Post by Rita Witt on Jun 6, 2010 20:24:11 GMT -5
Reilly Summation---NO DATES ON PICTURES OR EVIDENCE A BOTCHED UP PROSECUTION HURRIEDLY PUT TOGETHER FOR A TRIAL
Reilly Summation
Now the Attorney General said, when he stated in his opening: "I will hang this ladder around Hauptmann's neck." Five hundred fingerprints taken off the ladder. Not a fingerprint, but they had to pin this crime on Hauptmann, that is all there is about it. It was going to be pinned on him if they tore his house to pieces or tore down his garage. Now do you suppose this board was ever taken out of any attic? There isn't a mark on this board from any hammer. You know they would have to take a pinch bar and pry it in and lift up. It would be a toss as to whether these square cut nails would stay in the crosspiece they had been driven into, or whether they would come out with the board. Not a mark of a hammer, not a mark of a pinch bar, not a mark of anything!
Now why plant these things in the case? Why are they so desperate?
Mr. Koehler comes in, and we come back to expert evidence against horse sense. He is nothing more nor less than what we call a "lumber cruiser." He goes around the country spotting groves of trees to see what they are good for. He'd have you believe by his testimony - and I don't see how he can sleep at night after giving that testimony where a man's life is at stake - that this carpenter, this defendant, who could buy any kind of wood in a lumber yard up in the Bronx, went out and got two or three different kinds of wood to make this ladder. And he says to himself: "My goodness, I am short a piece of lumber! What am I going to do?"
There is a lumberyard around the corner. There is wood in the cellar, belonging to Rausch, so he crawls up into the attic and tears up a board and takes it downstairs some place and saws it lengthwise and crosswise and every other wise to make the side of the ladder, the upper joint of which he never used or never needed.
I don't know as much about lumber as Mr. Pope. I wish I did. Mr. Pope is a very distinguished lawyer who has other good qualities. He has been close to nature, living out here in Jersey, I suppose he has been more or less a man who has been in the woods and in gardens and everything else and understands those things. I couldn't drive a nail without busting my thumbnail. He could very likely build a house.
Now the standard, as I understand, in these mills is the same the world over. A two-foot measurement of gauge in a mill in North Carolina is the same two feet in Alaska. And the bevel is the same. The log goes into the mill and it is cut into one or two inch boards; then it is planed down. Here we have down in North Carolina, South Carolina, billions and billions of board feet a year. And then Koehler has the nerve to come in here and tell us, I suppose they are like fingerprints, - there never were two boards in all the billion feet alike; and he says, "This board here was once a part of this board here."
DeBisschop says, "Nothing of the kind. The grain isn't alike; the knots are not alike."
"How do you know?" says the Attorney General.
"Well, here are two boards," he says; "they perfectly match." He shows it to you. One, he says, forty-seven years old; the other, five years old. Both the same age when their individual and respective trees were cut, and they match perfectly, the grain, the age.
Mr. Pope's examination developed, as you will remember, perfect markings in these two.
Koehler is testifying for glory, vanity, preferment, advancement. DeBisschop, not a dime; carfare not even paid; never saw Hauptmann in his life. Comes down here - what for? Because he read in the paper this fellow Koehler's testimony. Would he come down here and commit perjury, make a fool of himself? He points out to you that board and that board were never the same. We can't get into the attic and see where the board came from.
This case is too perfect from the prosecution's viewpoint and what they produced here. No, I am afraid this board was prepared for this trial. I am pretty certain these pictures [close-ups of the ladder railings] were prepared. You and I take pictures and we write the date and the place. Here we are dealing with a police agency. They are trying to perpetuate and keep something for a future trial. No date. No name. And they come in here so lovely and fresh.
Reilly Summation
Now the Attorney General said, when he stated in his opening: "I will hang this ladder around Hauptmann's neck." Five hundred fingerprints taken off the ladder. Not a fingerprint, but they had to pin this crime on Hauptmann, that is all there is about it. It was going to be pinned on him if they tore his house to pieces or tore down his garage. Now do you suppose this board was ever taken out of any attic? There isn't a mark on this board from any hammer. You know they would have to take a pinch bar and pry it in and lift up. It would be a toss as to whether these square cut nails would stay in the crosspiece they had been driven into, or whether they would come out with the board. Not a mark of a hammer, not a mark of a pinch bar, not a mark of anything!
Now why plant these things in the case? Why are they so desperate?
Mr. Koehler comes in, and we come back to expert evidence against horse sense. He is nothing more nor less than what we call a "lumber cruiser." He goes around the country spotting groves of trees to see what they are good for. He'd have you believe by his testimony - and I don't see how he can sleep at night after giving that testimony where a man's life is at stake - that this carpenter, this defendant, who could buy any kind of wood in a lumber yard up in the Bronx, went out and got two or three different kinds of wood to make this ladder. And he says to himself: "My goodness, I am short a piece of lumber! What am I going to do?"
There is a lumberyard around the corner. There is wood in the cellar, belonging to Rausch, so he crawls up into the attic and tears up a board and takes it downstairs some place and saws it lengthwise and crosswise and every other wise to make the side of the ladder, the upper joint of which he never used or never needed.
I don't know as much about lumber as Mr. Pope. I wish I did. Mr. Pope is a very distinguished lawyer who has other good qualities. He has been close to nature, living out here in Jersey, I suppose he has been more or less a man who has been in the woods and in gardens and everything else and understands those things. I couldn't drive a nail without busting my thumbnail. He could very likely build a house.
Now the standard, as I understand, in these mills is the same the world over. A two-foot measurement of gauge in a mill in North Carolina is the same two feet in Alaska. And the bevel is the same. The log goes into the mill and it is cut into one or two inch boards; then it is planed down. Here we have down in North Carolina, South Carolina, billions and billions of board feet a year. And then Koehler has the nerve to come in here and tell us, I suppose they are like fingerprints, - there never were two boards in all the billion feet alike; and he says, "This board here was once a part of this board here."
DeBisschop says, "Nothing of the kind. The grain isn't alike; the knots are not alike."
"How do you know?" says the Attorney General.
"Well, here are two boards," he says; "they perfectly match." He shows it to you. One, he says, forty-seven years old; the other, five years old. Both the same age when their individual and respective trees were cut, and they match perfectly, the grain, the age.
Mr. Pope's examination developed, as you will remember, perfect markings in these two.
Koehler is testifying for glory, vanity, preferment, advancement. DeBisschop, not a dime; carfare not even paid; never saw Hauptmann in his life. Comes down here - what for? Because he read in the paper this fellow Koehler's testimony. Would he come down here and commit perjury, make a fool of himself? He points out to you that board and that board were never the same. We can't get into the attic and see where the board came from.
This case is too perfect from the prosecution's viewpoint and what they produced here. No, I am afraid this board was prepared for this trial. I am pretty certain these pictures [close-ups of the ladder railings] were prepared. You and I take pictures and we write the date and the place. Here we are dealing with a police agency. They are trying to perpetuate and keep something for a future trial. No date. No name. And they come in here so lovely and fresh.