One Monday We Killed Them All by John D. MacDonald

full of tears ready to spill. “Why did they have to do—so much to him? Why did they have to change him so much? What good does that do? What’s the—purpose of a prison?”
    “Punishment. A deterrent to others. Rehabilitation. Mostly,I think, it’s formal, organized revenge. The ones the screws can’t break, the inmates can. They exist because the shrinkers are still fumbling around. Some day when a man is found guilty, they’ll strap a gadget to his head and it will buzz and clean his brain right back to the day of birth. They’ll turn another dial and it will buzz some more and establish a whole brand-new set of abilities, habits, memory and desires, perhaps a pattern lifted intact from some sterling, productive citizen. But not for a long time, a very long time. Between now and then we’ll lock them up and toughen them, coarsen them, twist them a little further away from the norm, and turn them loose. But that isn’t my end of the business, and I don’t like to think about it very much because it takes the edge off some of the good I think I’m doing—hope I’m doing.”
    “Did he—tell you anything about his plans?”
    “Nothing specific. He thinks Brook City gave him a raw deal.”
    “He’s right, isn’t he?”
    “Yes—and no. Yes, in that he didn’t get impartial justice; no, in that that commodity is so rare he hasn’t any rational reason to expect it. If he tries to tip the scales the other way, to get back some of the meat and juice he thinks was taken away from him, he’ll just be trying to cut a loaded deck.”
    The shower sound stopped. She began to put things on the table. I went out and sat on the back steps. If he got a raw deal it was the same kind of raw deal I have tried to get used to, and which happens in every city in the country. It is one of the facts of life, and it is a flaw built right into the structure of our judicial system. Better minds than mine despair of ever correcting it.
    This is the rub. The average public prosecutor is a youngish lawyer. Maybe he has political ambitions. Maybe he merely wants to make an impression that will help him when he is back in private practice. In either case his future success is going to depend on the good will of those men who call themselves the backbone of the community, the men who own and operate the stores, factories, banks, dealerships and so on.
    The police force makes the arrest, files charges, completes the investigation and turns the file over to the prosecutor. The prosecutor runs a busy shop, usually on low pay and alimited budget. And so, in each case, he has to decide just how much time and effort to put into the prosecution. Suppose the crime has been committed by a good friend, relative or valued employee of one of the local businessmen. The prosecutor knows he will run up against a good defense attorney. Why should he use a lot of zeal, time, energy, expense in preparing the prosecution’s case? Why should he make a careful investigation of the whole jury panel in order to be better able to empanel a jury which will convict? Why should he try to get it before one of the more severe judges? He can salve his own conscience by making a routine preparation of the case and then going after a conviction with every outward evidence of zeal. He can hammer hardest at the strongest parts of the defense case. If, on cross-examination of a defense witness, he suspects the existence of an area where he might be able to trap the witness, who can say that he steered his cross-examination in another direction? If it appears that a conviction is inevitable, cannot he inadvertently introduce some element which, upon appeal, will be adjudged reversible error?
    But in a crime against the men able to directly and indirectly fatten his future, the spectators may think they are seeing exactly the same performance as before, but they are actually seeing a case put together as carefully as any ballistic missile. They are seeing an uncertain