From Emile Zola's "J'Accuse" on behalf of Alfred Dreyfus to Columnist William F. Buckley's decade-long effort to free convicted Murderer Edgar Smith, there has been a long history of laymen trying to overturn what they see as injustice wrought by police, lawyers and judges. Undoing the law's due process is an enormously difficult task. But last week two such efforts by laymen were gathering momentum and one was finally triumphant.
RALLYING FOR REILLY
To Playwright Arthur Miller, the why of violence has always been dramatically crucial—whether it is a man's murder of his family benefactor (A View from the Bridge) or the suicides of Willy Loman and Miller's former wife, Marilyn Monroe (Death of a Salesman and After the Fall). So last year Miller's interest was aroused when he heard about Peter Reilly, 18, who had been convicted of manslaughter for the 1973 killing of his mother in Canaan, Conn.—not far from Miller's home. Reviewing the evidence and the confession (which Reilly made after many sleepless hours of interrogation and later recanted), Miller had doubts. For example, says the psychologically oriented playwright, Reilly, after confessing, "reached no cathexis ... no discharge of a new order of feeling toward the hated mother he [supposedly] killed. This is not believable."
Well aware that it would take more prosaic evidence to convince a court, Miller and some friends—including Novelist William Styron and Director Mike Nichols—hired a new lawyer and a private detective and persuaded the New York Times to look into the case. Last week a story by Times Reporter John Corry detailed Reilly's movements on the fatal night. According to various witnesses (not all of whom, inexplicably, were called at the trial), the boy left a church meeting at about 9:40, dropped off a friend at 9:45, then made the five-minute drive to his own home where he says he found his mother's body. Her neck had been nearly cut through; she had other stab wounds; three ribs and both thighs were broken. About 9:50, he made a frantic call to a friend's house, then phoned a doctor's home and spoke to the doctor's daughter-in-law for about three minutes before deciding to call a hospital. Police say that the hospital's evening supervisor called them at 9:58.
Miller and the others looking into the case point out that in that time sequence, Reilly would scarcely have been able to commit a brutal, time-consuming murder. They also claim numerous other flaws in the prosecution's case. Reilly is now out on bail, a request for a new trial has been filed, and a simultaneous appeal is pending in the Connecticut Supreme Court.
STORM OVER HURRICANE