THE REFUGE IN CONFESSION

In a crowded court-room in Salem over eighty years ago the prosecuting attorney, Daniel Webster, pronounced what led to death on the men being tried for the murder of Captain White. His magnetic eloquence always effective, in this case left a profound impression on the minds of his contemporaries in the triumphant climax, "There is no refuge from confession save in suicide and suicide in confession."

Equally dramatic and thrown into sharp relief by its contrast to the famous trial of the 'forties was the scene in the Suffolk County Court-room on Monday night. Again the trial was for murder and the case hinged on the question of confession. The evidence had been presented. The judge advised the prisoner that he might address the jury in his own behalf. What followed is one of the most extraordinary speeches in an American court.

The prisoner had written a confession accepting the guilt for two murders in Massachusetts, while serving a fifteen year sentence in Pennsylvania for another crime. He received a pardon from Governor Sproul to enable him to stand trial on the charge of murder. His story to the jury of his life is the old story of a failure forced to earn an illegitimate livelihood by the grasping attitude of society. But coming to the murders this confessed criminal admitted that his confession was "faked", claimed his entire innocence and said to the jury quietly:

"You hold my life in the palm of your hand. If after a careful, conscientious deliberation you feel satisfied that I ever had any connection in any way, shape or manner with those two cold blooded murders . . . I ask no compromise, there is to be no alternative, I ask you to bring in a verdict of homicide in the first degree."

Two hours later the jury returned a verdict of "not guilty" and the prisoner found that his chance shot had gone home, that his "faked" confession had freed him from fifteen years of prison in Pennsylvania without resulting in his conviction for a crime he had never committed.

Sensational as it is and melodramatic in the extreme, Jesse Murphy's speech ranks with Webster's at the trial in Salem. And the great climax of the nineteenth-century attorney is twisted in the case of the twentieth-century prisoner until the latter finds a refuge not from but in confession.