finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_14_part_1.txt
The Brothers Karamazov.book 12.chapter 1
book 12, chapter 1
{"name": "book 12, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section15/", "summary": "The Fatal Day Dmitri's trial opens at ten o'clock the next morning, amid an atmosphere of widespread curiosity. All Russia seems to be interested in the outcome, and the legendary defense attorney Fetyukovich has traveled all the way from Moscow to defend Dmitri. The judge is known to be an educated man, but the jury is made up of peasants, leading to some concern that Fetyukovich's defense will be above the heads of the jury members. The judge asks Dmitri for his plea, and he again asserts his innocence. The general consensus in the courtroom, given what most people consider to be overwhelming evidence, is that he is guilty", "analysis": ""}
Book XII. A Judicial Error  Chapter I. The Fatal Day


At ten o'clock in the morning of the day following the events I have
described, the trial of Dmitri Karamazov began in our district court.

I hasten to emphasize the fact that I am far from esteeming myself capable
of reporting all that took place at the trial in full detail, or even in
the actual order of events. I imagine that to mention everything with full
explanation would fill a volume, even a very large one. And so I trust I
may not be reproached, for confining myself to what struck me. I may have
selected as of most interest what was of secondary importance, and may
have omitted the most prominent and essential details. But I see I shall
do better not to apologize. I will do my best and the reader will see for
himself that I have done all I can.

And, to begin with, before entering the court, I will mention what
surprised me most on that day. Indeed, as it appeared later, every one was
surprised at it, too. We all knew that the affair had aroused great
interest, that every one was burning with impatience for the trial to
begin, that it had been a subject of talk, conjecture, exclamation and
surmise for the last two months in local society. Every one knew, too,
that the case had become known throughout Russia, but yet we had not
imagined that it had aroused such burning, such intense, interest in every
one, not only among ourselves, but all over Russia. This became evident at
the trial this day.

Visitors had arrived not only from the chief town of our province, but
from several other Russian towns, as well as from Moscow and Petersburg.
Among them were lawyers, ladies, and even several distinguished
personages. Every ticket of admission had been snatched up. A special
place behind the table at which the three judges sat was set apart for the
most distinguished and important of the men visitors; a row of arm-chairs
had been placed there--something exceptional, which had never been allowed
before. A large proportion--not less than half of the public--were ladies.
There was such a large number of lawyers from all parts that they did not
know where to seat them, for every ticket had long since been eagerly
sought for and distributed. I saw at the end of the room, behind the
platform, a special partition hurriedly put up, behind which all these
lawyers were admitted, and they thought themselves lucky to have standing
room there, for all chairs had been removed for the sake of space, and the
crowd behind the partition stood throughout the case closely packed,
shoulder to shoulder.

Some of the ladies, especially those who came from a distance, made their
appearance in the gallery very smartly dressed, but the majority of the
ladies were oblivious even of dress. Their faces betrayed hysterical,
intense, almost morbid, curiosity. A peculiar fact--established afterwards
by many observations--was that almost all the ladies, or, at least the vast
majority of them, were on Mitya's side and in favor of his being
acquitted. This was perhaps chiefly owing to his reputation as a conqueror
of female hearts. It was known that two women rivals were to appear in the
case. One of them--Katerina Ivanovna--was an object of general interest. All
sorts of extraordinary tales were told about her, amazing anecdotes of her
passion for Mitya, in spite of his crime. Her pride and "aristocratic
connections" were particularly insisted upon (she had called upon scarcely
any one in the town). People said she intended to petition the Government
for leave to accompany the criminal to Siberia and to be married to him
somewhere in the mines. The appearance of Grushenka in court was awaited
with no less impatience. The public was looking forward with anxious
curiosity to the meeting of the two rivals--the proud aristocratic girl and
"the hetaira." But Grushenka was a more familiar figure to the ladies of
the district than Katerina Ivanovna. They had already seen "the woman who
had ruined Fyodor Pavlovitch and his unhappy son," and all, almost without
exception, wondered how father and son could be so in love with "such a
very common, ordinary Russian girl, who was not even pretty."

In brief, there was a great deal of talk. I know for a fact that there
were several serious family quarrels on Mitya's account in our town. Many
ladies quarreled violently with their husbands over differences of opinion
about the dreadful case, and it was only natural that the husbands of
these ladies, far from being favorably disposed to the prisoner, should
enter the court bitterly prejudiced against him. In fact, one may say
pretty certainly that the masculine, as distinguished from the feminine,
part of the audience were biased against the prisoner. There were numbers
of severe, frowning, even vindictive faces. Mitya, indeed, had managed to
offend many people during his stay in the town. Some of the visitors were,
of course, in excellent spirits and quite unconcerned as to the fate of
Mitya personally. But all were interested in the trial, and the majority
of the men were certainly hoping for the conviction of the criminal,
except perhaps the lawyers, who were more interested in the legal than in
the moral aspect of the case.

Everybody was excited at the presence of the celebrated lawyer,
Fetyukovitch. His talent was well known, and this was not the first time
he had defended notorious criminal cases in the provinces. And if he
defended them, such cases became celebrated and long remembered all over
Russia. There were stories, too, about our prosecutor and about the
President of the Court. It was said that Ippolit Kirillovitch was in a
tremor at meeting Fetyukovitch, and that they had been enemies from the
beginning of their careers in Petersburg, that though our sensitive
prosecutor, who always considered that he had been aggrieved by some one
in Petersburg because his talents had not been properly appreciated, was
keenly excited over the Karamazov case, and was even dreaming of
rebuilding his flagging fortunes by means of it, Fetyukovitch, they said,
was his one anxiety. But these rumors were not quite just. Our prosecutor
was not one of those men who lose heart in face of danger. On the
contrary, his self-confidence increased with the increase of danger. It
must be noted that our prosecutor was in general too hasty and morbidly
impressionable. He would put his whole soul into some case and work at it
as though his whole fate and his whole fortune depended on its result.
This was the subject of some ridicule in the legal world, for just by this
characteristic our prosecutor had gained a wider notoriety than could have
been expected from his modest position. People laughed particularly at his
passion for psychology. In my opinion, they were wrong, and our prosecutor
was, I believe, a character of greater depth than was generally supposed.
But with his delicate health he had failed to make his mark at the outset
of his career and had never made up for it later.

As for the President of our Court, I can only say that he was a humane and
cultured man, who had a practical knowledge of his work and progressive
views. He was rather ambitious, but did not concern himself greatly about
his future career. The great aim of his life was to be a man of advanced
ideas. He was, too, a man of connections and property. He felt, as we
learnt afterwards, rather strongly about the Karamazov case, but from a
social, not from a personal standpoint. He was interested in it as a
social phenomenon, in its classification and its character as a product of
our social conditions, as typical of the national character, and so on,
and so on. His attitude to the personal aspect of the case, to its tragic
significance and the persons involved in it, including the prisoner, was
rather indifferent and abstract, as was perhaps fitting, indeed.

The court was packed and overflowing long before the judges made their
appearance. Our court is the best hall in the town--spacious, lofty, and
good for sound. On the right of the judges, who were on a raised platform,
a table and two rows of chairs had been put ready for the jury. On the
left was the place for the prisoner and the counsel for the defense. In
the middle of the court, near the judges, was a table with the "material
proofs." On it lay Fyodor Pavlovitch's white silk dressing-gown, stained
with blood; the fatal brass pestle with which the supposed murder had been
committed; Mitya's shirt, with a blood-stained sleeve; his coat, stained
with blood in patches over the pocket in which he had put his
handkerchief; the handkerchief itself, stiff with blood and by now quite
yellow; the pistol loaded by Mitya at Perhotin's with a view to suicide,
and taken from him on the sly at Mokroe by Trifon Borissovitch; the
envelope in which the three thousand roubles had been put ready for
Grushenka, the narrow pink ribbon with which it had been tied, and many
other articles I don't remember. In the body of the hall, at some
distance, came the seats for the public. But in front of the balustrade a
few chairs had been placed for witnesses who remained in the court after
giving their evidence.

At ten o'clock the three judges arrived--the President, one honorary
justice of the peace, and one other. The prosecutor, of course, entered
immediately after. The President was a short, stout, thick-set man of
fifty, with a dyspeptic complexion, dark hair turning gray and cut short,
and a red ribbon, of what Order I don't remember. The prosecutor struck me
and the others, too, as looking particularly pale, almost green. His face
seemed to have grown suddenly thinner, perhaps in a single night, for I
had seen him looking as usual only two days before. The President began
with asking the court whether all the jury were present.

But I see I can't go on like this, partly because some things I did not
hear, others I did not notice, and others I have forgotten, but most of
all because, as I have said before, I have literally no time or space to
mention everything that was said and done. I only know that neither side
objected to very many of the jurymen. I remember the twelve jurymen--four
were petty officials of the town, two were merchants, and six peasants and
artisans of the town. I remember, long before the trial, questions were
continually asked with some surprise, especially by ladies: "Can such a
delicate, complex and psychological case be submitted for decision to
petty officials and even peasants?" and "What can an official, still more
a peasant, understand in such an affair?" All the four officials in the
jury were, in fact, men of no consequence and of low rank. Except one who
was rather younger, they were gray-headed men, little known in society,
who had vegetated on a pitiful salary, and who probably had elderly,
unpresentable wives and crowds of children, perhaps even without shoes and
stockings. At most, they spent their leisure over cards and, of course,
had never read a single book. The two merchants looked respectable, but
were strangely silent and stolid. One of them was close-shaven, and was
dressed in European style; the other had a small, gray beard, and wore a
red ribbon with some sort of a medal upon it on his neck. There is no need
to speak of the artisans and the peasants. The artisans of
Skotoprigonyevsk are almost peasants, and even work on the land. Two of
them also wore European dress, and, perhaps for that reason, were dirtier
and more uninviting-looking than the others. So that one might well
wonder, as I did as soon as I had looked at them, "what men like that
could possibly make of such a case?" Yet their faces made a strangely
imposing, almost menacing, impression; they were stern and frowning.

At last the President opened the case of the murder of Fyodor Pavlovitch
Karamazov. I don't quite remember how he described him. The court usher
was told to bring in the prisoner, and Mitya made his appearance. There
was a hush through the court. One could have heard a fly. I don't know how
it was with others, but Mitya made a most unfavorable impression on me. He
looked an awful dandy in a brand-new frock-coat. I heard afterwards that
he had ordered it in Moscow expressly for the occasion from his own
tailor, who had his measure. He wore immaculate black kid gloves and
exquisite linen. He walked in with his yard-long strides, looking stiffly
straight in front of him, and sat down in his place with a most
unperturbed air.

At the same moment the counsel for defense, the celebrated Fetyukovitch,
entered, and a sort of subdued hum passed through the court. He was a
tall, spare man, with long thin legs, with extremely long, thin, pale
fingers, clean-shaven face, demurely brushed, rather short hair, and thin
lips that were at times curved into something between a sneer and a smile.
He looked about forty. His face would have been pleasant, if it had not
been for his eyes, which, in themselves small and inexpressive, were set
remarkably close together, with only the thin, long nose as a dividing
line between them. In fact, there was something strikingly birdlike about
his face. He was in evening dress and white tie.

I remember the President's first questions to Mitya, about his name, his
calling, and so on. Mitya answered sharply, and his voice was so
unexpectedly loud that it made the President start and look at the
prisoner with surprise. Then followed a list of persons who were to take
part in the proceedings--that is, of the witnesses and experts. It was a
long list. Four of the witnesses were not present--Miuesov, who had given
evidence at the preliminary inquiry, but was now in Paris; Madame Hohlakov
and Maximov, who were absent through illness; and Smerdyakov, through his
sudden death, of which an official statement from the police was
presented. The news of Smerdyakov's death produced a sudden stir and
whisper in the court. Many of the audience, of course, had not heard of
the sudden suicide. What struck people most was Mitya's sudden outburst As
soon as the statement of Smerdyakov's death was made, he cried out aloud
from his place:

"He was a dog and died like a dog!"

I remember how his counsel rushed to him, and how the President addressed
him, threatening to take stern measures, if such an irregularity were
repeated. Mitya nodded and in a subdued voice repeated several times
abruptly to his counsel, with no show of regret:

"I won't again, I won't. It escaped me. I won't do it again."

And, of course, this brief episode did him no good with the jury or the
public. His character was displayed, and it spoke for itself. It was under
the influence of this incident that the opening statement was read. It was
rather short, but circumstantial. It only stated the chief reasons why he
had been arrested, why he must be tried, and so on. Yet it made a great
impression on me. The clerk read it loudly and distinctly. The whole
tragedy was suddenly unfolded before us, concentrated, in bold relief, in
a fatal and pitiless light. I remember how, immediately after it had been
read, the President asked Mitya in a loud impressive voice:

"Prisoner, do you plead guilty?"

Mitya suddenly rose from his seat.

"I plead guilty to drunkenness and dissipation," he exclaimed, again in a
startling, almost frenzied, voice, "to idleness and debauchery. I meant to
become an honest man for good, just at the moment when I was struck down
by fate. But I am not guilty of the death of that old man, my enemy and my
father. No, no, I am not guilty of robbing him! I could not be. Dmitri
Karamazov is a scoundrel, but not a thief."

He sat down again, visibly trembling all over. The President again
briefly, but impressively, admonished him to answer only what was asked,
and not to go off into irrelevant exclamations. Then he ordered the case
to proceed. All the witnesses were led up to take the oath. Then I saw
them all together. The brothers of the prisoner were, however, allowed to
give evidence without taking the oath. After an exhortation from the
priest and the President, the witnesses were led away and were made to sit
as far as possible apart from one another. Then they began calling them up
one by one.





book 12, Chapter 1
The Fatal Day Dmitri's trial opens at ten o'clock the next morning, amid an atmosphere of widespread curiosity. All Russia seems to be interested in the outcome, and the legendary defense attorney Fetyukovich has traveled all the way from Moscow to defend Dmitri. The judge is known to be an educated man, but the jury is made up of peasants, leading to some concern that Fetyukovich's defense will be above the heads of the jury members. The judge asks Dmitri for his plea, and he again asserts his innocence. The general consensus in the courtroom, given what most people consider to be overwhelming evidence, is that he is guilty