Deliberate Evil, page 15
At the blessed hour when of all others repose is soundest, the murderer goes to his work. In the silence and darkness he enters the house. He does not falter, there is no trembling of the limbs, his feet sustain him. He passes through the rooms, treads lightly through the entries, ascends the stairs, arrives at the door. There is no pause. He opens it. The victim is asleep, his back is towards him, his deaf ear is uppermost, his temples bare. The moonlight plays upon his silver locks.
One blow, and the task is accomplished!
Now mark his resolution, his self-possession, his deliberate coolness! He raises the aged arm, plunges the dagger to the heart—not once but many times—replaces the arm, replaces the bedclothes, feels the pulse, is satisfied that his work is perfected and retires from the chamber. He retraces his steps. No eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. He is master of his own secret, and he escapes in secret.
That was a dreadful mistake. The guilty secret of murder never can be safe. There is no place in the universe, no corner, no cavern where he can deposit it and say it is safe. Though he take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost part of the seas, human murder to human vision will be known. A thousand eyes, a thousand ears are marking and listening, and thousands of excited beings are watching his bloodstained step.
The proofs of a discovery will go on. The murderer carries with him a secret which he can neither carry nor discharge. He lives at war with himself; his conscience is a domiciled accuser that cannot be ejected and will not be silent. His tormentor is inappeasable, his burden is intolerable.
The secret which he possesses, possesses him, and like the evil spirit spoken of in olden times leads him whithersoever it will. It is a vulture ever gnawing at his heart; he believes his very thoughts to be heard.
His bosom’s secret overmasters him, subdues him—he succumbs. His guilty soul is relieved by suicide or confession, and suicide is confession.
I can wish nothing better for you gentlemen than that you should go home with confidence in the right discharge of your duty.
It has been truly said that this will be a day long to be remembered. It will be long remembered because it is a day full of important duty to be performed or neglected. It will follow you, gentlemen, it will follow us all, as duty accomplished or as duty neglected; and if there is anything which is at all times and everywhere present, it is the consciousness that we have discharged ourselves well of every important trust. If we could take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the East, the sense of memory would be present there.
This recollection will follow us in life and be with us in death. It will be with us in light, and ever near us when darkness covers us. At the close of life, it will be with us; and at that solemn hour, the consciousness of duty discharged or duty neglected will be there to afflict us if disregarded, or to console us if under the will of the Almighty, it has been performed.
* * *
Webster’s dramatic, romantic rendering of what he supposed to have been Dick Crowninshield’s gnawing conscience was certainly creative, and it certainly played well with his listeners. But of course, whether Webster realized it or not, the portrait he painted was fraudulent, a gross misrepresentation.
Anchored in his long-held cynicism, Dick was likely not the victim of a guilty conscience so much as he was the victim of inescapable investigative and prosecutorial triangulation. At the time that he committed suicide, Dick was a man cornered by the rules, revelations, and procedures of justice; and he was a most unlikely repentant, no matter what he might have expressed in last-minute notes contrived to console his father and exonerate his brother.
Dick’s taking of his own life seems to have been as deliberate a calculation as had been his taking of the life of Captain White. His ambition was evidently twofold, and entirely pragmatic. First, as has been shown, he clearly—given his research on the topic and his conversation with Dexter—sought to remove himself from prosecution as the principal in the crime, and in so doing remove the possibility for the prosecution of accessories, most importantly his brother George. Second, with his destiny at the gallows a foregone conclusion and his sense of pompous dignity all-consuming, he likely sought to deny the public the spectacle of seeing him swing. If he was to go out, it would be in his own way and at a time of his own choosing, without the indignity of a noose made from anything other than the finest silk.
Even in his very last moments he bowed to no man, and to no authority, other than himself.
21 A Contagion of Unexampled Popular Frenzy
“He lies like someone who was there.”
—Anonymous
After ten days of testimony, the jury finally received its charge from Judge Putnam and retired in the afternoon on August 12. The next day, at around 10:00 AM, they returned to announce themselves deadlocked: a hung jury.
Reportedly, the main disagreements concerned at least a few jury members not being satisfied that Frank had been present on Brown Street, to the rear of Joseph White’s mansion, on the night of the murder, directly aiding and abetting Dick Crowninshield. Judge Putnam instructed them to go back into conference and try to work it out, but toward the end of the day they returned and said there was absolutely no way they could achieve consensus. Upon this, Judge Putnam declared a mistrial and dismissed the jury. The solicitor general immediately moved that a new jury be impaneled to try the prisoner again upon the same indictment, and the court agreed.
The result of the trial was widely disapproved and the jury held in disdain. It was speculated that members of the jury from Salem, somewhat acquainted with Frank and somewhat disliking Captain White, had been the holdouts. An editorial in a local newspaper demanded that the names of those “to whom Frank Knapp is indebted for his escape” be made public. “It would be a sad joke,” commented a writer in the New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette, “if the immortal Daniel, who, it was said a few days since, was ‘swinging a ball around his head, ready to settle it upon the forehead of his victim,’ should not succeed in getting a culprit hanged who everyone knows deserves it.”1 Indeed, along with annoyance, there was also shock and surprise at the trial’s outcome—or, rather, lack of outcome, lack of resolution. Besides, was the mighty Webster actually going to be denied his victory?
Webster had many other obligations calling to him. There was no time to spare. Jury selection commenced on August 14. Given the fact that the few Salemites were generally suspected of having led the first jury to a mistrial, prosecutors made sure that all jurors impaneled for the second trial were from other precincts. Samuel N. Baker, of Ipswich, was made foreman. The balance of the jury were Orlando Abbot (Andover), Timothy Appleton (Ipswich), Stephen Bailey (Amesbury), Jacob Brown (Hamilton), William D. S. Chase (Newbury), Stephen Caldwell (Newburyport), Phineas Elliot (Haverhill), John Ladd (Haverhill), Thomas Merrill (Topsfield), Amos Sheldon (Beverly), and Moses Towne (Andover). They represented a mix of professions, all working class: Samuel Baker was an innkeeper, Orlando Abbot a shoemaker, and Timothy Appleton a farmer. The balance were cabinetmakers, masons, shipwrights, chandlers—none of them merchants, none of them a “gentleman,” none of any particular prominence. But they were all men of good reputations and varying political persuasions who sincerely professed, when examined, to being able to render independent judgments based on evidence, regardless of whatever rumors of publicity they may previously have heard or read—and despite the media saturation of the previous trial.
The trial proceeded very much as had that before it, with the exception that most of the eyewitnesses of the man on Brown Street, evidently after a stern talking to from Webster, were now astoundingly certain that the man they’d seen was Frank—no doubt about it. As well, there was no debate as to whether or not Reverend Colman would be allowed to state the contents of Joe Jr.’s confession as he best remembered it. And he remembered very well, even better than he had previously. It was almost as if the previous ten or so days had simply been a dress rehearsal for this main event—a dress rehearsal for the prosecution. This trial was to go for six days instead of ten, culminating of course with the closing summations by Dexter and Webster.
Throughout the trial, Dexter found it expressly annoying that Colman’s memory for incriminating minutiae seemed to improve with every trip he made to the witness stand. As Dexter was to complain to the jury:
Whatever the Government cannot otherwise prove, Mr. Colman swears the prisoner has confessed and nothing more. Of half an hour’s conversation with the prisoner, he cannot remember a word but what turns out to be indispensable to the case of the prosecution. . . . Mr. Colman has been living in [a contagion of unexampled popular frenzy] and breathing its intoxicating air for months. No man in the community has been so much excited by this horrible event as Mr. Colman. No man has taken a more active part in enquiring into its mysteries.2
The good minister seemed all too eager to oblige every request of the prosecution, to scratch his head and crease his brow, to appear to think hard before suddenly discovering whatever precious detail was then being earnestly sought by his examiner, most often Webster. Once again, he produced the bludgeon with a flourish, as if unveiling a relic of the True Cross or a precious diamond. Once again, he expressed his love and sympathy for the Knapp family, and his concern for them as they confronted the darkness in which they now found themselves enveloped. Once again, he reveled in the spotlight, in the questions from reporters, in his narrowly defined celebrity.
22 Franklin Dexter’s Summation at the Second Trial
Franklin Dexter’s summation ran to some twenty thousand words, which have here been edited down for the sake of brevity and clarity.1
Gentlemen of the Jury:
You have now heard all the evidence on which you are to form your judgment of life or death to the prisoner. He stands before you for that judgment under terrible disadvantages. . . . You see around you proofs of the power against which the accused has to struggle in his defense. You see the extraordinary array of counsel, active and inactive, brought in aid of the government or withdrawn from the reach of the prisoner. You have witnessed the efforts that have been made by those who could take no other part in the prosecution, to fasten upon him the evidence of guilt; and you may anticipate the power and eloquence with which the case is to be closed against him.
Gentlemen, why is all this? . . . If there is legal evidence against the prisoner, can there be a doubt that he will be convicted? And if there is not, is a verdict of condemnation to be wrenched from you by talent and eloquence which the ordinary course of a criminal trial would fail to procure? . . .
There is, however, a more dangerous influence in this case. . . . We care less for the array of counsel than for the array of the community against him. . . . We have greatly feared the effect of this hostile atmosphere on the testimony. We have feared, and found, that in such a state of excitement no man could take the stand an indifferent witness. He is to be esteemed a public benefactor on whose testimony the prisoner is convicted, and he who shrinks from the certainty expected of him, does it at the peril of public displeasure and reproach. If proof of this were needed, it might be found abundantly in the variance of the evidence on the two trials of this cause . . . and this last reinforcement of evidence is but proof of what had been done for the conviction of the prisoner.
After all that has been said abroad we fear that it may even seem strange that we should claim for the prisoner that presumption of innocence which the law affords every man. But it is not the less your duty to extend it to him. . . . You must be satisfied by the evidence in the case, beyond reasonable doubt, of the truth of the whole and of every material part of the charge as it is here laid against him.
I say this, gentlemen, because a new doctrine of the law has been advanced to meet the difficulties of this case. We have been told that the prosecution will contend that if the general guilt of the prisoner has been established, there is a presumption of law that he is a principal offender; that the burden is thrown on him to show that he is guilty in a less degree. It is enough for us to say that this is a doctrine subversive of the very foundation of all criminal law; that it strikes at the root of that humane provision that no man’s guilt is presumed; and that it is unsupported by any authority which has been or can be adduced.
What then is the crime of which the prisoner stands indicted? It is that he was present, aiding and abetting in the murder. Not that he is guilty of the murderous intent or that he procured the murder to be committed, but that he was present at the perpetration of it and gave his assistance to the murderer. But we admit the law to be well settled that an actual presence is not necessary to constitute the prisoner a principal. We admit that any place from which actual physical aid can be given in the commission of the murder is presence within the meaning of the law. . . .
To make a man an aider and abettor in a felony he must be in such a situation at the moment when the crime is committed that he can render actual and immediate assistance to the perpetrator, and that he must be there by agreement, and with the intent to render such assistance. . . . No previous consent or inducement, no encouragement at the moment short of the hope of actual and immediate physical assistance is sufficient for that purpose. . . . Was the prisoner, with such intent, under such an agreement, in such a situation that he could render actual aid at the moment when the murder was committed? . . . Sensible of the weakness of the evidence of the prisoner’s presence in Brown Street (specially as it stood on the first trial), the prosecutors have relied much on the aid of the conspiracy. . . . If then, as the prosecutors contend, the evidence of Leighton is sufficient to indicate the object of the conspiracy; if the words he so ingeniously overheard can, as is said, mean nothing but that the two Knapps and Richard Crowninshield had agreed that the latter should murder Captain White, then all the remaining proof of the conspiracy is superfluous. The only object for which it could legally be used was accomplished at the first step.
The Wenham robbery, the robbery of the Knapps’ house, the preceding letters of Joseph Knapp to Stephen White and to the committee, and other circumstantial stuff that has been introduced, may be used to aggravate the general appearance of the whole transaction, but they have no bearing on the case of the prisoner. The letters may be proof that Joseph Knapp was guilty, but what is that to the prisoner? He is not to stand or fall by the subsequent and independent acts of Joseph.
Why are these evidence against him, more than Joseph’s confession given to Mr. Colman? They are but confessions made after the fact and without the knowledge of the prisoner. As to the robbery, it may have been real or pretended. But whether real or pretended, what has it to do with the murder of Captain White? Not a particle of extrinsic proof of its falsehood or of its connection with that event has been produced. Some other circumstances may be dispatched in the same manner.
The conspirators wore daggers; the proof is that the Crowninshields habitually wore them before the murder and that the prisoner never had one until long after. And whether he then wore it for murder or in boyish bravado, you may judge of Leighton’s account of the manner in which he used it upon him. Pleased with his new weapon, “he pricked me bull calf till he roared.” And how much of Leighton’s testimony is to be ascribed to that is matter of no great consequence, so incredible is the whole. So of the five-franc pieces, the proof is that Joseph received five hundred on the twenty-first of April, and that George and Richard Crowninshield spent nine between that time and their arrest—nine five-franc pieces! Richard was to receive, according to Palmer, one thousand dollars for the murder, and we are called upon to account for nine of these pieces when the whole five hundred would not half of the price agreed to be paid. And why should not the whole five hundred have been paid? And if they were, why are not more than nine traced to the Crowninshields? The coin, besides, is no uncommon one; they carry no earmarks. The witnesses tell you they pass currently, commonly, here. . . . But suppose it otherwise; how does this prove Frank Knapp guilty of this murder? Is he shown to have any of this pernicious coin? All the evidence about them is of the nine spent by the Crowninshields. . . .
Besides, the proof of any communication between Joseph and Richard after the murder completely fails. . . . The whole evidence is that about the last of March, Richard Crowninshield stopped at [a] tavern with a stranger who asked if Captain Knapp had been there lately; they left their chaise and walked away together. Afterwards, about the twentieth of April, Richard and another person stouter than the prisoner, called at [the same tavern] in the evening and spent a five-franc piece.
Hart and Leighton testify that somewhere about that time Frank Knapp came in a chaise to Wenham with a stranger who sat in the chaise at the door an hour or an hour and a half. They differ very much in their accounts of the transaction; but neither pretends to know or believe that the stranger was Richard, or that any money was paid. In fact, money could not well have been paid at that time in five-franc pieces without observation. All they knew was that there was a long conversation between the two Knapps in the house and between them and the stranger at the door. . . .
One word about George Crowninshield. . . . He came to Salem with Selman and Chase on other business. It seems to be the object of the government to show that he could not be the man in Brown Street; but we think it material to show you also that neither was he anywhere in the neighborhood of Mr. White’s house at the supposed time of the murder. . . .
I come now to what is called the direct evidence of the conspiracy. It rests on two witnesses, Leighton and Palmer—or rather it rests on Leighton alone, for without his testimony that of Palmer would not be admissible. Palmer pretends only to have heard a conversation between the two Crowninshields in the absence of the prisoner. Now to make this admissible against Frank Knapp, a conspiracy must first be established between him and the Crowninshields. For that purpose, Leighton overhears the two Knapps tell each other the whole story while he listens behind a stone wall.
