Part 2

Jake nodded gravely, and advanced toward the witness stand. The young woman watched him apprehensively. In the TV booth, the regular court reporters leaned forward with anticipation. Many a time had they seen Jake Emspak take the most positive witness and reduce him to a quivering, stuttering symbol of uncertainty. "Show me an eye witness," Jake had once observed, "and I'll show you a liar."

Now, as Jake began, there was a note of friendliness in his voice:

"You say this is the man who entered the bank on the morning of last October 17?"

"Yes--yes, sir.... It is!"

Jake nodded understandingly.

"Suppose," he continued, "we look at it another way for a moment: Is the man who entered the bank on the morning of last October 17 the same man who now appears as defendant in this trial?"

The young woman bit her lip, smearing some of the lipstick on her large front teeth. She hesitated, thinking through the question, then nodded firmly.

"Yes--of course!"

"How do you know?"

"Why--he--he _looks_ the same!"

"_Exactly_ the same? I suggest you look him over carefully before you answer."

The young woman stared at Tony, then dropped her eyes in confusion.

"_Exactly_ the same?" Jake pressed.

"Well ... I'm ... I'm not sure...."

Jake teetered on the point of his cane, thoughtfully contemplating the now flustered witness. Then, unexpectedly, he turned to Judge Hayward and said,

"No further questions, your Honor."

The D.A. blinked in surprise. It was not like Jake to stop once he had a witness in full retreat. The court reporters looked at each other disappointedly. Maybe the old man should retire!

Jake continued to treat prosecution witnesses with similar restraint. He would lead them up to the brink of uncertainty, then leave them there. As a result, the District Attorney was able to complete presentation of his case by the middle of the second morning.

"The People rest," he announced, with grim satisfaction.

* * * * *

Jake Emspak's first defense witness was a youthful looking man of about forty who quickly identified himself as a well-known authority on fingerprints, an expert who had many times been called to assist the police in major criminal cases.

"Is it not true," Jake began, "that in the tradition of modern law, fingerprints are regarded as the most positive method of identification?"

"That is correct."

From a mass of data on his desk, Jake extracted a single sheet of photostatic copy and handed it to Judge Hayward.

"I have here," he said, "a certified copy of one Tony Corfino's fingerprints--taken at the time of his arrest and conviction five years ago on a charge of Grand Theft, Auto...."

The Judge accepted the photostat and handed it to the clerk for entry into the record. Jake then retrieved it, and gave it to his witness.

"Now, Sir," he went on, "will you please take the defendant's fingerprints and compare them to this photostatic copy."

The jurors craned forward curiously as the fingerprint expert opened his kit and went methodically about the business of fingerprinting Tony Corfino. When he had finished, and returned to the witness stand with the new prints, Jake Emspak demanded:

"Is there any similarity between those fingerprints and the fingerprints of one Tony Corfino?"

The expert looked from one set of prints to the other, and quickly replied:

"There can be absolutely no doubt about it--these are _not_ the same prints."

Red-faced with anger, the District Attorney heaved himself to his feet and strode toward the bench.

"Objection, your Honor!" he stormed. "This is the most outrageous deception I have ever witnessed in a courtroom. Frankly, I am astounded that opposing counsel would stoop to such tactics!"

Judge Hayward's voice had the bite of steel drill as he directed:

"Will you please explain to the Court exactly what you mean?"

"It's a matter of record," the D.A. snapped, "that the defendant was seriously injured in the accident that resulted in his capture. Massive burns were part of his injuries.... Bone and skin grafts were necessary to repair the damage to his hands--as well as to other parts of his body. Naturally, his fingerprints would be different! The Defense Counsel knows that!"

Jake smiled, and replied mildly:

"Of course the Defense Counsel knows that, and will certainly make the full extent of the defendant's injuries a part of the trial record. However, I have called this particular witness to show that Tony Corfino cannot be identified as Tony Corfino by what is still regarded as the most infallible method of criminal identification."

"Your Honor," retorted the D.A., "This so-called testimony is totally irrelevant and immaterial. I request that it be stricken from the record!"

"It is most relevant to our case," Jake shot back. "Furthermore, the Defense will prove that Tony Corfino cannot be identified as Tony Corfino by any known method of criminal identification!"

Judge Hayward's eyes narrowed speculatively. He thought the matter over for a moment before stating, with unconcealed interest:

"This may well be a legal situation without precedent. The Court will withhold ruling on the objection for the time being."

The next defense witness was a specialist on agglutination of the blood.

"Agglutination," he explained, adjusting his glasses pedantically, "is a biological reaction consisting of the mutual adhesion of the red corpuscles. It is also a method of establishing individualization of blood."

"I see," said Jake. "Now, tell us--how has this method been used to establish identification in a criminal case?"

"It is sometimes used where the victim's blood leaves stains on the murderer's clothing--as well as the victim's own clothing. If both blood stains produce the same biological reaction, the murderer is either guilty--or has a great deal of explaining to do!"

Jake meticulously selected another exhibit from the material on his desk.

"Will you identify this, please?"

"It is a piece of cotton stained with the blood of this--this defendant."

"When was it stained?"

"In the test I made last week."

"Did you compare it with the stains on garments worn by a certain Tony Corfino at the time of his accident?"

"I did."

"What did you find?"

"The two samples were entirely different?"

"Could we assume, then, that the blood of a man known as Tony Corfino does not flow through the veins of this defendant, who also bears the name of Tony Corfino?"

The witness rubbed his hand thoughtfully over the high, polished dome of his forehead.

"You _could_ put it that way," he conceded.

With the skill of a symphony conductor calling upon the diverse instruments under his baton, Jake Emspak continued to bring forward a bewildering variety of witnesses to prove that in the identifiable details of his physiology, Tony Corfino indeed was not Tony Corfino. The D.A. watched in furious silence. Once, when Jake passed near him, he muttered:

"This is contemptible!"

Imperturbably, Jake turned back to the witness stand, where a radiographer from Scripps Institute was taking the oath. Patiently, he led the witness through a description of how the radiographies of the nasal accessory sinuses and mastoid processes could be used to establish the identity of an individual. Jake then produced medical records from a juvenile correctional institution in eastern Pennsylvania, where Tony Corfino had sojourned during his seventeenth year. Comparison with recent hospital records showed a striking difference between the two radiographies.

The opthalmologic method of Capdevielle was next explored by Jake to show that the eyes of Tony Corfino were not the eyes of Tony Corfino. The technique of Tamassia and Ameuille was employed to prove the same point about Tony's veins. The umbilicial method of Bert and Vianny intrigued the courtroom and TV audience with structural dissimilarities of Tony's navel. By means of projection on a large screen, Jake demonstrated to the jurors and Judge Hayward that Tony Corfino, defendant, had an entirely different electrocardiagram from the Tony Corfino whose crushed body had been pulled, more dead than alive, from the wreckage of a burning automobile.

Late that afternoon, Ed Murrow commented to his news audience in the cadence that had been his trademark for more than forty years:

"We know not yet where this trial is taking us, though Jake Emspak is beginning to show the direction. Perhaps, we, too, could ask ourselves the question: _What is a man?_"

Less philosophically, a space-weary young captain, sending in his nightly report from the satellite station, Vanguard VI, queried:

"If this Tony Corfino isn't Tony Corfino, who or what in the hell is he?"

* * * * *

Part of the answer to this question was on display the next morning when the jury filed into Judge Hayward's courtroom. Before them, and angled toward the TV cameras, was a chart nearly eight feet tall. It showed, in outline, the figure of a man. The figure was covered with small black dots, each bearing a white number. In all, there was seventy-two dots.

As soon as court was in session, Jake called a short, squarely-built man of about fifty to the stand. There was a bulldog set to his jaw and mouth. He identified himself as Dr. Theodore Clendenning, Chief of Staff at City Hospital.

"Dr. Clendenning," said Jake, "I assume you are familiar with the medical and surgical care received by the defendant at your hospital?"

"Quite familiar," the doctor retorted, impatiently.

"Then, may I direct your attention to this chart. It indicates areas in which artificial parts were used to replace the damaged or destroyed natural parts of a certain Tony Corfino's body. Will you name them, please, as I point them out with my cane."

Tapping the chart like a school-teacher signalling for the attention of his pupils, Jake Emspak started at the outline of the head.

"Vitallium skull plate," snapped Dr. Clendenning.

Jake's cane touched the nose.

"Vitallium nose plate."

Swiftly, the tip of the cane moved around the outline of the body, pausing only long enough for the doctor to name each part:

"Plastic tear duct ... vitallium jaw bone and implanted dentures ... paraffin and plastic sponge to fill chest after removal of lung ... plastic esophagus ... tantalum breast plate ... tantalum mesh to patch chest wall ... vitallium shoulder socket rim and shoulder joint bone ... vitallium elbow joint, radius bone, ulna bone, wrist bone, finger joint ... spinal fusion plate ... vitallium blood vessel tubes."

Jake put down his cane, and turned conversationally toward the doctor.

"Dr. Clendenning, is it true that this Tony Corfino's reproductive organs were destroyed in the accident?"

"Virtually so."

"And is it not also true that the defendant in this case is now capable of becoming a parent?"

Dr. Clendenning glanced at his watch and sighed.

"What you are referring to," he answered, "has been rather elementary surgery for the past ten years."

"But the children of Tony Corfino would not then be the children of Tony Corfino?"

Dr. Clendenning looked toward Judge Hayward with a pained expression. Receiving no sign of any kind from the Judge, he turned back to Jake Emspak.

"I have given you the medical data," he said angrily. "You can draw your own conclusions."

Jake nodded, and replied with emphasis:

"I am sure this Court and the Jury will do just that."

He studied the chart for a moment, then tapped the outline figure in the area of the eyes.

"Tell us, Dr. Clendenning, what did your staff do about Tony Corfino's eyes? I understand the flames had reached them."

"Cornea transplants were necessary."

"And where did you obtain the corneas?"

"Mr. Emspak--I'm sure you know that most people nowadays will their eyes to the Cornea Bank!"

"Can you tell us anything about the corneas that were transplanted in Tony Corfino's eyes? From what type a person did they come?"

"I'd rather not answer that?"

Jake turned to the Judge.

"Your Honor, unless there is a legal reason why the good doctor should not answer, I ask the Court to direct that he do so."

Judge Hayward hesitated, then directed the witness to answer.

"They came from the eyes of a priest," growled the doctor.

Jake Emspak raised his cane to the chart once again, then apparently changed his mind and lowered it.

"Dr. Clendenning," he asked quietly, "am I correct in believing that the construction of parts for the human body is now an important industry?"

"That's right," the doctor said grudgingly. "It's grown tremendously in the past twenty years--from a $160-million-a-year business in 1957 to nearly a billion today...."

"One further question, if you please, Doctor," said Jake. "What is _your_ definition of a man?"

The doctor thought for a moment, and smiled coldly.

"I'm afraid it would not assist your case," he replied.

"We are only looking for some basic truths."

Dr. Clendenning bunched his square shoulders and leaned forward aggressively.

"I can think of no better definition," he snapped, "than one given by a distinguished physician in the earlier years of this century. He defined the human body as an animal organism, differing in only a few respects from other animal organisms, and fitted for the performance of two main functions: The conversion of food and air into energy and tissue; and the reproduction of other individuals of its species!"

So coldly, with such an air of finality did he speak, that his words brought an audible gasp from two women in the jury box. Jake Emspak remained impassive.

"And this is all you see in a man?" he prodded gently.

The doctor's jaw set stubbornly.

"As a philosopher," he retorted, "I may engage in some speculation in the company of Plato, Schopenhauer or the Archbishop of Canterbury, but my speculations would themselves be based upon speculations and not upon any scientific data resembling observed facts!"

"Then, from your point of view, the defendant in this courtroom is not _the_ Tony Corfino--the same man--whose broken body was brought into your hospital eight months ago?"

"Obviously not."

"Thank you, Doctor."

Jake walked slowly from the witness stand to the jury box, and then back to the bench.

"Perhaps," he said softly, "a ten-minute recess would be in order...."

Judge Hayward drew a long breath, exhaled and nodded. With the sound of his gavel, tension ran out of the courtroom like water from a punctured barrel.

* * * * *

When court reconvened, Jake began bringing to the witness stand a parade of educators, religious leaders and philosophers who kept the courtroom alternately fascinated and bewildered for the next two days. They came from London, Rome, Johannesburg, Philadelphia, Tokyo and Chicago. They came from every oasis of learning where men could still find profit in thought, without relating the profit to the cash register or the thought of technology. They spoke in words and symbols that sometimes soared beyond space itself, and left the world's TV audience groping for stability in earthbound cliches. The paradox was incredible: All this thinking, all this culture--all of everything brought into a courtroom to defend a bush-league hoodlum. Reporters ceased to ask who was paying for this display; they simply marveled at the pyrotechnics. Through it all, Jake Emspak moved deftly, surely, extracting from each witness the pure essence of relevant thought:

Man is a creature destined to live in two worlds. He is surrounded first by the realities of this world--and he is called to live with eternal realities that transcend this world....

The human person is a body, and therefore subject to the laws of matter, to spatiality, temporality and opacity. As such, he is a meeting place for passing forces, a crossroads of contacts and reactions. But the human person is also a spirit, that is to say a reality that transcends apparent reality. There is within him the wakened or nascent ability to comprehend space and surpass time....

The human self is an object, of a sort--and, as such, can be described as the empiricists have described us. But the human self is also, and more essentially, a subject, which never appears to the view of others or even to the most determined introspection. The self as object is finite, but the self as subject touches the infinite; it is the meeting place of time and eternity, of man and God....

For all its advances, the 20th century is still a child of the 19th, when the impact of the developing sciences of physics and biology produced a change in the concept of nature and Man's place in it. From Malthus and Darwin, Spencer and Feuerbach, Vogt, Buchner, Czolbe and Haeckel evolved a reductive naturalism in which the spiritual quality of man is ruled out and he becomes a unique emergent of a blind natural process--a creature who must make of nature what he can....

The next five million years of evolution will be in the human brain, where Man must ultimately be defined. Until Man appeared, evolution strove only to produce an organ, the brain, in a body capable of protecting it, and carrying out its will. The ancestors of Man were irresponsible actors playing parts in a play they did not understand. Man continues to play his part but wants to understand the play....

Man is a blending of the rational and intuitive processes. Ethical conclusions reached by logical thinking were attained several thousand years ago by the religions, which proves that man's rational processes are strangely slower than his intuitive processes....

Jurors shifted impatiently in their seats, yet their attention would inexorably be drawn back to the witness stand. Courtroom spectators, who had come to be titillated by the sensational, stayed to grope with concepts they could not understand. The TV audience, spoon-fed for so many decades, tried doggedly to chew and digest adult foodstuffs. Sets were turned off in anger or despair--and then turned back on again.

"What is a man?"

The pivotal nature of this question became steadily more evident.

If Tony Corfino was not Tony Corfino, was he then not more of the real personality, the human entity, than the original Tony had ever been.

"In restoring the damaged areas of the brain," a surgeon testified under Jake's skillful prodding, "we thought it wise to perform a lobotomy at the same time, thereby relieving anti-social tensions and pressures."

(The body is at once a means of expression for the soul, and a veil; it reveals and it hides....)

"During the convalescent period," a consulting specialist informed the courtroom, "we recommended treatment with sodium dilantin and electroshock therapy, thereby producing a change in this patient's electroencephalograph."

(The body presents all the problems of matter: It is a limitation, a weight, a force. It seems almost a miracle when it is overcome, penetrated and ordered by thought and spirit....)

"Subsequently," the psychiatrist stated, "this patient underwent extensive therapy, aided frequently by hypnosis and sodium pentathol. His respiratory, vascular and circulatory systems began to show increasing stability."

(Released from its warped framework, brought into balance with instincts inherited from our animal ancestors, the body becomes, in a way, an image of the soul, a sign conveying something of our personal mystery....)

And then Jake called the hospital Administrator to the stand. Speaking with great deliberation, so that each word registered, Jake asked:

"Is this type of medical care ordinarily given to a prisoner-patient?"

"The type of care depends upon the case, Mr. Emspak. In a case such as this, I would regard the treatment as routine. You see, in the past decade our approach to any patient has become one of total therapy...."

"And in the case of a prisoner, what do you do when the therapy is completed?"

The Administrator looked surprised.

"Why, we return him to jail--in accordance with the law."

Jake Emspak stood in silence, contemplatively staring down at the blue veins on the back of his hands. At length, he announced:

"Your Honor, the Defense will conclude tomorrow morning, after one more witness--a man who goes by the name of Tony Corfino...."

* * * * *

The sweat on the pale, polished skin of Tony's forehead stood out like drops of summer rain; they seemed to have fallen there rather than seeped out through the pores.

A polygraph lie detector had been set up under Jake's direction and wheeled close to the witness stand. A technician opened the front of Tony's shirt and made fast the pneumograph tube with the aid of a beaded chain. Next, a blood-pressure cuff, of the type used by physicians, was fasted around Tony's right arm. A set of electrodes was attached to the palmar and dorsal surfaces of the hand of the other arm. The recorder showing the graph lines had been specially constructed so as to be visible throughout the courtroom, and to the television cameras.

The technician had already been on the stand to explain the simplified and easily read graph lines of the modern polygraph: A shallow breathing line denoting suppression; a heavy breath line denoting relief; the respiratory block, fast pulse and slow pulse lines; the rise in blood pressure tracing.... It was all there on the screen--the emotional picture of a man testifying at his own trial for murder.

"Objection, your Honor!" shouted the D.A. for the tenth time that morning. "This procedure is definitely irregular and immaterial! Defense Counsel has been making a mockery of the Court for days, but now he has stepped completely out of line!"

Jake clucked soothingly.

"What," he inquired, "is irregular or immaterial about a defendant voluntarily taking a lie detector test? I believe that I have heard the District Attorney challenge clients of mine to do so on several occasions! Now, we are merely permitting the Court and the Jury to view the test in progress...."

Once again, the Judge withheld his ruling, and the D.A. sagged dejectedly in his chair. The strain of the last few days--sitting in the courtroom and listening to witnesses he knew not how or why to cross-examine--had taken its toll. His eyes were bloodshot, and fits of wheezing seized him spasmodically, but the set of his jaw was still unyielding. Jake grieved for him.

Tony Corfino's reactions, as he sat in the witness chair watching the final preparations, would be difficult to catalogue. He looked both aloof and nervously concerned. His curly black hair was damp from the way he constantly brushed the sweat back off his forehead; his puffy lips seemed in constant need of moistening. But his hands were folded quietly in his lap. He seemed to Jake like a man lost to the past, adrift in the present and unrelated to the future.

"Will you give us your name, please?" Jake asked casually.

"Tony Corfino."

"Where were you born?"

"I ain't--I'm not sure.... On the West Side, I suppose...."

On the recorder over Tony's head, the graph lines rippled in smooth patterns.

Suddenly changing his manner, Jake rasped:

"Have you ever committed a crime?"

Tony frowned in bewilderment.

"I _know_ that I have, but sometimes.... Well, I kinda wonder...."

"Do you remember what happened last October 17?"

"You mean the bank ... the shootin'?"

"That's right."

"I've read so much--heard so much talk--that I ain't sure just what I remember...."

Tony's eyes--or the eyes of the dead priest through which Tony had vision--reflected his torment. Jake moved around so that Tony would be facing the jury when he answered the next question.

"Tony," directed Jake, "think about this question before you answer it: Are _you_ the man who tried to rob that bank--then got excited and killed two people?"

Jake knew this question was the one element of gamble in his entire case. The way it was answered could be a summation or refutation of all the evidence and testimony he had so painstakingly assembled.