To every man his due; Ye shall know the truth...
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- Transcript
You shall know the truth. The truth shall make you free. Of the truth. The truth is the look on it. As they see. The jury is what is the matter with those people. They couldn't agree on a verdict that's all. He's guilty as sure as I'm alive. That woman is guilty. She's guilty it's just as plain as the nose on your face. Rose if that woman is guilty I don't have a nose on my face to inquire after the truth. It belongs to her greater power to post. To every man his with a series of radio programs about the principles of
justice to every man his do is produce by radio station WAGA of the University of Wisconsin under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. Now today's program. You shall know the truth. Truth is the highest thing that man made key. If all men kept the truth which would have little need for our legal institutions but then if any man possessed the truth the whole truth that would be the undoing of most of our political and social institutions from the freedom of speech to the free public school our institutions are founded in the belief that no man possesses the truth and that all man must therefore pursue it. We are free to pursue the truth pursuing truth we are free. This is a persistent theme in our tradition. This accounts for much that goes on in our halls of
justice and on and on and on. Will this disgusting business never end. When I think what that woman must be costing the state hundreds of. Thousands of dollars tax dollars Relf your money and mine decently earned dollars just squandered on a cheap common shameless little murderous. Well she may not be a murderous rose she says she didn't do it. So said she letting fall a tear or two upon her husband's corpse and clutching all the while in her pretty little hand apparently little claims it was self-defense while the other man just stood by holding her feather boa. Oh come on Ralph has she got you wrapped around her little finger to her little trigger finger that is. Look rose even if that woman is what you seem to take her for what do you take her for she does have a right to her day in court her day in court. She's already had more days in court and she has other had night. That's an exaggeration Why do you always have to exaggerate old as many stories just to make a point you blow
everything up. All right so she's had only five hundred and one days in court. It's still a wait it's still an exaggeration to Wethers but that when an out an out hussy like that can cut her up the courts for months on and parading her sordid little life before the world and all. And at society's expense. When I call that an exaggeration or something or other that's what I call it. The hallowed halls of justice are used it's true for everything a great deal of dirty linen and the cost can be awesome. That's true too but it is also true and should never be forgotten that in the halls of justice free born men and women may be deprived by the state of life or liberty a nation dedicated to the belief that these are the inalienable rights of every human being and hardly exaggerate its efforts to deprive no one of them even the most lowly or unpopular. Toward this end the
linen must be aired. It is the judgment of the finest minds of countless generations interpreting the experience of centuries that when the linen is not aired its freedom becomes Muffy. Accordingly it's the law of our land that no person shall be deprived of life liberty or property without due process of law. That from the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This from the 14 nor shall any state deprive any person of life liberty or property without due process of law due process of law cannot be defined in so many specifics. It is you might say a fluid term for a fluid situation of flowing on from generation to generation of an evolving law. Nor does it embrace precisely the same elements in federal courts and the courts of the states. Experimentation as well as evolution has allowed for in our law. But this much is universally required in this land
by Due Process of Law that every person accused of a crime is entitled to a trial in a court and a fair trial it must be. No one may be deprived by the state of life or liberty without opportunity to be heard. Whenever our law sits in judgment even when no criminal act is in question a hearing is the general rule. Daniel Webster said it about as well as it can be said that the law of our land is a law which hears before it condemns. If on occasion the law is condemned for hearing much ado about nothing that's what it is. Yes and pearls before swine. All those noble principles all those dignified proceedings all that money put upon a little dreg of humanity that maybe because they object and purpose of its hearing is misunderstood. You think wouldn't you that in this day and age we could find a more appropriate way to convict a criminal.
To convict. Is this the purpose of a trial object of a court hearing. Or court trial is the product of centuries of evolution at its roots then was it a method for convicting the accused. Consider an ancient ancestor of our trials. Whole Truth and Nothing But the truth so help me God I am in it and the truth will out. Once upon a summer's day thousands years passed in Saxon England. And the
person she's guilty. And there's a truth that if she be guilty wife I don't have me a fishwife movie you judge as a lady I judge we agreed she is no lady. This was the day the mother of Edward the Confessor a daughter of a French Duke who brought the first contamination here was queen brought to trial accused by Edward her son. Some there who do honor their mothers accused Bishop of Winchester. Seats with inmates feared to spoil the day with a fit of weeping. Best get on with it.
Reminds me of the last witness and why shouldn't St. Swithin shot her in heaven and drown us all in t is own church they'd be filed there in the very shadow of all that's holy that royal bag of wanton mind that one was a trial by water accused only the Queen Mother and you'd best remember that. An accused by the king is good enough for me. What water won't catch up is innocent that's the principle you know. Well there was this Plowman Kings my wife's royalty do is but human truly said. Right you are enhances the flesh to prove it. The ploughman was a Q Rule that sauce mistress I'll see you rowing. I'll fire on you when you'll rue wife beating. That's what he was accused of. What did you say stranger. The ploughman was accused of wife beating whatever maybe most dear to a man's dreams. Certain it is to be followed. Oh they took him and they bound him tight and they threw him into the pond right deep it was and then come what happened. Always
like a rock he sank like a bag of grain. Innocent as a lamb he was pure as the water that did receive him. So his wife lives out a merry widow who would ever get heritage all his worldly goods. Oh I do like a tail to wag happily at its in its tail it seems one of wag the same had the man been guilty but were not ever thus with wife beating. How so sir. Why you are doomed if you do and if you don't. Didn't you know. The trial of Queen Emma was trials were those days and ordeal ordeals were of many varieties. The lady might have been tried by water to prove herself pure. She had been required to take an oath which if no harm befell her not even an erupting boil she would be deemed innocent. She might have been tried by any number of orders but were told put to ordeal by fire. Specifically she would walk barefoot over
nine glowing hot ploughshares. I can think of a better use for plow shares. The trial begins. Look you all know you read the irons will they burn her walkies guilty were about here and he delivered her well. The truth be known. Tripp knightly mistress. More than 3 4 5. 7. 8. No I've seen this and. That. If the object of his trial was conviction a kind of coup occurred that
day the will of the state being thwarted not only but given a thorough looking the chief of state the king himself the chronicler tells us received as punishment for having brought false accusation. A very solemn whipping. Obviously conviction was not the object of Emma's trial by ordeal. They object was to determine whether she was innocent or guilty. The object was the truth. Now it may seem to you that nothing much was determined one way or the other in Emma's trial whether she did or didn't do it may appear to you just one of history's more interesting mysteries. But that's because of the kind of mind you have with a modern mind that is Anglo-Saxons having minds of a different sort. We're convinced that the truth came out in the Queen's trial divinely revealed truth. The trials of the Middle Ages were as they were because the mind of the age was what it was a mind that looked heavenward for truth
or deals were contrived to give have an opportunity to attest to the truth or false nose of the accusation. The modern mind places its faith in its own capacities to inquire after the truth. A modern trial under our system of jurisprudence is therefore a search for the truth by rational means. To tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God. You're doing the truth. I'm here to tell you they did. To illustrate take a trial that occurred in this land of the free in the 1920s when again cows went on milk pigs on foot. While the folks were out. Doing. I think I can put the courthouse windows up so high I can't see inside tome that you're home or for sure it is dead or you just go right on back home you hear you go home and you
take that sheet off and I'll go on no. Well once I told you once I told you fifty times that kind of action not just you high tail it now I mean get this was a modern trial in a court in a county of one of these United States. Five men were on trial for their lives accused of murder during a race disturbance. A qualified judge was on the bench qualified attorneys for prosecution and defense were present. Twelve good men and true the jury box a bible is available for witnesses to swear upon a 20th century trial the courtroom was jammed with onlookers and in the street outside. Oh in there there's not. Don't you forget it. Here a mob circled about the courthouse stirring the air with flapping Joy you know what again. You know what. Never give up just yet man. If you don't get it. Take your pick.
Can't hold us much longer Homer. You got our shares. When you stand still my stories are about to cave in. All right now tell me how the jury looks to you. I reckon it's all right Daddy. Leastways it's all the right colored white. News which the defendants were not a circumstance which went unchallenged by counsel for the defense. Nor did the defense counsel request that the trial be delayed or moved to another locale in view of the extraneous accompany meant he didn't request separate trials for his five clients either and he did not call any witnesses. Nary a one homer. That's what the man said. Nary a witness for the defense let their meaning not one witness for the defense. But with one emotion under another the proceedings proceeded with remarkable rapidity. Forty minutes after the trial had begun. You can let me down now Daddy. I'd be proud to do that. Then feeling you're gonna cut me. Well whatever the jury just laid back their
chairs and went out. Everybody else stayed put Also I reckon they won't take long. JORDAN Well what of it. Would you think if they decided to chew on it a bit before they voted on it and decided themselves as innocent was what they were when we took the way the law says we are what do we do. Sometimes when we're real hungry for justice but knows we have it to answer your question it's brought on another one. Things like you say or do make me think of just what was going on at the window. What's the matter. I missed them from the same direction.
Guilty it was 40 minutes for the hearing five minutes for the jury to deliberate. Justice was done. Or was it. Did it prove anything one way or the other about the guilt or innocence of the defendants. Did the truth come out that day. The state Supreme Court thought it did. The Supreme Court of the United States thought it did not said Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes on that occasion. If the case is that the whole proceeding is a mask that console the jury and judge were swept to the fatal end by an irresistible wave of public pressure at the state courts failed to correct the wrong. Neither perfection in the machinery for
correction nor the possibility that the trial court and counsel sought no other way of avoiding an immediate outbreak of the mob can prevent this court from securing to the petitioners the constitutional right. And the point is this although the truth is the only rightful object of a court's trial under our system of justice. Conviction may become its object. It may whenever influences which impair or impede human rational faculties are admitted to the courtroom. It may also whenever certain aids to rational faculties are omitted from the courtroom to admit what to omit. These questions contain virtually the whole story of the modern trials evolution since trial by ordeal was abandoned. It's a matter of law everywhere in this country that mobs must not be permitted to impair the mind of the court
in its pursuit of the truth. Mob dominated trials are unfair trials impairment of the court's rational faculties may come however from within. As well as from without. I always knew Justice wore a blindfold when the star blinders on the JAD Bowl barged into court Joe caught me with a jug a Little Brown Jug his Little Brown Jug you never did say what did you know there's no law against Little Brown Jug in the estate not empty want to empty the bin been full of vinegar to vinegar doesn't smell a thing like liquor but I knows that even cops and judges. Maybe it's just Little Brown Jug I have around Sunni that made my wife wanted to make a lion now look Joe the point not even me that I played on that Joe it was a jug of corn was no matter whether it was or wasn't part is that Jed slapped a hundred dollar
fine army and jail time I could pay. Doesn't tell if they have a right to do it with him. Wow how that judge was cut out like a woman's undershirt you know on the buy ass every time he hooks somebody like a law. Yeah part of the fun. Now I get the last part of the family rot in his own pocket. Yasser on the line back up the juice. Not the judge only but also the police were paid out of fines collected for violating the state's prohibition law. There was no other source of pay for their work on this particular kind of case. It happened it happened in a small midwestern village in the twenties and the question was was the pursuit of the truth impaired when the judge had such a direct personal substantial the CUNY arre interest in finding the
defendant guilty. The United States Supreme Court thought it was the requirement of Due Process of Law in judicial procedure said Chief Justice Taft is not satisfied by the argument that man of the highest honor and the greatest self-sacrifice could carry it on without danger of injustice. Every procedure which would offer a possible temptation to the average man as a judge to forget the burden of proof required to convict the defendant deny the latter due process of law. A judge in any American court is required by law to have no personal and substantial interest in the outcome of any case over which he presides. Everyone has the right to be tried before an unbiased judge. It's a matter of increasing the chances of getting at the truth by rational means. A similar explanation may be given for virtually all our laws requirements with regard
to fairness in a trial or other court hearing. Whatever impairs human reason is to be omitted. Whatever assists it should be at it. An example of the latter. The law's requirement that a court trial must be public. Well I think it's a disgrace all those hair raising details screaming at us from the front page. Don't they know children read those newspapers and do you know that people are allowed to go there and sit in that courtroom and listen. If I were the judge I'd close up that courtroom as those. Somebody was sitting in there with a contagious disease quarantine it. That's what I do. You'd be sorry. Whatever do you mean. Well you know that feather boy you're always making so much of that feather boa happens to be a very damning piece of evidence. Yes. And that feather boat would be hanging in a dry cleaner's shop right now if you were a judge in this trial. Well I don't see why there was a dry cleaner who like to spend his day off at the courthouse watching trials. Well one day he happened in on this trial recognized the woman
remembered her feather boa from which she had removed certain blood stains. And that's the way it happens every so often evidence comes to light that might otherwise have been undetected because a trial is public witnesses present themselves who might not have been found. It's also argued that witnesses are less likely to give false testimony when the trial is public. The modern mind believes that the truth will come out only after all the evidence is in and its belief is served by the requirement the trials shall be public. Then too it's of no small importance that the eyes of the public upon the courts keep the officials of those courts on their toes. That prosecuting attorney ought to be hostile to the thing up brown. The little floozy get him all goggle eyed and fuzzy headed. Honestly Ralph he isn't even half dry trying to do what Rose get this mess cleared up of course. To put that woman out of the sight of decent people. If he'd been trying it all she'd have been locked up months ago.
So it is when you come right down to it that justice our kind of justice comes to rest finally in the lap of the people. Traditionally the people of this land have supported the law which not just when convenient or expedient but in every instance hears before it can them. Accusation brought by the state itself must not stand untested. The state is men and men may err. Therefore the law must hear for the purpose of determining the truth. Courtrooms too are manned by humans who may err or though the truth may not always be discovered. Innocent people may be convicted guilty ones may go free so long as courts pursue the truth. Freedom itself is protected. This has been our traditional view. But how do you judge your judges. How do you measure the
efficiency of your district attorney by the number of convictions shown on the record or by the furnace with which the truth is pursued in your courtroom. These questions have everything to do with an evolving justice and everything to do with you. Where are you going all dolled up in fur and feathers. Where am I going. You know very well this is the day. Oh Rose you aren't going down there. I tell you it's a waste a waste of time a waste of gas I don't see how you can say that. Well you didn't Rose I know you did it. I've seen you do it a thousand times I have never once seen you not do it. Never have I seen you stop at that stop sign you shift you don't stop. Pay the fine rose and forget about going to court I'll do no such thing. Maybe I didn't stop but I paused. That's different from busting right through without
looking. I posit that makes me different from some maniac who goes sailing right through there ought to be some distinction on the road. They shouldn't lump somebody like me who pauses and looks together with somebody who rips through like a bat out of arrows. Well should they just tell it to the judge. Go on tell it to the judge. To every man his due is produced by radio station WAGA of the University of Wisconsin under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center and distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters script by Milburn and Elizabeth Carlson content consultant David film and music by Don vaguely. Production by Carlos meant this is the N.A. E.B. Radio Network.
You're. Going. To. Beat. Me.
- Series
- To every man his due
- Episode
- Ye shall know the truth...
- Producing Organization
- National Association of Educational Broadcasters
- WHA (Radio station : Madison, Wis.)
- Contributing Organization
- University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/500-nv99b442
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/500-nv99b442).
- Description
- Episode Description
- Ye Shall Know the Truth...: Fair Trial
- Series Description
- Dramatic-narrative series on principles of justice under the American system of law, particularly the rights of defendants.
- Broadcast Date
- 1962-04-23
- Topics
- Law Enforcement and Crime
- Media type
- Sound
- Duration
- 00:29:24
- Credits
-
-
Advisor: Fellman, David, 1907-2003
Music Director: Voegeli, Don
Producing Organization: National Association of Educational Broadcasters
Producing Organization: WHA (Radio station : Madison, Wis.)
Production Manager: Schmidt, Karl
Writer: Carlson, Elizabeth
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
University of Maryland
Identifier: 62-17-7 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:14
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
- Citations
- Chicago: “To every man his due; Ye shall know the truth...,” 1962-04-23, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed September 7, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-nv99b442.
- MLA: “To every man his due; Ye shall know the truth....” 1962-04-23. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. September 7, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-nv99b442>.
- APA: To every man his due; Ye shall know the truth.... Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-nv99b442