like the man who already has had smallpox. Lazy court attendants in well-worn uniforms ambled about freely. They too were envied. They were thoroughly court-broken. A couple of blithe, alert looking young men from the district attorney’s office came and, with their hands in their pockets, stared blandly at the waiting group, very much as the judges at a live-stock show stare at the prize pigs, sheep and cattle. They seemed to be appraising the supply on hand and, to judge by their manner, they were not at all favourably impressed with the material. Indeed, they looked unmistakably annoyed. It was bad enough to have to select a jury in any event, but to have to select one from this collection of ignoramuses was—well, it was too much!
The hour hand on the clock said ten o’clock, but everybody was watching the minute hand. It had to touch twelve before anything, could happen. Then the judge would steal out of his lair and mount the bench, while every one stood and listened to the unintelligible barking of the attendant who began with something that sounded suspiciously like “Oy-yoy!” notwithstanding the fact that he was an Irish and not a Jewish comedian.
Two uninteresting, anxious-eyed, middle-aged men, who looked a trifle scared and uncertain as to their right to be there, appeared suddenly inside the railing, and no one doubted for an instant that they were the defendant’s lawyers. Sampson always had wondered why the men from the district attorney’s office were so confident, so cocky, and so spruce looking while their opponents invariably appeared to be a seedy, harassed lot, somewhat furtive in their movements and usually labouring under the strain of an inward shyness that caused a greasy polish of perspiration to spread over their countenances.
Sampson was to find that these timid, incompetent looking individuals had every reason in the world to be perspiring even so early in the proceedings. They turned out to be what is known in rhetorical circles as “fire-eaters” The judge took his seat and the clerk at once called the case of the State vs. James W. Hildebrand. Sampson speculated. What had Hildebrand done to get himself into a mess of this sort? Was it grand or petit larceny, or was it house-breaking, entering, safe-cracking, or—Two burly attendants came up the side aisle and between them walked a gaunt, grey, stooped old man, his smooth shaven face blanched by weeks of sunless existence.
Sampson had expected to see a sullen-faced, slouching young fellow, shaved and brushed and combed into an unnatural state of comeliness for the purpose of hoodwinking the jury into the belief that his life was as clean as his cheek. He could not deny himself a stare of incredulity on beholding this well-dressed, even ascetic looking man who strode haltingly, almost timidly through the little gate and sank into the chair designated by his counsel. Once seated, he barely glanced at his lawyers, and then allowed his eyes to fall as if shame was the drawing power. Somehow, in that instant, Sampson experienced the sudden conviction that this man James W. Hildebrand was no ordinary person, for it was borne in upon him that he despised the men who were employed to defend him. It was as if he were more ashamed of being seen with them than he was of being haled into a court of justice charged with crime.
The assistant district attorney in charge of the case addressed the waiting talesmen, briefly outlining the case against the defendant, and for the first time in his experience Sampson listened with a show of interest.
James W. Hildebrand was charged with embezzlement. Judging by the efforts of his counsel to have the case set over for at least ten days and the Court’s refusal to grant a delay, together with certain significant observations as to the time that would probably be required to produce and present the evidence—a week or more—Sampson realised that this was a case of considerable magnitude. He racked his brain in the futile effort to recall any mention of it in the newspapers. It was his practice to read every line of the criminal news printed, for this was the only means he had of justifying the declaration that he had formed an opinion. Nothing escaped him—or at least he thought so—and yet here was a case, evidently important, that had slipped through without having made the slightest impression on him. It was most disturbing. This should not have happened.
His heart sank as he thought of the California reservations uptown. He was expected to take up the transportation and Pullman that very afternoon.
The old man—he was seventy—was accused of having misappropriated something like fifty thousand dollars of the funds belonging to a real-estate and investment concern in which he was not only a partner but also its secretary and treasurer. The alleged crime had been committed some five years prior to the day on which he was brought to trial.
After having evaded capture for four years and a half by secluding himself in Europe, he voluntarily had returned to the States, giving himself up to the authorities. Sampson abused himself secretly for having allowed such a theatric incident as this to get by without notice on his part. Other prospective jurors sitting nearby appeared to know all about the case, for he caught sundry whispered comments that enlightened him considerably. He realised that he had been singularly and criminally negligent.
A protracted and confidential confab took place between the Court and the counsel for both sides. Every juror there hoped that they were discussing some secret and imperative reason for indefinitely postponing the case after all—or, perhaps, better than that, the prisoner was going to plead guilty and save all of them!
Finally the little group before the bench broke up and one of the attorneys for Hildebrand approached the rail and held open the gate. A woman entered and took a seat beside the pris............