Juice

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Authors: Stephen Becker
attributes. But the jury knew, and Davis knew, that this was not a monster, but a man; a man so weakened by the miseries and frustrations of a life spent in search of an unattainable ideal that in his moment of greatest stress the overworked, overstrained, unhappy mind failed him; for so long, fifteen seconds, thirty seconds, in an otherwise creative life, his mind had failed him. For so long he had been, by any definition of the word, insane.
    How many of us could say certainly that it would never happen to us? Were not Landauer’s origins, his intellectuality, his brilliance really, his frightened, withdrawn contempt for society, to be rather pitied than scorned? Without the security of community, family, and friends, any one of us might be driven to that one moment of insanity.
    Even the state’s attorney, Davis said, would have to admit the defense’s point. The state had condemned Landauer on four counts: he was a foreigner, an intellectual, a sodomite, and an atheist. The state’s attorney felt that such a man was a monster. But Willie was all of those things save one; yet the state’s attorney had described him as clean-cut, a young man with a future, a boy led astray. And in a way Kuno Landauer was a boy led astray: disoriented, rootless, weakened.
    â€œFor thirty seconds on that night,” Davis said, “a weak man was insane. In thirty seconds he committed an act against which every hour of the rest of his life, before and after, cries out in horror; an act of destruction damned and denied by a life of creation. I can go even further: I can say that Kuno Landauer, being what he is, probably knows better than we what guilt and innocence are; that he has suffered more guilt since that insane moment than any punishment would ever make him feel. He is a man without malice—” Davis spoke slowly, gravely—“utterly without malice; yet he killed the thing he loved.”
    That was it. Davis gave the jury the benefit of a traditional peroration, a plea to them to help bring justice, the law, out of the darkness and into the light, away from the primitive and toward the spiritual. He sat down exhausted; his bowels were knotted, and his body ran with sweat.
    The state tried hard, but was unable to avoid the trap of its own emotionalism. The jury was frigid. They were out, nevertheless, for two days. During this time the state’s attorney sent Davis a note: “You have tried to legalize pique as a cause of murder. You ought to be hanged, or at least disbarred.” Davis marked beneath those words, “Opinion is not evidence,” and sent the note back.
    Kuno Landauer was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. The judge, whose charge had been severe toward Davis, was unconvinced; but the verdict stood. Reporters, knowing Davis as a reliable source of quotable wit, surrounded him, and found him oddly distraught.
    â€œWhat was your fee, J. J.?” one of them called.
    â€œDon’t call me J. J.,” Davis said. “There was no fee. Landauer’s broke. Everybody knows that.”
    â€œThat’s not like you.”
    Davis looked up, startled. “I suppose it isn’t,” he said. He rubbed his eyes. “Listen,” he went on suddenly, “the verdict was right. It was justice. You can print that. Now I have to go to the bathroom. Don’t print that.”
    â€œWhat about Landauer?”
    Davis paused. “What about him?”
    â€œWhat’ll he do? Where’s he going?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Davis said. “Nobody’ll hire him now. He has record royalties, but they’re small. Interview him. Why ask me?” There was no strength in him; he could hardly stand. “Let me through.”
    He left the courtroom, went home, showered, slept twelve hours, called Landauer, returned the cat, and went back to Mexico. He saw Kuno Landauer once after that, and they both knew that once was enough.

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