An Eye for an Eye

An Eye for an Eye by Clarence Darrow

"An Eye for an Eye" opens with Hank Clery, a Chicago switchman, riding the streetcar to the county jail on an errand of mercy: his old friend Jim Jackson, condemned to hang the next morning for killing his wife, has begged through a priest for a last visit. Hank, uneasy and only able to enter through a pass from his alderman, is led through the crowded, sweltering jail to Jim's cell, where a friendly death-watch guard supplies cigars and whiskey through the night and periodically checks whether a telegram has come from the governor. Once alone with Hank, Jim insists on telling his whole story before dawn, since no one else has ever let him explain. He recounts growing up poor along the Chicago canal, raised by an aunt after his parents' deaths, working first at the stock yards and then as a switchman alongside Hank, and losing his nerve for that work after a coworker, Jimmy Carroll, was run over. He describes courting and marrying a waitress from the railroad men's restaurant, their debt-ridden household with three rented rooms and mortgaged furniture, the birth of their son, and escalating quarrels over money that once led to Jim being jailed for striking her. After buying a lame horse and wagon from old Sol Goldstein to peddle potatoes, Jim continued sinking into debt, borrowing against a chattel mortgage and losing one horse to death before acquiring another from a rendering plant. Jim then details the day of the killing: a bitterly cold November 26th, a hard day of selling half-frozen potatoes, several free drinks bought by politicians campaigning at saloons (including men running for the legislature, senate, and assessor), disappointment on learning the alderman would not give out Thanksgiving turkeys that year, and the purchase of a cheap rump steak intended to please his wife. At home, a quarrel erupted when she deliberately poured water on the frying steak to spite him after prior warnings; the fight escalated over money, his drinking, and old grievances, culminating in her daring him to kill her. Seeing a poker in a coal pail, Jim struck her once in a rage; she died instantly. Overcome with panic, Jim tried reviving her, prayed for her to come back, then methodically cleaned the room, washed and arranged her body, hid the poker in the stove ashes, and put the cat out. Fearing discovery, he loaded her body, bound and wrapped in a quilt, onto his potato wagon and drove her far south along the Vincennes Road to an old flooded stone quarry the couple had once picnicked at, where he threw her in. Returning home, he checked on his sleeping son, then fled by freight car, eventually working under an assumed name at a Mississippi sawmill and later at a charcoal-burning camp, always moving on when he feared coworkers grew suspicious or newspapers with his picture and a thousand-dollar reward turned up. Captured after being chased down as a vagrant near a small Southern town, identified by a marshal comparing him to a wanted circular, he was shaved, measured, and confirmed as Jackson, then returned to Chicago under guard past jeering crowds and reporters. Jim describes his indictment, his difficulty securing counsel (a young, inexperienced lawyer appointed to defend him), the packed and hostile courtroom, jury selection weighted against him despite jurors admitting preconceived opinions, and a trial built on circumstantial evidence—including the bloodstained butcher's paper, her recovered clothing, and testimony about his flight—culminating in a guilty verdict and death sentence, with one holdout juror (a former switchman) later accused of bribery for favoring life imprisonment. A motion for a new trial failed, an appeal to the Supreme Court, funded partly by his lawyer, went nowhere because the justices saw no doubt of his guilt, and his lawyer's final effort was a personal appeal to the governor for clemency. As dawn approaches, Jim drinks heavily to steady himself, hears workmen building the scaffold in the courtyard and the test-drop of a sand-filled bag rehearsing the hanging, and repeatedly asks the guard whether any telegram has arrived from the governor or his lawyer, who had gone to Springfield with a petition. Throughout the night Jim reflects on poverty, politics, prison life, the kindness prisoners show one another, his hope that his son will someday understand he was not simply a monster, and his doubts about whether hanging accomplishes anything. The narrative breaks off as Jim, now visibly drunk and exhausted, continues waiting through the night for word of a reprieve while still recounting his ordeal to Hank, the outcome of the governor's decision not given in the text provided.

By Clarence Darrow · First published 1907 · Genre: True Crime, Biography, Legal Nonfiction · 10 chapters · 60,691 words

First lines

When Hank Clery left the switch-yards in the outskirts of Chicago he took the street car and went down town. He was going to the county jail on the north side of the river. Hank had never been inside the jail though he had been arrested a number of times and taken to the police court, escaping luckily with a small fine which his mother had contrived to pay. She was one of the best washerwomen of the whole neighborhood, and never without work. All the officers knew that whenever Hank got into trouble his mother would pay the fine and costs. Hank had often been arrested, but he was by no means a bad fellow. He lived with his old Irish mother and was very fond of her and often brought his wages home if none of the boys happened to be near when the pay-car came around. Hank was a switchman in one of the big railroad yards in Chicago.

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justice · law · morality · punishment · crime · philosophy · retribution · society · ethics · human nature · capital punishment · criminal justice

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