He faced Blair. “Captain Blair says this young man would do anything to save his own skin. Well, sir, I agree that Cicero Sweet lied to save himself. To survive. He lied to save himself. It’s not very admirable. No virtue in that lie.” He deliberately paced the breadth of the jury box. “But I ask you, gentlemen, where has virtue been in this trial? Where did you see a noble heart? Was it Miss Jessie when she lied to protect Peter and Sterling DeGroote? Did a noble impulse emanate from Peter or from Miss Sadie or Big Joe, who told the same lies? Where in the prosecution case did we see nobility?”
He searched the spectator gallery. “Was there a noble impulse from Detective Palmer? Was he forthright with you when he led you to believe he got his science from scientists when in truth he got it from Mark Twain’s yarn?” He picked up the magazine. “A storybook lawyer named Pudd’nhead Wilson told a storybook jury this: ‘Upon this haft stands the assassin’s natal autograph, written in blood. . . . There is but one man in the whole earth whose hand can duplicate that crimson sign.’ No, there’s no nobility in Palmer’s deceit. Gentlemen, there was little true character displayed in this case on either side, I’m afraid. Had he watched this trial, Preacher Jones might well have said, ‘Let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone.’”
Catfish walked behind Cicero and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “This boy sinned. He caused Georgia Gamble’s death. But does he deserve to die for it? Judge Goodrich instructed you that he must be guilty of first-degree murder before you may condemn him to death. The question for you is this: What crime is he guilty of? Is it murder in the first degree, or is it manslaughter?”
He patted Cicero’s shoulder and moved on. “Judge Goodrich instructed you that first-degree murder requires you to believe, beyond reasonable doubt, he acted with malice aforethought. What’s that? The judge told you. Cicero must have formed a decision to take the life of Georgia Gamble with a sedate and deliberate design. His mind must have been cool in forming this purpose. You heard Peter’s testimony, and Cicero’s too. Those two boys exchanged heated words. It happened suddenly and unexpectedly. Peter slugged him, and Cicero fell back on the bed, dazed. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He opened his eyes and saw her pointing a gun at him, and he knocked it away. It went off. It hit Miss Georgia.”
He wasn’t sure any of them believed it.
“Does that sound cool and deliberate? Sedate? Or was what he did something different? Was it manslaughter?” He retrieved the judge’s jury charge from the bench and read it: “‘Manslaughter is voluntary homicide, committed under the immediate influence of sudden passion, arising from an adequate cause, but neither justified nor excused by law.’ Remember what Judge Goodrich told you about sudden passion. It could be anger, rage, sudden resentment or terror, rendering him incapable of cool reflection.” He returned the charge to the judge. “Cicero Sweet, in sudden terror at facing a gun, reacted instantly. He might have caused the gun to go off, but he didn’t intend it. It was hardly cool reflection.”
He passed the prosecution table and paused. “Captain Blair is one of the very finest lawyers I know. I’m sure he’ll say Cicero acted deliberately because Miss Georgia laughed at him—‘insulted his manhood’ is how he put it. Peter DeGroote told you that story, and Cicero swears it never happened. Who’s telling you the truth? Both told you lies about that night. Who do you believe? Does it make sense that Georgia and Cicero had been together in that bed since just after eleven, but it was only hours later after Peter arrived that she insulted Cicero’s manhood? Where had his manhood been before Peter arrived?”
One juror smiled.
He rubbed his hands together. “Why do people lie, gentlemen? Peter lied for the most dissolute of reasons, to protect the DeGroote family from the shame of their indiscretions. They were willing to send a boy to the scaffold to save themselves from public embarrassment. What a sorry thing to do.”
He faced Cicero. “Why did Cicero lie? I don’t aim to excuse him. There’s no excuse. All I ask is you understand it. He told you why. He lied to save himself. To survive.”
It was time.
Fear not death, men. The day goes to the bold.
He picked out the five jurors who were on the veteran’s list from the Cleburne Camp office and made eye contact with each, one by one, as he spoke. “I’ve thought a lot about survival lately. Earlier today I was in the cemetery among the graves of men who served in the war. Today is July fourth. Thirty-one years ago, thousands of young men were worried about their survival—at Gettysburg, at Vicksburg. Henry Sweet and I rode behind Captain Cicero Jenkins, this young man’s namesake. We were in middle Tennessee about then, all Cicero’s age. Some of you worried about survival three decades ago, too.”
He locked eyes with juror Sam Powell. I know you remember the Red River swamps. And the bloody ground at Mansfield.
“In war, we did terrible things in the name of survival, didn’t we? We killed other boys. We did it before they could kill us. That’s the way it was in those terrible days, in that terrible war. What are men willing to do when their survival is threatened? Captain Blair condemns Cicero for lying to survive, and I say men do
