Empire of Sin by Gary Krist Read Free Book Online

measures for the uprooting and total annihilation of such hell-born associations.”
    The resolution passed unanimously, and Mayor Shakspeare promptly announced the eighty-three names he had selected in advance for the so-called Committee of Fifty. They amounted to a collection of New Orleans’ wealthiest, most prominent, and most powerful men—a clear sign that what was to come would be, at root, a class war on behalf of the city’s native-born elite. The real crime to be avenged here was not just a brutal assassination, but the assassination of a representative of that elite, by a class of citizen considered beneath their notice. “A shining mark have they selected on which to write … their contempt for the civilization of the new world,” the mayor said in conclusion. “We owe it to ourselves, and to everything that we hold sacred in this life, to see that this blow is the last. We must teach these people a lesson that they will not forget for all time.”



 
    IT WAS HARD TO IMAGINE WHAT WAS CAUSING THE delay.In the main courtroom at St. Patrick’s Hall, all eyes were on the door to the upstairs deliberation room, where the jury in the Hennessy murder trial had been sequestered for over eighteen hours. Most of the spectators who’d crammed into the courtroom’s gallery at ten A.M. had expected an immediate verdict. According to that morning’s Picayune ,the jury had supposedly reached its decision very quickly last night, before retiring to bed. But even now, two hours after the scheduled start of the morning session, the door to the jury room remained stubbornly closed.
    For many in New Orleans, it had already been far too long a wait for justice. The lesson that Mayor Shakspeare had promised to teach the enemies of law and order had ultimately taken almost five months to unfold—five months of late-night raids, wild accusations of citizens against citizens, and blanket arrests of Italians of all stripes. The morning after the Hennessy outrage, there had been talk of immediate violent action to punish the alleged assassins already in custody. But ultimately the law—such as it was in New Orleans—was allowed to run its course. The Committee of Fifty, led by YMDA leader W. S. Parkerson—who served as liaison between the committee and the mayor’s office—had conducted a vigorous investigation of the alleged conspiracy. Under the committee’s often heavy-handed “guidance,”the police had ultimately arrested more than a hundred Italians. Most had subsequently been released for lack of evidence, but the grand jury did end up indicting nineteen defendants. Nine had been charged with direct involvement in the shooting; the rest—including prominent Italians like Joseph P. Macheca and Charles Matranga—were held as accessories before the fact. Did these nineteen men constitute the entire extent of the conspiracy against Chief Hennessy and the city of New Orleans itself? Few believed that to be so, but bringing this group to justice would at least be a start.
    Once the trial began on the morning of February 16, 1891, however, it became immediately obvious just how difficult it would be to secure even this small measure of justice. For one thing, this trial would be only the first of two court proceedings for the Hennessy murder. District Attorney Charles Luzenberg, worried about the unwieldiness of a prosecution against nineteen defendants at once, had asked for and been granted a severance; thus only nine of the defendants would be tried now, leaving the other ten for a future action.
    And even this first trial soonproved to be maddeningly complicated and drawn-out. More than 1,300 potential jurors had to be examined simply to find 12 who did not have a “fixed opinion” about the case, either from local gossip, newspaper reports, or else their own prejudice against Italians. Once a jury was finally impaneled, it had to hearevidence from more than 140 witnesses—over 60 for the prosecution and over