"Just now, when the prosecutor was explaining his subtle theory that only an inexperienced thief like Karamazov would have left the envelope on the floor, and not one like Smerdyakov, who would have avoided leaving a piece of evidence against himself, I thought as Ilistened that I was hearing something very familiar, and, would you believe it, I have heard that very argument, that very conjecture, of how Karamazov would have behaved, precisely two days before, from Smerdyakov himself.What's more, it struck me at the time.I fancied that there was an artificial simplicity about him; that he was in a hurry to suggest this idea to me that I might fancy it was my own.
He insinuated it, as it were.Did he not insinuate the same idea at the inquiry and suggest it to the talented prosecutor?
"I shall be asked, 'What about the old woman, Grigory's wife?
She heard the sick man moaning close by, all night.' Yes, she heard it, but that evidence is extremely unreliable.I knew a lady who complained bitterly that she had been kept awake all night by a dog in the yard.Yet the poor beast, it appeared, had only yelped once or twice in the night.And that's natural.If anyone is asleep and hears a groan he wakes up, annoyed at being waked, but instantly falls asleep again.Two hours later, again a groan, he wakes up and falls asleep again; and the same thing again two hours later- three times altogether in the night.Next morning the sleeper wakes up and complains that someone has been groaning all night and keeping him awake.And it is bound to seem so to him: the intervals of two hours of sleep he does not remember, he only remembers the moments of waking, so he feels he has been waked up all night.
"But why, why, asks the prosecutor, did not Smerdyakov confess in his last letter? Why did his conscience prompt him to one step and not to both? But, excuse me, conscience implies penitence, and the suicide may not have felt penitence, but only despair.Despair and penitence are two very different things.Despair may be vindictive and irreconcilable, and the suicide, laying his hands on himself, may well have felt redoubled hatred for those whom he had envied all his life.
"Gentlemen of the jury, beware of a miscarriage of justice! What is there unlikely in all I have put before you just now? Find the error in my reasoning; find the impossibility, the absurdity.And if there is but a shade of possibility, but a shade of probability in my propositions, do not condemn him.And is there only a shade? Iswear by all that is sacred, I fully believe in the explanation of the murder I have just put forward.What troubles me and makes me indignant is that of all the mass of facts heaped up by the prosecution against the prisoner, there is not a single one certain and irrefutable.And yet the unhappy man is to be ruined by the accumulation of these facts.Yes, the accumulated effect is awful: the blood, the blood dripping from his fingers, the bloodstained shirt, the dark night resounding with the shout 'Parricide!' and the old man falling with a broken head.And then the mass of phrases, statements, gestures, shouts! Oh! this has so much influence, it can so bias the mind; but, gentlemen of the jury, can it bias your minds? Remember, you have been given absolute power to bind and to loose, but the greater the power, the more terrible its responsibility.
"I do not draw back one iota from what I have said just now, but suppose for one moment I agreed with the prosecution that my luckless client had stained his hands with his father's blood.This is only hypothesis, I repeat; I never for one instant doubt of his innocence.But, so be it, I assume that my client is guilty of parricide.Even so, hear what I have to say.I have it in my heart to say something more to you, for I feel that there must be a great conflict in your hearts and minds....Forgive my referring to your hearts and minds, gentlemen of the jury, but I want to be truthful and sincere to the end.Let us all be sincere!"At this point the speech was interrupted by rather loud applause.The last words, indeed, were pronounced with a note of such sincerity that everyone felt that he really might have something to say, and that what he was about to say would be of the greatest consequence.But the President, hearing the applause, in a loud voice threatened to clear the court if such an incident were repeated.Every sound was hushed and Fetyukovitch began in a voice full of feeling quite unlike the tone he had used hitherto.
Chapter 13
A Corrupter of Thought"IT'S not only the accumulation of facts that threatens my client with ruin, gentlemen of the jury," he began, "what is really damning for my client is one fact- the dead body of his father.Had it been an ordinary case of murder you would have rejected the charge in view of the triviality, the incompleteness, and the fantastic character of the evidence, if you examine each part of it separately; or, at least, you would have hesitated to ruin a man's life simply from the prejudice against him which he has, alas! only too well deserved.But it's not an ordinary case of murder, it's a case of parricide.That impresses men's minds, and to such a degree that the very triviality and incompleteness of the evidence becomes less trivial and less incomplete even to an unprejudiced mind.How can such a prisoner be acquitted? What if he committed the murder and gets off unpunished? That is what everyone, almost involuntarily, instinctively, feels at heart.