×
Check-out the new Famous Trials website at www.famous-trials.com:
The new website has a cleaner look, additional video and audio clips, revised trial accounts, and new features that should improve the navigation.
(Close this pop-up window to remain on this page)
Wakened in the Gray
Light of Morning
I could say something about the death penalty that, for some mysterious
reason, the state wants in this case. Why do they want it? To vindicate
the law? Oh, no. The law can be vindicated without killing anyone else.
It might shock the fine sensibilities of the state's counsel that this
boy was put into a culvert and left after he was dead, but, your Honor,
I can think of a scene that makes this pale into insignificance. I can
think, and only think, your Honor, of taking two boys, one eighteen and
the other nineteen, irresponsible, weak, diseased, penning them in a cell,
checking off the days and the hours and the minutes, until they will be
taken out and hanged. Wouldn't it be a glorious day for Chicago? Wouldn't
it be a glorious triumph for the State's Attorney? Wouldn't it be a glorious
triumph for justice in this land? Wouldn't it be a glorious illustration
of Christianity and kindness and charity ? I can picture them, wakened
in the gray light of morning, furnished a suit of clothes by the state,
led to the scaffold, their feet tied, black caps drawn over their heads,
stood on a trap door, the hangman pressing a spring, so that it gives way
under them; I can see them fall through space--and--stopped by the rope
around their necks.