btain his end. He knew that argument is the best answer to oratory.

"Your Honour, and gentlemen of the jury," he began, "in defending this
man I stand for the law. The representative of the State invokes the
law.

"What is that law? Is it violence for violence, hatred for unreasoning
hate? Is that the law? Or is the love of justice, the love of fair
play, at the heart of the law? What do you say? Is it not right for
any man to have a fair chance?

"I yield to no man in my desire to see a better day of law and order in
this town. We are two years old in time, but a century old in
violence. Is it merely your wish that we add one more grave to the
long rows on our hillsides? Is that your wish? Do you want a trial,
or do you wish merely an execution? Gentlemen, I tell you this is the
most important day in the history of this town. Let us here make our
stand for the law. The old ways will no longer serve. We are at the
turning of the road. Let us follow the law.

"Now, under the law you must, in order to prove the crime of murder, be
able to show the body of the victim; you must show that murder has
really been done. You must show a motive, a reason. You must show, or
be prepared to show, when required, a mental responsibility on the part
of the accused. All these things you must show by the best possible
testimony, not by what you think, or what you have heard, but by direct
testimony, produced here in this court. You can't ask the accused man
to testify against himself. You can't ask me, his counsel, to testify
against him. Hence there is left but one witness who can testify
directly in this case. There is not one item of remains, not one bone,
one rag, one shred of clothing, not one iota of evidence introduced
before this honourable court to show that the body of Calvin Greathouse
was ever identified or found. There is no corpus delicti. How shall
you say that this missing man has been murdered? Think this thing
over. Remember, if you hang this man, you can never bring him back to
life.

"There must be some motive shown for the supposition of such an act as
murder. What motive can be shown here? Certainly not that of robbery.
The horse of the missing man came back alone, its lariat dragging, as
we shall prove. It had not been ridden since the lariat was broken.
You all know, as we shall prove, that this man Juan was never known to
ride a horse. We shall prove that he walked sixty miles