The murder trial

The murder trial of Muff Potter is the novel's pivotal legal event, the moment when the secret witnessed by Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in the graveyard is dragged into the public sphere. For weeks the sleepy village of St. Petersburg has been electrified by the ghastly news of Doctor Robinson's murder, and the trial becomes the absorbing topic of village talk immediately. The community has already convicted Potter in its collective mind: a gory knife recognized as his was found near the corpse, a belated citizen reported seeing him washing in the branch at an early hour, and he had sneaked away suspiciously. Horsemen had scoured every road, and the Sheriff was confident of capture before night. The trial is the formal machinery that will ratify what everyone already believes.

The Courtroom and the Community

The trial transforms the sleepy atmosphere into something vigorous. On the great day, the court-house is packed with an audience equally representing both sexes. After a long wait the jury files in, and then Potter is brought in, pale and haggard, timid and hopeless, with chains upon him, seated where all curious eyes can stare. No less conspicuous is Injun Joe, stolid as ever. The judge arrives, the sheriff proclaims the court open, and the usual whisperings among lawyers and gathering of papers work up an atmosphere of preparation as impressive as it is fascinating. The prosecution presents a seemingly airtight case: witness after witness testifies to finding Potter washing at dawn, to the knife near the corpse, to his guilty behavior when brought to the scene. Each time, Potter's counsel declines to cross-examine, and the audience begins to betray annoyance, murmuring that the attorney means to throw away his client's life without an effort. A groan escapes from poor Potter, and he puts his face in his hands and rocks his body softly to and fro while a painful silence reigns.

Tom Sawyer's Testimony

At the climax, counsel for the defence rises and announces a change of plan: they will not offer the plea of drunken irresponsibility. Instead, he calls Thomas Sawyer. A puzzled amazement awakes in every face, not excepting Potter's. Tom looks wild enough, for he is badly scared. The oath is administered. When asked where he was on the night of the murder, Tom glances at Injun Joe's iron face and his tongue fails him; the audience listens breathless. Finally he manages to say, "In the graveyard." A contemptuous smile flits across Injun Joe's face. Tom describes hiding behind the elms at the edge of Horse Williams' grave, and then, warming to his subject, his words flow more and more easily. Every sound ceases but his own voice; every eye fixes upon him; with parted lips and bated breath the audience hangs upon his words, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale. The strain upon pent emotion reaches its climax when Tom says, "-- and as the doctor fetched the board around and Muff Potter fell, Injun Joe jumped with the knife and --"

Injun Joe's Flight and Aftermath

Crash! Quick as lightning, the half-breed springs for a window, tears his way through all opposers, and is gone. The trial is effectively over. Tom becomes a glittering hero once more—the pet of the old, the envy of the young. His name goes into immortal print, for the village paper magnifies him. The fickle, unreasoning world takes Muff Potter to its bosom and fondles him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But for Tom, the trial's aftermath is a season of horror: Injun Joe infests all his dreams, always with doom in his eye, and hardly any temptation can persuade the boy to stir abroad after nightfall. The trial has freed an innocent man but unleashed a guilty one, and the legal system's failure to capture Injun Joe leaves Tom and Huck living in terror, their blood oath broken and their safety gone.