Part 3
The jury sensed this, too. So did Judge Hayward. His keen eyes flickered alertly from the defendant's face to the lines on the polygraph recorder.
Now Tony's hands were no longer folded quietly in his lap. They were locked together, and the new veins in his wrists stood out under the new skin. His lips worked silently as he groped for words.
And then the words burst into an anguished outcry:
"No! I couldn't!..."
The polygraph lines leaped into jagged peaks. Blood pressure, respiratory block, pulse and breathing--all climbed and dropped wildly, recording their damning message for the world to see.
The D.A.'s lips twisted in a mirthless smile of triumph. Up in the TV booth, reporters sputtered, split infinitives and shattered syntax in frantic efforts to describe and interpret what had happened.
Jake Emspak stood and waited, a sear and wrinkled leaf hanging motionless in the wind.
(If the self is merely a node in a complex casual series, if self is solely energized and motivated by the sovereign need of survival and security, then the idea of a bridge between Man and the infinite is a pious illusion....)
Tony Corfino stared down at his twisted hands, and slowly they unlocked. He looked up at Jake, and the doubt and fear and bewilderment were gone at last from his eyes.
"That ain't so," he said quietly. "I did it ... I know I did it ... an' I know it was wrong ... I deserve the chair!"
(Thus Man escapes himself in freedom, and is therefore never a fully predictable or manipulatable object--only a window through which we peer with blind eyes into the reaches of the universe....)
* * * * *
The District Attorney's summary to the jury was a model of legal craftsmanship. Boldly disregarding the broader issues raised by Jake, he hewed firmly to the line of criminal responsibility and punishment.
Point by point he reviewed the facts of the crime. Witness by witness he retraced the eye-witness testimony. He produced photographs of Tony's body being loaded from the wreckage of the car into the ambulance, and from the ambulance into the prison ward of City Hospital. He proved beyond any reasonable doubt that Tony had never been out of custody from the moment of his apprehension.
"Even the defendant admits to his responsibility for the crime," the D.A. continued coldly.
Only in his concluding remarks did the District Attorney make reference to the defense presented by Jake Emspak.
"I wonder," he asked, smiling for the first time, "if any of you tried--as I did--to carry through to its ultimate conclusion the line of reasoning presented with such detail and admitted virtuosity by the defendant's counsel? If the fabricating of replacement parts for the human body has already become a billion dollar industry, if psychiatry continues to achieve new miracles, how many people in this world could now--or in the near future--seek to escape their responsibilities by taking refuge in the argument that they were no longer themselves? At what point would we draw the line? If fifty-percent of a man's body has been replaced is he neither himself nor a new person? If fifty-one has been replaced, is he no longer the husband of his wife or the father of his children? Can he then walk blithely away from his responsibilities, proclaiming 'I am a new man'?"
A titter went through the courtroom. Judge Hayward gavelled immediately for silence, but the D.A. winked at the TV cameras. His point had been well made.
When Jake Emspak stepped up to the jury box to deliver his own final plea, he promptly picked up the challenge.
"I have known the District Attorney too well, for too many years," he said, "to believe that he has considered only the superficial aspects of this case. If you should find the defendant guilty, I am sure he would be the last to oppose consideration of all the matters I have raised in the determination of a just sentence.
"And I grant you that if a verdict of guilty is reached, the letter of the law will be fulfilled, and an eye for an eye can be paid.
"Likewise, if the verdict is not guilty, the letter of the law most unquestionably will be violated--but its spirit will be vindicated!
"I am asking you to take a bold step, across a new frontier.... Yes, down through the ages, law has become a living, meaningful instrument of human dignity because--at each crossroad of decision--men and women were not afraid to depart from precedent!"
Oldtimers in the court had never before heard Jake Emspak summarize a case in such dispassionate, objective tones. Usually, his voice and argument ranged the gamut of emotional and semantic appeals, plucking at each member of the jury like the strings of a harp. Today, he seemed to be making an effort to hold himself in check.
"This is the trial of a living man for the crime of a man who no longer exists," Jake continued quietly. "Science destroyed that man--completely and with absolute finality! In his place is a man with a new body, new thoughts, new blood and new reproductive capacity. The fact that this new man can be brought to trial violates justice in its deepest and truest meaning! It points inescapably to the fact that the law must be revised to bring it up to date with present reality...."
Jake paused and was silent for so long that he appeared to have forgotten his surroundings. When he finally continued, his voice was so soft that the jurors unconsciously leaned forward to catch his words:
"There is still another dimension to this case--one that transcends science ... and the law. It is one I approached with great uncertainty, because it leads down a path I am walking for the first time....
"Some of the testimony brought out in this trial may not have been new to all of you, though it was new to me. Perhaps you have all formed your own conclusions with regard to the relationship between the spirit or soul of Man, and his outer shell ... the house in which man lives. But if this house becomes a prison for the real man, and science releases him to live in a new dwelling, then did the man ever actually exist until his release? And if the man who lives now did not exist at the time of the crime for which he is tried, can he then be judged guilty?
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury--we await your answer."
* * * * *
Twilight faded, and across Central Park the skyline of the city changed from steel and concrete to a gossamer web of light and shadow. Jake Emspak sat in peace by his window, the fingers of his right hand resting gently on the gold frame of his wife's picture. He touched a button on the arm of his chair, and in a moment Ed Murrow's features came into focus on the wall-screen.
"The jury in the Corfino case is now locked up for the night," Murrow began, his 80-year-old voice more vibrantly alive than ever. "Tomorrow we may--and very likely will--have a verdict.
"But whatever the verdict, this case has served an epochal purpose--to our time as well as to the law. We have paused for an instant in our frantic drive for technological advancement to ponder the essential meaning of man--and the worth of the human entity.
"It may take years to evaluate and appreciate all of the complex testimony Jake Emspak put into the trial record, for each of us will see in it only what we want to see or are capable of seeing....
"But we may be assured that in the generations to come this case will be footnoted throughout the opening worlds of space by serious students of the law, the sciences and the humanities.
"For tonight, it should suffice to say: Thank you, Jake Emspak--Well done!"
Jake touched the button again, and the screen went dark. Between old friends, there was much that words left unsaid.