The Trial of Lizzie Borden(48)
Chapter 7
A SIGNAL VICTORY
The jury in its favorite position, Boston Globe
While Lizzie Borden lost herself in Dickens, journalists at the trial discussed the case on their hotel balconies “in an atmosphere like the exhaust from a mighty engine.” Elizabeth Jordan later wrote that she and most of her fellow out-of-town reporters believed Lizzie was innocent. Yet, they wondered: “If Miss Borden had not committed the murders, who had?” In the New York Sun, Julian Ralph had pointed out the inescapable paradox: it seemed impossible that Lizzie Borden had committed the murders, and equally impossible “to understand how anyone else could have worked such fearful havoc in the house in which she was stirring.” His colleagues proposed their own theories: “An escaped maniac? The crime seemed the work of one.” Elizabeth Jordan thought: “A gorilla? A gorilla was indicated, by the appearance of the rooms. The Murders in the Rue Morgue came cheerily to mind.” That night, Jordan dozed fitfully and woke at three o’clock in the morning to a terrifying sight: “a gorilla standing framed in the open French windows.” Her somnolent eyes had deceived her. It was not a murderous beast but rather the night watchman, demonstrating that the balcony was “easily reached from the street below.” According to Jordan, “He mentioned maniacs, and the fact that the Borden murderer might still be at large.” From then on, despite the heat, Jordan slept with the windows tightly shut.
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 1893
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After the short break of the weekend, the crowds surged toward the small fence to the courthouse, impatient to claim any available seats. Even the lawyers had to fight their way “through the perpetual and swollen crowd of women idlers.” For those who managed to secure admittance, a grim relic awaited them. Just outside the courtroom itself stood the bloodstained sofa on which Andrew Borden was murdered. It was covered in sackcloth but gawkers lifted the covering to examine it for themselves. After passing that memento mori, Julian Ralph entered the courtroom to find “his favorite seat taken, although it was taken by a much handsomer person, and a woman at that.” She was the new illustrator from the New York World. Oblivious, she “calmly sketched on.” Joe Howard fared better: he had struck up a friendship with a beautiful young woman during the Saturday session and, Monday morning, “they drove up [to the courthouse] in style.”
Lizzie was wearing a new black silk dress with a delicate outer layer of black lace, “many times more expensive than the old one.” But, despite her new gown, she seemed unwell: “Her color was bad, her manner listless, and it seemed as though the demon of apprehension was dallying with her sensibilities.” This was understandable. Before the court adjourned on Saturday, the attorneys filed a stipulation that laid out the agreed facts about Lizzie Borden’s inquest testimony. This morning, out of the hearing of the jury, her lawyers would entreat the judges not to permit the prosecution to use that testimony as evidence against her.
THE COORDINATE BRANCHES
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Why was the jury removed from the courtroom? Judges and juries have different roles in the legal system: judges explain the law and juries decide the facts. Or, put another way, the judges serve as gatekeepers who decide what evidence the jury can hear. As a general matter, all relevant evidence should be presented to the jury. Relevance, then and now, means the tendency for any piece of evidence to prove or disprove a proposition in the case. It is a broad concept based on reason alone: all facts having rational, probative value are admissible. This general rule comes with an important caveat: judges can exclude relevant evidence for a variety of reasons. There may be statutory or even constitutional prohibitions against admitting certain evidence. An involuntary confession is a classic example of relevant evidence that the jury may not hear. Other common grounds for excluding otherwise relevant evidence are unfair prejudice, confusion, or undue delay. For example, common-law precedent frowns on evidence of bad character on the theory that jurors might unfairly decide that a defendant was likely to act in ways consistent with negative character traits without giving appropriate attention to the actual evidence of guilt. This is often referred to as “propensity” evidence—the idea that a person who has done something in the past has a tendency to repeat the behavior. In such cases, the judges need to balance the importance of the evidence—its probative value—against the risk of unfair prejudice to the defendant who might be judged for who he is rather than what he had actually done. Judges, as legal professionals, are thought to be able to understand the pertinent distinctions involved and to safeguard the legal process from decisions based on bias or emotions.
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At the coroner’s inquest, Knowlton metaphorically returned Lizzie Borden to the scene of the crime to establish a chronology that made her the only possible killer. She had told different people a range of stories relating to her discovery of her father’s body: she told one officer she had heard a “scraping noise”; she told Bridget Sullivan she had heard “a groan.” Yet, she had also said she was in the barn looking for iron to make a sinker, or for a piece of iron or tin to fix a screen. The inquest forced her to explain herself under oath. It was not a success. As the New York Times observed, “The statements made by her at the inquest were of a contradictory character, extremely damaging to her interests.” Even Borden’s most fervent supporters acknowledged that her testimony had not gone well. Elizabeth Jordan, for example, wrote sympathetically: “On the confused stories and contradictions in matters for the most part trifling the District-Attorneys have built their strongest hopes of arousing the antagonism of the jury.”