MY OLD MAN used to say that it was truly remarkable how willing people were to listen to accusations, and how unwilling they were to hear explanations from the accused.
He said that in the course of a long life, he had been accused of many things, most of them to his discredit, and that it had been his observation that everybody always knew all about the accusations down to the last detail, but that few ever knew his answers to same, or cared to hear them.
He said he had once been accused by a bitter enemy of stealing a dog, when the dog had merely followed him home and sat outside his door yowling for admittance. The dog knew that pork chops were brewing inside. My old man said that everybody who knew him must have known that he would not steal a dog, or that if he did steal one it would certainly have been a better dog than the one he was accused of stealing.
He said the fellow who owned the dog went all over town telling about the alleged theft and everybody listened intently, but when my old man came along with his explanation of the dog following him home, very few gave ear to his story and those who did had smilingly incredulous expressions on their faces.
My old man said he supposed he had a right to get good and sore over this attitude, but that after he had thought it over he realized that he had often received explanations of accusations himself in exactly the same manner. He said he had come to the conclusion that the reason most people were willing to listen to accusations was that they generally hoped they were true, and the reason they did not want to hear explanations was because they did not care to have that hope weakened.
My old man said nobody was to blame for that situation. He said it was just human nature. He said he judged that accusations were more interesting than explanations.
He said he had noticed that when a fellow was arrested for murder or any other crime, the headlines in the newspapers were founded mainly on the accusations against the fellow and never on how he explained them, though his explanation might be the truth and subsequently substantiated in court.
My old man said the proof that accusations were more interesting than explanations was in the fact that headlines kept dwindling along with public attention as the strength of the accusations waned, until finally the accused was pretty lucky if he got a few paragraphs announcing his absolution.
He said you could not blame the newspapers, either because generally that was all the absolution was worth from the standpoint of reader interest, however important it might seem to the accuser. My old man said newspapers just reflected human nature, too.
He said that even when a fellow accused of something established his innocence beyond all shadow of a doubt, the memory of the accusation stuck in the public mind longer than the absolution, though that accusation might have been against a lifetime of righteousness.
My old man said it had always struck him as strange that people would open their recollections of a once-accused fellow with a statement of the accusation, and recall his absolution late in their story, and then with a suggestion of doubt that it was all right in their tone.
He claimed that this would be a better world if we had laws requiring an accusation of any kind to be preceded by the explanation of the accused, though he admitted that he did not see how that could be worked out. He said it was the fact that the accusation got in first that made it tough on the accused, the same as the first punch in a fist fight.
My old man said that he had often read that in the eyes of the law an accused fellow was supposed to be innocent until he had been proved guilty, but he had never noticed district attorneys getting up and saying to a jury, “This chap is charged with such-and-such, and here is what he says about it,” then reciting the accused’s explanation.
The district attorneys just piled up the accusations without mentioning any possible explanations, except to say they were probably lies, and that way they got in the first punches. He said the burden of proof of a fellow’s guilt was supposed to be on the district attorney, but that it had been his observation that it was the accused who wound up carrying the load.
He said he had served on juries in his time, and it had been his experience that the first angle they took up in the jury room was not the possible innocence of the accused, but his probable guilt. He said he thought most juries gave more attention to the accusations than to the explanations, though that was not supposed to be the theory of law or justice.