But is a
man to be lost because he is bred and born with a weak character?
Gentlemen, men like the prisoner are destroyed daily under our law
for want of that human insight which sees them as they are, patients,
and not criminals. If the prisoner be found guilty, and treated as
though he were a criminal type, he will, as all experience shows, in
all probability become one. I beg you not to return a verdict that
may thrust him back into prison and brand him for ever. Gentlemen,
Justice is a machine that, when some one has once given it the
starting push, rolls on of itself. Is this young man to be ground to
pieces under this machine for an act which at the worst was one of
weakness? Is he to become a member of the luckless crews that man
those dark, ill-starred ships called prisons? Is that to be his
voyage-from which so few return? Or is he to have another chance, to
be still looked on as one who has gone a little astray, but who will
come back? I urge you, gentlemen, do not ruin this young man! For,
as a result of those four minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable,
stares him in the face. He can be saved now. Imprison him as a
criminal, and I affirm to you that he will be lost. He has neither
the face nor the manner of one who can survive that terrible ordeal.
Weigh in the scales his criminality and the suffering he has
undergone. The latter is ten times heavier already.
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