Part 6 - The Descision

As the trial twisted its way through this catacomb of fantasy and despair, Mumler remained a "calm and fathomless" presence in the courtroom, with "a face which one would scarcely be able to believe in at first sight." On May 3, the photographer rose for the first time to address the court. Again, he confessed nothing: "I positively assert that in taking the pictures, I have never used any trick or device, or availed myself of any deception or fraud."

When Mumler finished, Townsend and Gerry stepped forward to give their closing remarks. Townsend spoke first, rousing himself for two hours of "powerful and highly finished" argument. "Men like these would have hung Galileo, had he lived in their day," Townsend thundered, oratorically thumping the prosecution and its witnesses.

Gerry swatted back with a "lengthened dissertation" that roved through hallucinations, Biblical phantoms, the heathenish nature of spiritualism and the nine methods of faking spirits. "There is no positive proof whatever of any spiritual agency," in Mumler's photographs, Gerry exclaimed. "Only evidence that certain persons believe it exists."

And then, without much further ado, Judge Dowling announced his decision with a verdict fogged in ambiguity. The judge shared Gerry's belief that Mumler was crooked, pronouncing himself "morally convinced," that Mumler had practiced "fraud and deception." And then he set the photographer free. Prosecutor Gerry had not pinpointed Mumler's trickery and, therefore, had not made his case.

It was a decision that satisfied neither party. Did Judge Dowling take the easy way out with this mixed decision? Or did he take a deeper view and conclude that in matters of belief there are degrees of reality and degrees of truth, and it was not in his power to decide upon them? In any event, Mumler was released, and his comrades in the movement of the "new light" rejoiced that their martyr had escaped the bonds of the Tombs.