Execution Dock Page 0,37
jurors were nodding now.
Lord Justice Sullivan looked concerned, on the brink of going so far as to interrupt him. Could Rathbone conceivably have forgotten which side he was on?
"Let us consider these excellent people, one by one," Rathbone said reasonably. "And Mr. Orme, as well, of course. We too, I believe, wish that justice may be served, completely and irrevocably." That was almost a question, although he smiled very slightly. "Our position is different from theirs, in that they provide evidence to be considered, while we reach a conclusion that is irrevocable. If we find that Jericho Phillips is guilty, within three weeks he will be hanged, and cannot ever be brought back to this world.
"If, on the other hand, we find that he is not guilty, then he cannot be tried for this crime again. Gentlemen, our decision allows no room for passion, no matter how understandable, how human, how worthy of the noblest pity for the victims of poverty, disease, or inequality. We have not the luxury that others will have after us to alter our mistakes or correct our misjudgments. We have in this room only that final judgment at the bar of God, before whom we will all stand in eternity. We must be right!" He held up his hand in a closed fist, not of any kind of threat, but of an unbreakable grasp.
"We are not partisan." He looked at them one after another, and then quailed a little. "We must not be. To allow emotion of liking or disliking, of horror, or pity or self-indulgence, of fear or favor for anyone"-he sliced the air-"or any other human tenderness to sway our decision is to deny justice. And never believe that the drama here is our purpose-it is not! Our purpose is the measured and equal justice for all people, alive or dead, good or evil, strong or weak..." He hesitated. "Beautiful or hideous. The question is not whether Commander Durban was a good man, even a noble one. It is whether he was right in his collection of and deduction from evidence regarding the murder of Walter Figgis. Did he allow his human passions to direct his course? His dream of justice to hasten his judgments? His revulsion at the crime to make him too quick to grasp at the solution?
"You need to weigh in your minds why it was that he stopped his pursuit of Phillips, and then started it again. His notes do not say. Why do they not? You need to ask that, and not flinch from the answer."
He turned, paced back, and then faced the jury again. "He chose William Monk to succeed him. Why? He is a good detective. No one knows that better than I. But did Durban, who knew him only a few months, choose him because he saw in Monk a man of profound convictions like his own, of pity for the weak, rage against the abusive, and an unstoppable dedication? A man who would seek to close his own unfinished cases, out of honor and to pay a personal debt?"
The jurors' eyes were fixed unwaveringly on Rathbone. He knew it.
"You must judge the power and the compulsion that drove Monk to follow precisely the course that Durban had taken," he told them. "You have listened to Mrs. Monk and must have formed some opinion of her courage and her passion. This is a woman in the same mold as Florence Nightingale, a woman who has walked the fields of battle among the dead and the dying, and has not fainted or wept, or turned away, but has steeled her courage and made her decisions. With knife and needle, bandages and water, she has saved lives. What would she not do to bring to justice the man who abused and murdered children-including a boy so like the very mudlark she has all but adopted as her own?"
He lowered his voice. "Are you prepared to hang Jericho Phillips in the certainty, beyond any reasonable doubt, that those passionate, justifiably enraged people have made no error in their detached and analytical reasoning, and have found the right man, among all the teeming many who make their livings on this busiest river in the world?"
He stood motionless in the center of the floor. "If you are not certain, then for all our sakes, you must find him not guilty. Above all for the sake of the law, which must protect the weakest, the poorest, and the least loved of