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SECTION I
CRIME AND SOCIAL IMPACT
"IT IS HIS FIRST OFFENSE. WE MIGHT AS WELL LET HIM GO": HOMICIDE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN CHICAGO, 1875–1920
| By Jeffrey S. Adler |
University of Florida |
| Chicago's Pleasant Place erupted in violence on April 23, 1907, when John Nesczuk began work on a fence along the property line behind his house. Nesczuk's neighbor, John Wijas, complained that the fence intruded into his garden. "What are you doing that for? You are spoiling my garden," Wijas roared from his window. "Come down here and we'll show you," Nesczuk answered.1 Rather than accepting the challenge, Wijas—or perhaps another inhabitant of his home—hurled a brick out the window, hitting Nesczuk, breaking the fence builder's arm, and temporarily halting construction on the "spite fence."2 Five days later Nesczuk's sons and two friends resumed work on the fence, and the violence flared anew. When Wijas, a forty-eight-year-old factory foreman, ventured near the disputed turf, the elder Nesczuk screeched "now we've got him. Kill him."3 Nesczuk's son, Joseph, attacked Wijas with a hammer, striking him on the head and "crushing in his skull."4 As soon as Wijas crumbled to the ground, Nesczuk's other son, Lawrence, and their friends pounced on the factory foremen, bludgeoning him with the boards they had gathered for the fence. John Wijas remained hospitalized for two months before his condition improved enough for him to return home. During this period he engaged an attorney, who sought a warrant for the arrest of the Nesczuks. A local judge, however, refused to issue the warrant. On July 21 Wijas succumbed to his injuries, and the police arrested the Nesczuk brothers, charging them with homicide.5 A grand jury indicted only one of the brothers, the hammer-wielding Joseph. In the fall of 1907, a criminal court jury found the killer "not guilty" and released him, concluding that Joseph Nesczuk had been provoked into smashing Wijas's skull.6 According to the Cook County criminal justice system, the Nesczuk brothers had acted lawfully when they beat to death John Wijas in his Pleasant Place garden. |
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The acquittal of Joseph Nesczuk generated scant attention, for this was not an unusual homicide case. Seemingly trivial disputes often fueled lethal violence in the city, and Cook County juries routinely exonerated and acquitted killers. Between 1875 and 1920 fewer than one Chicago killer in four was convicted.7 True to its reputation, Chicago was a tough town. |
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The low conviction rate notwithstanding, this was an era of rapid criminal justice reform and legal modernization in the city. Chicago officials created the nation's first juvenile justice system during the final decade of the nineteenth century, and early in the twentieth century they forged specialized courts to adjudicate domestic disputes and morals cases.8 Similar innovation and specialization transformed local policing during this era, as municipal officials formed a homicide squad, an "Italian [crime] squad," and other units designed to focus the investigative expertise of law enforcers.9 Reflecting the "sociological jurisprudence" of the period, Chicago judges and prosecutors were also quick to invite social scientists and other experts into their courtrooms, and psychologists, "alienists," and physicians often testified in homicide cases. Likewise, the police and state's attorneys embraced the latest investigative techniques. Chicago law enforcers pioneered the use of the Bertillon criminal identification system in 1888 and finger printing in 1904.10 A decade later Chicagoans established a "Psychopathic Laboratory," where defendants were observed, evaluated, poked, and prodded.11 Legal reformers also demanded more professional training and operating procedures for local law enforcers.12 |
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