The Art of Cross-Examination Part 23

_Counsel._ "If you swore before the coroner there was no violence, and nothing happened until Wednesday after supper, did you mean to say it?"

_Witness._ "I don't remember."

_Counsel._ "After hearing read what you swore to at the coroner's inquest, do you still maintain the truth of what you have sworn to at this trial, as to seeing the nurse let the patient fall backward four or five times, and pick him up and laugh at him?"

_Witness._ "I certainly do."

_Counsel._ "I again read you from the coroner's minutes a question asked you by the coroner himself. Question by the coroner, 'Did you at any time while in the office or the large room of the asylum see Hilliard fall or stumble?' Answer, 'No, sir; I never did.' What have you to say to that?"

_Witness._ "That is correct."

_Counsel._ "Then what becomes of your statement made to the jury but fifteen minutes ago, that you saw him totter and fall backward several times?"

_Witness._ "It was brought out later on before the coroner."

_Counsel._ "Brought out later on! Let me read to you the next question put to you before the coroner. Question, 'Did you at _any time_ see him try to walk or run away and fall?' Answer, 'No, I never saw him fall.'

What have you to say to that?"

_Witness._ "Well, I must have put in about the tottering in my affidavit, and omitted it later before the coroner."

At the beginning of the cross-examination it had been necessary for the counsel to fight with the Court over nearly every question asked; and question after question was ruled out. As the examination proceeded, however, the Court began to change its att.i.tude entirely toward the witness. The presiding judge constantly frowned on the witness, kept his eyes riveted upon him, and finally broke out at this juncture: "Let me caution you, Mr. Minnock, once for all, you are here to answer counsel's questions. If you can't answer them, say so; and if you can answer them, do so; and if you have no recollection, say so."

_Witness._ "Well, your Honor, Mr. ---- has been cross-examining me very severely about my wife, which he has no right to do."

_Court._ "You have no right to bring that up. He has a perfect right to cross-examine you."

_Witness_ (losing his temper completely). "That man wouldn't dare to ask me those questions outside. He knows that he is under the protection of the court, or I would break his neck."

_Court._ "You are making a poor exhibit of yourself. Answer the questions, sir."

_Counsel._ "You don't seem to have any memory at all about this transaction. Are you testifying from memory as to what you saw, or making up as you go along?"

_Witness_ (no answer).

_Counsel._ "Which is it?"

_Witness_ (doggedly). "I am telling what I saw."

_Counsel._ "Well, listen to this then. You said in your affidavit: 'The blood was all over the floor. It was covered with Hilliard's blood, and the scrub woman came Tuesday and Wednesday morning, and washed the blood away.' Is that right?"

_Witness._ "Yes, sir."

_Counsel._ "Why, I understood you to say that you didn't get up Wednesday morning until noon. How could you see the scrub woman wash the blood away?"

_Witness._ "They were at the farther end of the hall. They washed the whole pavilion. I didn't see them Wednesday morning; it was Tuesday morning I saw them scrubbing."

_Counsel._ "You seem to have forgotten that Hilliard, the deceased, did not arrive at the pavilion until Tuesday afternoon at four o'clock. What have you to say to that?"

_Witness._ "Well, there were other people who got beatings besides him."

_Counsel._ "Then that is what you meant to refer to in your affidavit, when speaking of Hilliard's blood upon the floor. You meant beatings of other people?"

_Witness._ "Yes sir--on Tuesday."

The witness was then forced to testify to minor details, which, within the knowledge of the defence, could be contradicted by a dozen disinterested witnesses. Such, for instance, as hearing the nurse Davis call up the morgue, the morning after Hilliard was killed, at least a dozen times on the telephone, and anxiously inquire what had been disclosed by the autopsy; whereas, in fact, there was no direct telephonic communication whatever between the morgue and the insane pavilion; and the morgue attendants were prepared to swear that no one had called them up concerning the Hilliard autopsy, and that there were no inquiries from any source. The witness was next made to testify affirmatively to minor facts that could be, and were afterward, contradicted by Dr. Wildman, by Dr. Moore, by Dr. Fitch, by Justice Hogman, by night nurses Clancy and Gordon, by Mr. Dwyer, Mr. Hayes, Mr.

Fayne, by Gleason the registrar, by Spencer the electrician, by Jackson the janitor, and by several of the state's own witnesses who were to be called later.

By this time the witness had begun to flounder helplessly. He contradicted himself constantly, became red and pale by turns, hesitated before each answer, at times corrected his answers, at others was silent and made no answer at all. At the expiration of four hours he left the witness-stand a thoroughly discredited, haggard, and wretched object.

The court ordered him to return the following day, but he never was seen again at the trial.

A week later, his foster-mother, when called to the witness-chair by the defence, handed to the judge a letter received that morning from her son, who was in Philadelphia (which, however, was not allowed to be shown to the jury) in which he wrote that he had shaken from his feet the dust of New York forever, and would never return; that he felt he had been ruined, and would be arrested for perjury if he came back, and requested money that he might travel far into the West and commence life anew. It was altogether the most tragic incident in the experience of the writer.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CROSS-EXAMINATION OF JEREMIAH SMITH BY SIR ALEXANDER c.o.c.kBURN IN THE WILLIAM PALMER CASE

It was the cross-examination of a Birmingham attorney, named Jeremiah Smith, by Sir Alexander c.o.c.kburn, then Attorney-General and afterward Chief Justice of England, in the celebrated trial of William Palmer for taking the life of John Parsons Cook by poison, that finally turned the tide, in this closely contested case, against the prisoner, and resulted in his conviction and execution. An observer of such long experience as Mr. Justice Stephens said of this cross-examination that "it was something to be heard and seen, but incapable of being described."

William Palmer at the time of his trial was thirty-one years old. He was a physician by profession, but had for several years prior to his trial given up the active practice of medicine and had devoted all his time to the turf. His victim, John Parsons Cook, was also a young man of decent family, originally intended for the profession of the law, but after inheriting some 15,000, also betook himself to the turf. He kept race horses and betted considerably, and in the course of his operations became intimate with Palmer. At the time of his acquaintance with Cook, Palmer had become involved financially through forging the name of his mother, a woman of considerable property, as indorser of his notes.

These indors.e.m.e.nts amounted to the sum of 13,000. He had effected an insurance upon the life of his wife for 13,000, and the policies of insurance he had given as collateral on the forged notes. Upon the death of his wife he was enabled to pay off the first notes, but shortly issued fresh ones to the amount of 12,500, had them discounted at the rate of sixty per cent, and gave as new collateral, policies of insurance of an equal amount upon his brother's life, which policies had been a.s.signed to himself. Upon his brother's death, there being a year's interim between the death of his wife and brother, the companies in which the insurance had been effected declined to pay, and Palmer found himself confronted with suits upon these forged notes and the exposure of his forgeries.

It was for the supposed intention of getting possession of Cook's money and race horses that he took the life of his intimate companion.

The trial was held in the Central Criminal Court, London, May 14, 1856, Lord Campbell presiding, and has ever since maintained its reputation as being one of the most learned trials in the history of the criminal courts of the world.

H. D. Traill, in the _English Ill.u.s.trated Magazine_, gives a most graphic account of the incidents during the cross-examination of Jeremiah Smith.

"'It was the riding that did it,' exclaimed one of the greatest criminals of the century in extorted admiration of the skill with which one of the greatest advocates of the century had brought Justice in a winner by a short head in one of the century's greatest trials. Sir Alexander c.o.c.kburn is said to have been more proud of this tribute from the eminent sportsman and poisoner whom he hunted to the gallows post, than of any other of the many triumphs of his brilliant career. And undoubtedly it has all the ring of one of those utterances which come straight from the heart and attest their source by taking shape in the form of words most familiar to the speaker's lips. There is plenty of evidence to the critical attention with which Mr. William Palmer observed the jockeyship of the attorney in driving that terribly exciting race for life.

"There exists, or existed once, a slip of paper about six inches long by an inch broad--just such a slip, in fact, as a man might tear irregularly off the top of a sheet of foolscap, which bears this calm and matter-of-fact legend, more impressive than the most impa.s.sioned prose. 'I suppose you think that last witness did harm.' It is one of those notes which Palmer subscribed from time to time and turned over to his counsel to read and, if necessary, reply to. There is no sign of trembling in the hand that wrote it. Yet it was written--this one--just at the close of Sir Alexander c.o.c.kburn's memorable cross-examination. It was the conviction of the expert section of the audience that when the attorney-general resumed his seat, the halter was knotted around the neck of the prisoner too firmly to be loosed. There is little doubt that the doomed wretch read as much in the face of his counsel, and that the outward indifference of the hastily penned inquiry which he flung across to them must have caused a silent agony of doubt and dread.

"Palmer, of course, was not as well accustomed to observe the manners of the presiding judge as were the professional spectators of the scene, but if so, he would have drawn the worst possible augury from Lord Campbell's increasing politeness to him after this incident in the trial--a form of demeanor toward a prisoner which always indicated that in that distinguished judge's opinion, his doom was certain.

"Yet the cross-examination of Mr. Smith, important as its consequences are said to have been, _might easily be quoted_ as _a very doubtful_ ill.u.s.tration of the value of this formidable engine for the extraction, or supposed extraction, of the truth.

"Its effect upon the witness himself left nothing to be desired from the point of view of the operator. No abbreviation, in fact, can give the effect of it. The witness's efforts to gain time, and his distress as the various answers were extorted from him by degrees, may be faintly traced in the report. His face was covered with sweat, and the papers put into his hands shook and rustled. These papers, it must be admitted, were some of them of a sufficiently agitating character. Mr. Smith had had to confess with great reluctance that he had witnessed the a.s.signment of a policy for 13,000 by Walter to William Palmer, who was suspected, and indeed as good as known, to have been guilty of murdering him; he had had to confess that he wrote to an office to effect an insurance for 10,000 on the life of a groom of Palmer's in receipt of 1 a week as wages; he had been compelled to admit the self-impeachment of having tried, after Walter Palmer's death, to get his widow to give up her claim on the policy. The result was that Lord Campbell, in summing up, asked the jury whether they could believe a man who so disgraced himself, in the witness-box. The jury thought they couldn't, and they didn't. The witness, whose evidence was to the effect that Palmer was not at his victim's bedside, but some miles away, at a time when, on the theory of the prosecution, he was subst.i.tuting poisonous drugs for the medicine supplied to the sick man by the doctor, was disbelieved. _Yet it is nevertheless tolerably certain from other evidence of an unimpeachable kind that Jeremiah Smith was speaking the truth._"

The text of the cross-examination that follows is taken from the unabridged edition of the _Times'_ "Report of the Trial of William Palmer," containing the shorthand notes taken from day to day, and published in London in 1856.

_Attorney-General._ "Are you the gentleman who took Mr. Myatt to Stafford Gaol?"

_Smith._ "I am."

_Attorney-General._ "Have you known Palmer long?"