The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie Mansfield (14 page)

The testimony of Stokes and Josie has contradicted the
prosecution’s assertion of cold-blooded murder. Stokes feared for his life before entering the Grand Central Hotel on the day of the shooting; in the stairwell he saw Fisk pull a pistol, or thought he did; his shots were fired in self-defense. So Stokes has said. Josie has corroborated Stokes’s reason for fear and Fisk’s possession of a gun.

But, doubtless worried that the jury will judge the siren and her paramour less than credible, the defense hedges its bets. It summons expert witnesses who suggest that Fisk died not of shock from the gunshot wounds but from the opium administered for the pain. “A man in the prime of life, in unusually sound health, receives a severe injury from a pistol-shot wound,” defense counsel Townsend says to Dr. John M. Carnochan, physician and surgeon. “That man being a man of temperate habits in the use of spirituous liquors, the shock is recovered from, his pulse seventy-six, respiration twenty-four, the wound having been inflicted about half past four in the afternoon, his pulse having fallen very low, about half past six his pulse is seventy-six and respiration twenty-four, and about half past ten his pulse is natural and respiration normal, his intelligence good—would you apprehend any danger from shock?”

“When we see a patient recovering from shock, his functions again working naturally,” Carnochan replies, “we would infer that there is no immediate apprehension of collapse.”

Townsend asks Dr. Benjamin Macready the same questions and receives a similar negative. “What
was
the cause of the death of Mr. Fisk?” Townsend then inquires.

“I have no doubt that the cause of death was directly the influence of opium,” Macready answers. “It was not shock. It was opium and nothing else.”

The defense returns to its argument that Stokes was insane, at least temporarily, at the time of the shooting. To establish a pattern of unbalance, his lawyers summon Edward H. Stokes, the seventy-two-year-old father of the prisoner. “Mr. Stokes, state to your recollection whether or not you have discovered any change in the conduct of the prisoner, and if so where and of what character?”

“From the time of his first trouble with Mr. Fisk, six or eight months before his arrest.”

“Will you state to the jury what those appearances or evidences were?”

“He complained of a great pain in his head.” The elder Stokes covers his eyes and cradles his head as if in severe pain. “There was an entire unfixedness of purpose; he would propose a thing one moment, and the next he would fly off on another subject. On one or two occasions, when I would proffer any advice, he would seem very much excited and very disrespectful, different from his former behavior.”

“Did you notice anything peculiar in his countenance or his eye?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What was it?”

“I can hardly describe it, rather different from what I had ever seen before.”

“Have there been cases of insanity in your family?”

Mr. Stokes winces visibly. “Yes, sir. I had a brother who died in the insane asylum.”

“Any other cases?”

“I had a sister who became imbecile.”

Nancy Stokes, the mother of the prisoner, testifies that her son had grown very agitated after his tangle with Fisk. “His eyes had a wild appearance that I had never seen before,” she says.

Howard Stokes, the prisoner’s brother, describes a particular manifestation of Stokes’s nervousness. “He told me he couldn’t pass a night without the pistol, and hadn’t for some time.”

Ned Stokes squirms under the testimony of those who know him best. The unconcern he affected just after Fisk’s death has vanished; escaping from this trial with his life seems to demand surrendering his self-respect. The bargain might be necessary, but he doesn’t like it.

Tremain ties together the defense’s lines of reasoning in his
concluding argument. “On the poor, feeble words that may fall from my lips,” he tells the jury, “rest not only the fate of this young man with a future opening bright and beautiful before him, but little past the age of thirty, but also whether the blow shall be struck by your hands that will place upon that innocent child of his the stigma of being denounced as the son of a murderer; and whether his wife shall be hereafter pointed out as the widow of a murderer; and finally whether the gray hairs of this old father and mother shall be brought down in sorrow to the grave.

“There is a great disparity of forces here in this struggle. The prisoner, single-handed and alone, is struggling for his life against the full power of this gigantic commonwealth. Arrayed against him stands the public prosecutor. At his beck the whole police force of the city is ready to summon witnesses. The treasury of the state, the whole taxable power, the whole taxable property, is subject to the will of the public prosecutor. He comes here clothed with tenfold more power and influence before a jury than I can possibly collect, and then, in addition to all that, he has been aided by the learning, the ability, and the wisdom of two of the ablest members of our profession. The contest is an unequal one, and unless the prisoner’s defense is one that is sustained by the power of truth, he can scarcely expect that, in such a mighty contest, he will not be driven to the wall. But if he has the truth on his side, then I care not what powers are brought against him.”

Tremain sets out a series of propositions: “That the jury should not find the prisoner guilty of murder unless they are satisfied that he killed the deceased with premeditated design to effect his death; that the deceased died from the effects of a pistol-shot wound; that there was no justifiable cause of firing the pistol; and at the time the prisoner was not insane.” If the jury entertains a reasonable doubt on any of these points, it must find Ned Stokes not guilty.

Tremain reiterates the arguments against each of these points. Stokes did not go to the Grand Central Hotel seeking Fisk; on the contrary, the meeting there was accidental. Fisk’s death was the result of an overdose of opium, not of the gunshot wounds. Stokes had ample reason to believe that Fisk intended to harm him, culminating in Stokes’s perception—whether accurate or not—that Fisk had drawn a pistol and was about to fire. Fisk’s persecutions of Stokes had driven Stokes out of his right mind.

Tremain recapitulates the testimony of Josie Mansfield about Fisk’s repeated threats against Stokes, and he asserts that the prosecution has utterly failed to rebut this testimony. So have Fisk’s friends failed to defend their deceased partner, by their conspicuous absence at the trial and from the prosecution’s list of witnesses. “Where is Jay Gould? Where is William M. Tweed? Where are those men that knew him in life and had enjoyed his hospitalities or his bounty? Where are the men who ate those splendid state dinners that he loved to give? Was there not one to be found who would say a word for their fallen chief?”

Some in the courtroom nod and exchange looks at the mention of Gould and Tweed, as if to second the query about their absence. Others stay focused on Tremain.

Tremain takes care not to assert that Fisk deserved killing, but he says that a violent death for such a man should come as no surprise. “The power of this man, through the Erie corporation, with its arms extending all over this country, with its thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of capital, and its many branches wielded by him and his associates—Rome, in the days of her decline, with all the examples of profligacy and licentiousness on the part of her nobility, never presented such instances as is shown in the life and career of this man. Do you ask me again whether I justify murder without any sense of imminent and impending danger? No. But God moves by laws. Men who live in violation of His laws, sooner or later, although they may flourish and prosper, will fail. It is well that it is so, for the successful career of a man who tramples under foot all laws human and divine would set at naught the teachings of the Bible and the instruction of father and mother around the domestic fireside. He who takes the sword shall fall by the sword. Men who live a life of violence are ever liable to fall victims to violence.”

Tremain asks the jury to do its duty, no more and no less. And part of its duty is to inform justice with humility. This is a fundamental premise of the law. “It is found in the very unanimity which requires the agreeing of all the twelve jurors before convicting. It is found in the doctrine that it is better that ninety-nine guilty men should go free than that one innocent should suffer. It is found in the rule that if there is reasonable doubt on the whole case, it is your duty to acquit. And finally, more clearly perhaps than in any other case, it is found in the great principle that he is to be tried by twelve men with human hearts and human sympathies, with that natural reluctance which exists against consigning a man to the gallows.”

Tremain’s speech moves the spectators. Several exhibit
agreement; many scrutinize Stokes less skeptically than before. The whispers sound softer, as if the whisperers are more willing to allow for human weakness.

District Attorney Garvin acknowledges the shift as he begins the conclusion for the state. “All the sympathy of the jury, the audience, the court, prosecuting officers, and counsel is with the living man, with the relatives that surround him and the associations with which he is connected,” Garvin says. This is only natural. So is the tendency to devalue those who cannot appear in court. “The dead are forgotten; their good deeds are buried with them, and their bad deeds, if they have any, are brought to the surface in the course of a trial like this. Every stain on their character is referred to. Every single thing that can be brought to light against them is displayed in characters of living fire.”

Yet the quality of the life of the deceased is not the issue here, Garvin continues, but the manner of its termination. “He was struck down while going up the stairway into the ladies’ entrance of the Grand Central Hotel, and sent into eternity by a pistol shot by the prisoner, who pleads for mercy, who asks for reasonable doubt in his favor, who asks for sympathy at the hands of this jury, and who prays through counsel for the right to be heard. All these for him. Poor Fisk has no jury, no counsel, no friends. Among strangers, no human being that he ever saw before, so far as we know, except the employees of this hotel, except the prisoner, who at the head of the stairs took his life in a moment. This is not disputed. This is admitted, and nobody denies. He swears to it himself. Yet he stands here asking for protection.”

The defense has made its case on three allegedly mitigating grounds, Garvin says. “First, insanity—want of responsibility—whatever it may be called. Second, that Fisk did not die of the wound that was inflicted upon him by this pistol shot. And third, self-defense.”

The district attorney serially dissects the defense arguments. Regarding insanity: “Is there any doubt that this man started on this day, came down from Delmonico’s to Andrews’s office, to Bixby’s court, and the Hoffman House and the Erie Railway office, and the corner of Fourth Street, to Chamberlain & Dodge’s, and to the Grand Central Hotel, and performed this deed? Anybody say he is guilty of any symptoms of insanity? Anything said or done by him that afternoon, or that day, or that week, that should indicate that he is not a sane man and knew what he is doing? Every step that he took that day, every word he said, and everything that he did, only goes to confirm the idea that he was just as responsible as he is today.”

As to the cause of death, Garvin reminds the jurors that while the doctors for the defense have asserted that shock from the gunshot wound was not the cause of death, other equally distinguished physicians have asserted that the shock
was
the cause of death. The jurors must make up their own minds—and recall that without the gunshot, fired by Stokes, the issue of the technical cause of death never would have arisen.

In the matter of self-defense, Stokes claims to have seen a pistol in Fisk’s hand. “Where is the pistol Fisk is alleged to have had? Was it dropped anywhere, and why was it not found? If the shot was fired in self-defense, why did Stokes not say so to the crowds on the spot? Why did he not say so to Hart when he charged him with shooting Fisk? Why did he not say so to the deceased when brought before him for recognition?”

And what is the evidence for the existence of a pistol in Fisk’s hand? “The only testimony to that effect was by the prisoner, confirmed by a woman connected with these two men, one of whom she had brought to death, the other to this peril.” He asks the jury to disregard Josie Mansfield’s testimony as entirely self-interested and wholly unreliable. He quotes Proverbs: “Deliver me from the strange woman. Her house inclineth unto death, and her paths to the dead.”

The arguments of the defense have failed, Garvin concludes. The responsibility of the jury is to judge not the dead man or his associates but the prisoner. “I care nothing for the Erie ring or the Tammany ring or any other ring. I care for right, justice, and truth.” If the jurors have doubts regarding the testimony of particular witnesses, let them ignore it. “There is evidence enough beside.” The question is simple: “If there was a killing without provocation it was murder.”

Garvin reminds the jurors that they bear great responsibility. New York is a dangerous place; he notes a recent series of violent murders that have set the entire community on edge. “If you release this man, blood will continue to flow in our streets.”

The accused has acted; now he must accept the consequence of his actions. “By the law he is to be judged; by the law he is to be punished.”