The Trial of Lizzie Borden(86)
Warning the jurors not to consider any information from any prior accounts of the case they might have read, he urged them to deliberate “with impartial and thoughtful minds, seeking only for truth” so that they would “lift the case above the range of passion and prejudice and excited feeling, into the clear atmosphere of reason and law.” Yet, like Robinson and Knowlton before him, Dewey invoked a higher law and omniscient power to guide the jury’s deliberations, expressing his hope that Providence “may express in its results somewhat of that justice with which God governs the world.”
Judge Dewey’s charge buoyed Lizzie Borden’s friends. Indeed, Joe Howard called it “a plea for the innocent.” “Had he been the senior counsel for the defense,” Howard continued, “he could not have more absolutely pointed out the folly of depending upon circumstantial evidence alone.” As they waited for a verdict, Judges Blodgett and Dewey went for a walk, leaving Chief Judge Mason alone in the judges’ room. The reporters melted into the crowd, interviewing spectators or simply eavesdropping. Lizzie remained in the dock, chatting with friends sitting around her. Eventually she, too, went out for a short break. Suddenly the festive atmosphere ended. Less than an hour and a half into their deliberations, the jury was ready with its verdict. “The silence became impressive and fearful” as Lizzie Borden returned to her seat. She did not falter. As one commentator declared: “At no time during the trial has the prisoner’s almost supernatural courage so appalled the spectators as at this sublime moment of her entry into the court room to hear her doom.”
The jurors were no less somber: they entered with a “look of fixed determination on their countenances as of men who had done a trying duty faithfully to their consciences.” Even the clerk shook perceptibly. When asked for the verdict, the foreman could no longer contain his excitement, interrupting the question and declaring Lizzie Borden “Not guilty.” As the courtroom erupted in what seemed to be a single yell, joined, after a momentary delay, by an answering cheer from the spectators outside “which might have been heard half a mile away,” Lizzie Borden sank back into her chair “as if she was shot,” placed her face on the rail in front of her seat, and sobbed. Even her supporters were startled: “Every man of them was as pale as a corpse, as they looked toward her.” The clerk continued: “Gentlemen of the jury, you, upon your oaths, do say that Lizzie Andrew Borden, the prisoner at the bar, is not guilty?”
“We do!” replied the jurors.
“Say you, Mr. Foreman, so say all of you?”
A unanimous “We do” followed.
The court adjourned at 4:38 p.m. The trial was over.
Different stories of the jury deliberations later surfaced. In one account, the jurors argued, nearly coming to blows. Another declared that a juror bought the verdict by promising liquor to the others if they voted for acquittal on the first ballot. In yet another, the first ballot found one juror committed to convict; the second found them unanimous for acquittal. But the truth was less dramatic. An informal ballot was taken once they were in the room. Finding themselves already unanimous, they discussed the evidence to seem “reasonably deliberative,” out of courtesy to the district attorney. They then voted unanimously for acquittal, remaining in the room, again “as a matter of courtesy,” for an additional half hour.
Last scene in the Great Borden Trial, Boston Globe
Lizzie’s friends had been “warned by the counsel that, in the event of a verdict of acquittal, they should make no demonstration that would mar the dignity of the court.” As Howard put it, “He might as well have given directions for stopping the flow of the tides.” In any event, Sheriff Wright “never saw the people rising in their seats and waving their handkerchiefs in unison with their voices, because his eyes were full of tears and were completely blinded.” He was not alone: “Tears gushed from hundreds of eyes” and “It was whispered that two of the three judges had cried.” Knowlton and Moody congratulated the defense counsel. Jennings assisted his client to her feet and Robinson “put his arm around the now strengthened girl, and he pressed close down to her cheek as though a loving father was caressing a much loved daughter.” Joe Howard declared: “The extraordinary and visible affection between these two persons will always remain as one of the refreshing memories of the trial.” Lizzie extended her hand to Melvin Adams but “one wasn’t enough . . . and he took both.”
Robinson watched “with a fatherly interest in his kindly eyes” as the jurors, “still moving like a lot of convicts out for exercise, gathered themselves in a bunch, and then, in Indian file, marched down to shake hands with the woman for whom they had done so very much.” Lizzie greeted “each of them with a fresh sparkle of her eyes, a warm grasp of the hand and a look so grateful and kindly that the heart of every man among them must have been touched.” Once liberated, the jurors rushed to the bar of the Parker House for a long-overdue drink. Robinson then led his client out of the court while Jennings held the door. Lizzie herself said very little to most of the reporters, “her warmest greetings being given to Julian Ralph, the man who, from the first, portrayed her actions with unerring skill and judgment.”
What were her plans? Where would she go? The reporters asked, and the crowds waited. And with the wide world before her, she chose Fall River.