The Brothers Karamazov

he Speech For The Defense. An Argument That Cuts Both Ways

All was hushed as the first words of the famous orator rang out. The
eyes of the audience were fastened upon him. He began very simply and
directly, with an air of conviction, but not the slightest trace of
conceit. He made no attempt at eloquence, at pathos, or emotional
phrases. He was like a man speaking in a circle of intimate and
sympathetic friends. His voice was a fine one, sonorous and
sympathetic, and there was something genuine and simple in the very
sound of it. But every one realized at once that the speaker might
suddenly rise to genuine pathos and “pierce the heart with untold
power.” His language was perhaps more irregular than Ippolit
Kirillovitch’s, but he spoke without long phrases, and indeed, with
more precision. One thing did not please the ladies: he kept bending
forward, especially at the beginning of his speech, not exactly bowing,
but as though he were about to dart at his listeners, bending his long
spine in half, as though there were a spring in the middle that enabled
him to bend almost at right angles.

At the beginning of his speech he spoke rather disconnectedly, without
system, one may say, dealing with facts separately, though, at the end,
these facts formed a whole. His speech might be divided into two parts,
the first consisting of criticism in refutation of the charge,
sometimes malicious and sarcastic. But in the second half he suddenly
changed his tone, and even his manner, and at once rose to pathos. The
audience seemed on the look‐out for it, and quivered with enthusiasm.

He went straight to the point, and began by saying that although he
practiced in Petersburg, he had more than once visited provincial towns
to defend prisoners, of whose innocence he had a conviction or at least
a preconceived idea. “That is what has happened to me in the present
case,” he explained. “From the very first accounts in the newspapers I
was struck by something which strongly prepossessed me in the
prisoner’s favor. What interested me most was a fact which often occurs
in legal practice, but rarely, I think, in such an extreme and peculiar
form as in the present case. I ought to formulate that peculiarity only
at the end of my speech, but I will do so at the very beginning, for it
is my weakness to go to work directly, not keeping my effects in
reserve and economizing my material. That may be imprudent on my part,
but at least it’s sincere. What I have in my mind is this: there is an
overwhelming chain of evidence against the prisoner, and at the same
time not one fact that will stand criticism, if it is examined
separately. As I followed the case more closely in the papers my idea
was more and more confirmed, and I suddenly received from the
prisoner’s relatives a request to undertake his defense. I at once
hurried here, and here I became completely convinced. It was to break
down this terrible chain of facts, and to show that each piece of
evidence taken separately was unproved and fantastic, that I undertook
the case.”

So Fetyukovitch began.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” he suddenly protested, “I am new to this
district. I have no preconceived ideas. The prisoner, a man of
turbulent and unbridled temper, has not insulted me. But he has
insulted perhaps hundreds of persons in this town, and so prejudiced
many people against him beforehand. Of course I recognize that the
moral sentiment of local society is justly excited against him. The
prisoner is of turbulent and violent temper. Yet he was received in
society here; he was even welcome in the family of my talented friend,
the prosecutor.”

(N.B. At these words there were two or three laughs in the audience,
quickly suppressed, but noticed by all. All of us knew that the
prosecutor received Mitya against his will, solely because he had
somehow interested his wife—a lady of the highest virtue and moral
worth, but fanciful, capricious, and fond of opposing her husband,
especially in trifles. Mitya’s visits, however, had not been frequent.)

“Nevertheless I venture to suggest,” Fetyukovitch continued, “that in
spite of his independent mind and just character, my opponent may have
formed a mistaken prejudice against my unfortunate client. Oh, that is
so natural; the unfortunate man has only too well deserved such
prejudice. Outraged morality, and still more outraged taste, is often
relentless. We have, in the talented prosecutor’s speech, heard a stern
analysis of the prisoner’s character and conduct, and his severe
critical attitude to the case was evident. And, what’s more, he went
into psychological subtleties into which he could not have entered, if
he had the least conscious and malicious prejudice against the
prisoner. But there are things which are even worse, even more fatal in
such cases, than the most malicious and consciously unfair attitude. It
is worse if we are carried away by the artistic instinct, by the desire
to create, so to speak, a romance, especially if God has endowed us
with psychological insight. Before I started on my way here, I was
warned in Petersburg, and was myself aware, that I should find here a
talented opponent whose psychological insight and subtlety had gained
him peculiar renown in legal circles of recent years. But profound as
psychology is, it’s a knife that cuts both ways.” (Laughter among the
public.) “You will, of course, forgive me my comparison; I can’t boast
of eloquence. But I will take as an example any point in the
prosecutor’s speech.

“The prisoner, running away in the garden in the dark, climbed over the
fence, was seized by the servant, and knocked him down with a brass
pestle. Then he jumped back into the garden and spent five minutes over
the man, trying to discover whether he had killed him or not. And the
prosecutor refuses to believe the prisoner’s statement that he ran to
old Grigory out of pity. ‘No,’ he says, ‘such sensibility is impossible
at such a moment, that’s unnatural; he ran to find out whether the only
witness of his crime was dead or alive, and so showed that he had
committed the murder, since he would not have run back for any other
reason.’

“Here you have psychology; but let us take the same method and apply it
to the case the other way round, and our result will be no less
probable. The murderer, we are told, leapt down to find out, as a
precaution, whether the witness was alive or not, yet he had left in
his murdered father’s study, as the prosecutor himself argues, an
amazing piece of evidence in the shape of a torn envelope, with an
inscription that there had been three thousand roubles in it. ‘If he
had carried that envelope away with him, no one in the world would have
known of that envelope and of the notes in it, and that the money had
been stolen by the prisoner.’ Those are the prosecutor’s own words. So
on one side you see a complete absence of precaution, a man who has
lost his head and run away in a fright, leaving that clew on the floor,
and two minutes later, when he has killed another man, we are entitled
to assume the most heartless and calculating foresight in him. But even
admitting this was so, it is psychological subtlety, I suppose, that
discerns that under certain circumstances I become as bloodthirsty and
keen‐sighted as a Caucasian eagle, while at the next I am as timid and
blind as a mole. But if I am so bloodthirsty and cruelly calculating
that when I kill a man I only run back to find out whether he is alive
to witness against me, why should I spend five minutes looking after my
victim at the risk of encountering other witnesses? Why soak my
handkerchief, wiping the blood off his head so that it may be evidence
against me later? If he were so cold‐hearted and calculating, why not
hit the servant on the head again and again with the same pestle so as
to kill him outright and relieve himself of all anxiety about the
witness?

“Again, though he ran to see whether the witness was alive, he left
another witness on the path, that brass pestle which he had taken from
the two women, and which they could always recognize afterwards as
theirs, and prove that he had taken it from them. And it is not as
though he had forgotten it on the path, dropped it through carelessness
or haste, no, he had flung away his weapon, for it was found fifteen
paces from where Grigory lay. Why did he do so? Just because he was
grieved at having killed a man, an old servant; and he flung away the
pestle with a curse, as a murderous weapon. That’s how it must have
been, what other reason could he have had for throwing it so far? And
if he was capable of feeling grief and pity at having killed a man, it
shows that he was innocent of his father’s murder. Had he murdered him,
he would never have run to another victim out of pity; then he would
have felt differently; his thoughts would have been centered on
self‐preservation. He would have had none to spare for pity, that is
beyond doubt. On the contrary, he would have broken his skull instead
of spending five minutes looking after him. There was room for pity and
good‐feeling just because his conscience had been clear till then. Here
we have a different psychology. I have purposely resorted to this
method, gentlemen of the jury, to show that you can prove anything by
it. It all depends on who makes use of it. Psychology lures even most
serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously. I am speaking
of the abuse of psychology, gentlemen.”

Sounds of approval and laughter, at the expense of the prosecutor, were
again audible in the court. I will not repeat the speech in detail; I
will only quote some passages from it, some leading points.