The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie Mansfield (15 page)

Judge Ingraham has been an intermittent presence in the
trial so far, letting the lawyers predominate. Now he takes command as he gives the jury its charge. “I know that you are acting here in the performance of a disagreeable task,” he says. “But I know that you feel you have a duty to perform—a duty you owe to the public, a duty you owe to yourselves.”

The jurors must be guided solely by the evidence adduced at the trial. “Banish from your minds sympathy for the prisoner, his family, or his friends. Banish from your minds any prejudice existing
against
the prisoner. Banish also from your minds anything which will tend to the favor or disfavor of the prisoner, other than what has been derived from the consideration of the case.”

The jurors must keep the fundamental issue clearly in mind. “We have a simple question to try, and you have a simple answer to render on that question, and that is, whether this prisoner is guilty or innocent of the charge preferred against him.” The charge is murder in the first degree. “Murder is the killing of a human being without excuse or justification, with the intent to take life.” Much of the case as presented turns on the matter of intent. “You are to form an opinion as to the intent of this man from his acts, conduct, and declarations, by all the circumstances connected with the incidents for which he is on trial.” The prosecution has alleged that Stokes went to the hotel intending to shoot Fisk. “If you come to the conclusion that he had that intent when he came there and carried it out, and you don’t find any circumstance to warrant you seeing that he was justified or excused in that act, or that there is some other cause that rendered him irresponsible, then you will find him guilty.”

Judge Ingraham explains the law touching the issue of the cause of death. If the gunshot wound was mortal—that is, if it would have caused death in any event—the matter of whether the death at the precise moment it came was caused by shock or by opium is immaterial. The judge notes that none of the physicians has asserted that Fisk could have recovered. In other words, they have agreed that the wound was indeed mortal.

The defense has argued that Stokes credibly feared for his life. Ingraham reminds the jurors that Stokes and Josie Mansfield have been the principal witnesses to this effect. The jury must decide whether to believe them.

On the insanity plea, he notes, the defendant is the sole material witness. Again the jury must decide.

As in every case, he concludes his charge, the defendant must receive the benefit of reasonable doubt.

Judge Ingraham finishes at half past two in the afternoon
of July 13. The jurors file out and begin their deliberations. An hour passes, then another. At a few minutes before five, they return to the courtroom to ask the judge to define “premeditation.” He does so and they retire once more. At seven Ingraham recalls them to the courtroom and asks whether they have reached a verdict. Their foreman says they have not. The judge orders them sequestered for the night. He sends Stokes back to the Tombs. The bailiff clears the courtroom.

The next day is Sunday, when New York’s courts are supposed to rest. But there is no rest in this case. The Sunday papers are filled with the latest accounts from the courtroom, and the state legislature has approved a special statute allowing Judge Ingraham to declare Sunday’s meeting of the court an extension of Saturday’s session.

The spectators line up early to learn Stokes’s fate. Perhaps because his recent testimony has reminded the city of his attractiveness to the opposite sex, perhaps because Josie’s appearance has touched a feminine nerve, the crowd today is mostly women. Along with the men in the crowd, they have neglected church in favor of the criminal court. Women and men alike try to ignore the rising heat of the midsummer morning.

The ladies are admitted to the courtroom first; after they have entered, the few remaining seats are allowed to the men. Those persons denied admission mill around outside the court, growing hotter by the minute but assuming that the news of the verdict will be swiftly relayed from inside. Speculation is rampant regarding the jury’s decision; fittingly, for a case involving Fisk, wagers are exchanged.

Ingraham enters the courtroom as the clock chimes eleven. Stokes is brought in after the judge sits down. The prisoner is pale and drawn; as he sinks into his seat a heavy breath escapes his lips.

The judge summons the jurors; the bailiff guides them to their box. The audience examines the jurors, trying to determine whether they have reached a verdict and what it might be. Stokes alone refuses to look toward the jury. He fixes his gaze on the table in front of him.

The judge asks the foreman if the jurors have reached a conclusion. The foreman says they have not.

Stokes looks up and toward the jury. The beginning of a smile flits across his face.

The foreman adds, “There is no probability that we can agree, not the least chance. We stand exactly where we stood last night.”

Stokes’s smile broadens.

Judge Ingraham shakes his head. “I hardly feel at liberty to discharge you yet. This case has lasted nearly three weeks, and it would not be proper to let you go without giving this case further consideration.” He orders the jury to retire once more.

The spectators shift in their seats and mutter among themselves, but few leave. Those outside the court, where a slight motion of the summer air moderates the heat, begin to think they were lucky not to get in.

The clock on the courtroom wall ticks slowly. Noon comes and goes. The heat continues to mount. Few in the room want to leave and risk missing the most exciting verdict in New York in decades. But the afternoon heat, the spectators’ growing fatigue, and eventually their hunger gradually diminish their ranks. Late in the day word spreads that Judge Ingraham has gone home to his house in Harlem. Calculating that under the best of circumstances news that the jury has come to a verdict will take an hour to reach him and he will require another hour to return, the remaining spectators conclude that he won’t be back this evening, and they go home, too.

On Monday the curious return in greater numbers than
ever. All seem certain that the trial will come to a conclusion this day, and probably this morning. The court officers apparently expect a quick verdict, for, in contrast to previous days, when they valiantly held the masses back, today they let everyone in. The seats are taken in an instant after the ten o’clock opening of the doors; the comparative laggards clog the aisles, crowd the entrances, and press close behind the tables where the defendant and the lawyers sit.

Stokes again seems hopeful, but his weariness is apparent. He chats casually with Tremain and McKeon but without any real spark. He seems exhausted and old; observers in the courtroom can hardly imagine that this is the same man who set Josie Mansfield’s young heart racing.

Judge Ingraham enters at ten thirty. The bailiff summons the jurors. Their names are called; each signifies his presence. Ingraham asks the foreman if they have agreed on a verdict.

The foreman replies that they have not. Their positions remain unchanged from Saturday. They have argued and argued, but their differences are irreconcilable.

Ingraham nods gravely. He reiterates why he has held them so long, citing the seriousness of the offense and the importance of the trial. But he accepts the foreman’s judgment that agreement is impossible. He thanks the jury members for their diligent service and dismisses them. The trial has failed.

Newsmen buttonhole the jurors as they leave the courtroom. No vow of secrecy binds them, and various members explain that on the first ballot, taken thirty minutes after they received their charge from Judge Ingraham, seven voted to convict on first-degree murder, while two insisted on the lesser crime of manslaughter—an alternative allowable under New York law. Three contended that the homicide was justified. The five dissenters joined forces around manslaughter, but there the deliberations stuck. Thirty-six hours later they remained stuck.

Stokes greets the verdict with tempered relief. He will not hang, not yet anyway. But neither will he be released. The deadlocked jury leaves him in the same position he has been in for six months—and in the same location: Judge Ingraham orders him back to the Tombs.

The city sighs unhappily at the result. No verdict is the
worst verdict of all. Conviction has been preferred by those who disbelieve Stokes and Josie or, for one reason or another, admire Fisk. Acquittal suits those who find the Stokes-Mansfield version credible or who think Fisk had it coming. A mistrial yields no satisfaction whatever.

But court watchers in New York are not entirely bereft. Bill Tweed hasn’t committed any capital crimes, so far as investigators of the Tammany ring can tell, yet he has committed innumerable offenses against property and propriety. For years Tweed and the ring have been constructing a new county courthouse for New York, and the longer they have built, the further the work appears from completion and the more money the project absorbs. The projected price tag of a quarter-million dollars has swollen past thirteen million, and the building remains unfinished. Invoices for the work have gradually come to light: $8,000 apiece for windows, $1.5 million for plumbing and lighting fixtures, $500,000 paid to one plasterer for some interior work and then $1 million to the same plasterer to redo the work, $800,000 to a carpenter, lesser sums to several dead men kept on the payroll. The contractors themselves haven’t pocketed the greatest part of this money; most gets kicked back to Tweed and the ring, who have grown immensely wealthy off the public pork.

The grafting attracts attention. Thomas Nast draws pictures for
Harper’s Weekly;
it was Nast who created the American version of Santa Claus, with rosy cheeks, fat belly, and full beard. And it is Nast who goes after Tweed. The Tammany boss actually does look like Santa Claus, but Nast draws him darker and much more dangerous. The
Times
, meanwhile, has gathered the story of the courthouse fraud, employing leaks from Tammany insiders who wanted a larger share of the graft.
Times
publisher George Jones knows a good story when he discovers one, and he releases the tale of the Tweed scandal in several parts, to maximize its effect on circulation.

Tweed and the ring respond by offering Jones a million dollars to kill the story. Jones rejects the offer—and adds it to the story. Tweed offers Thomas Nast half a million, which is likewise spurned. Tweed takes Nast’s rejection harder. “I don’t care a straw for your newspaper articles,” he says. “My constituents don’t know how to read, but they can’t help seeing them damned pictures.”

“Tweed and his gang are doomed,” Governor Samuel Tilden, who has been elected on a catch-the-crooks platform, promises. “Before many days pass it will be made so hot for the arch robber that New York will not hold him.” A grand jury, convened amid the Stokes proceedings, delivers a two-hundred-count indictment against Tweed and the ring. Readers of the New York papers catch the latest developments in the Stokes case one day and in the Tweed case the next. Most know that Tweed consorted with Fisk before the latter’s demise; many guess that the death of the one has made the fall of the other more likely.