{"id":3716,"date":"2018-07-07T13:17:39","date_gmt":"2018-07-07T17:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/HatchetOnline\/?p=3716"},"modified":"2024-08-21T16:58:52","modified_gmt":"2024-08-21T20:58:52","slug":"news-and-views-that-wouldnt-fit-notes-from-the-compositors-bench-april-2006-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/news-and-views-that-wouldnt-fit-notes-from-the-compositors-bench-april-2006-2\/","title":{"rendered":"News and Views that Wouldn&#8217;t Fit: Notes from the Compositor&#8217;s Bench, April, 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">First published in April, 2006, Volume 3, Issue 2, <em>The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">\u201cYou Must Kick Every Dog, Sir\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">(Advice On A Closing Argument)<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\"><i>It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted. \u2014 <\/i>Aeschylus<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\"><i>Advice usually goes for a penny a pound<br \/>\n<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\"><i>Advisors for two bits a gross;<br \/>\n<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\"><i>What\u2019s it worth in the end? Nobody knows \u2013<br \/>\n<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\"><i>The advisee\u2019s left comatose.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Each of us has, at some point, learned the practical truth in both the ancient statement and the verse above. We may wonder whether Hosea Knowlton suffered similarly as he set about the matter of trying Lizzie Andrew Borden for the crime of double murder.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5907\" src=\"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/07\/knolton-copy.jpg\" alt=\"Hosea Knowlton sketch.\" width=\"400\" height=\"568\" \/>Advice and theory were a by-product of the Borden murders since almost before the bodies turned cold. Indeed, scratch any inhabitant or would-be \u201cexpert\u201d of the day and rather than blood, theory would likely pour out of the wound. Murder-suicide was indeed one of the earliest put forth, and is recorded as finding \u201cmany supporters\u201d despite the obvious inequities of that proposition. Within one day of the grisly killings, the \u201cPortuguese or Swede Farm Hand\u201d notion was also investigated and discarded.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Among the few who claimed to have no theory as to the murders early on was Mr. Andrew Jackson Jennings, legal advisor to the late Andrew Borden and friend of Miss Emma L. Borden. But Lawyer Jennings, it appears, was among the few rather than the many.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Speculation it may be, but it stands to reason that Hosea Knowlton was most probably no more immune to (and no less besieged by) theorists and would-be advisors than any other individual of stature connected with the case.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">It is not at all difficult to envision his office as it might have been\u2014complete down to the humble sampler hanging behind the desk. Rather than the more common \u201cHome Sweet Home\u201d there would be a more appropriate proclamation, such as that which Mr. Lincoln once reputedly uttered: \u201cIf I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.\u201d But that Knowlton\u2019s might well have read: \u201cIf I were to try to read\u2014much less process and answer\u2014all the tips and theories presented to me regarding the Borden murders at Fall River, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">We might well sympathize with such a sentiment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Battered and beleaguered as he must have been, it would appear though, that Hosea Knowlton did not ignore <i>all<\/i> the advice he received regarding the Borden matter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">One of the more intriguing bits of advice\u2014proof thereof that is to say\u2014has recently come before the eyes of ye humble Compositor. It lies here on the desk, a small scrap of paper very like a telegraph slip. Remarkably well preserved, it reads as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\"><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Dear SIR:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\"><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">I should like to offer the following for your consideration:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\"><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">If it is your intent to win the case now being tried at New Bedford you must, so to speak, kick every dog in that courtroom, Sir, with sufficient force such as to drive them out from beneath their proverbial \u2018park bench\u2019 of complacency.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\"><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Manage that task, Sir, and justice shall be done.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\"><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">A Friend of the Law<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\"><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">CAMBRIDGE, Mass.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Now in ordinary course, this humble slip should have no more significance than any other tidbit of advisory scrawl. The \u201cFriend of the Law\u201d is unknown, but may be reasonably suspected to have some connection to the law school at Cambridge. This is no mere flight of fancy, but is supported by direct inferential evidence. For contained in close proximity to that humble advisory scrawl (indeed, in the same envelope) is what appears to be an honest attempt by the good District Attorney to<i> follow<\/i> the writer\u2019s advice. The inference, simply stated here is that Hosea Knowlton would not have attempted such without <i>some reason to believe<\/i> that this particular writer held a position of eminence, either in the practice or teaching of the law.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">The resulting document would likely qualify, to borrow the phrase of Mr. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, as \u201cmost singular\u201d in its content. It follows here:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">May it please this Honorable Court, Mr. Foreman, and Gentlemen of the Jury:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Whether we stand today representing the Commonwealth, as do I now stand before you, or the cause of the defendant, as my brothers Jennings and Robinson have stood\u2014irrespective of position, it cannot be denied that each side shares the same common plot of ground. Both sides stand today as we have stood these many months, in the full and clear recognition that a great tragedy has been done in our midst, one compounded by the fact of not one but two victims. On that common, unshakable ground do we stand\u2014a plot as stark and unyielding as that which received two coffins now some ten months ago.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">None but an <i>imbecile<\/i>, Gentlemen, would dare deny that tragedy has been done, nor that its scope is such as would lacerate the heartstrings of humanity until they ran bright with blood.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">There is something Gentlemen, something in the cry of \u201cMurder!\u201d which affects the human heart and soul as does nothing other known to man. Passed from mouth to ear and from mouth to ear, that single word has more effect on any person of good and common intellect than any other word in the language save perhaps \u201cLove.\u201d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">But we are not here, Gentlemen, on account of Love. It is <i>murder<\/i> which has brought us here today\u2014most foul, bloody, and vicious murder.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">I need not say much more of this effect, for doubtless you twelve good and true will recall it, the chill and bitter wind sent blustering through the heart and soul of every man and woman within earshot of that first cry. You will know it better than I\u2014for you were here. Nay, gentlemen, I need not ask you to <i>imagine<\/i> it: You were a part of the community. It came to you in your daily avocations, it sent a thrill through your beings, and you felt that life was not secure. Every man turned detective. Every act and fact and thought that occurred to the thousand, to the million men all over the United States, was spread abroad and furnished and given for the identification of the criminal, and still it remained an impenetrable mystery.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">My learned brother asks, \u201cWho upon this earth could have done such a deed?\u201d The very facts alone, as I have said, do chill the heart and bring wonder and fear. \u201cWho <i>could have done<\/i> such a deed?\u201d The merest consideration will not stand; the facts of these crimes are so horrid, so raw that the slightest consideration of them stunts the intellect, chilling the power of thought. The practical result is much the same as that noted in Shakespeare\u2019s play, where Antony, in his eulogy to Caesar, laments:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\"><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\"><i>O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">So foul and bloody thing as compounded parricide\u2014the raw and brutish beast of murder\u2014it cannot be! Its very nature <i>offends<\/i> and <i>displaces<\/i> the coursing current of <i>reason<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">\u201cSuch things are the stuff of fiction,\u201d we reassure ourselves. <i>It cannot happen here!<\/i> That, Gentleman, is but wishful thinking. You may recall that a mere thirty years ago, political assassination was considered a distinctly un-American practice, wholly against everything we knew. <i>It simply could not happen here!<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Our history, of course, tells us otherwise\u2014that in that season so flush with the thrill of victory and new hope of rebirth in our land, there came upon the Good Friday eve a gunshot, and in its wake the accursed cry of the old Roman: <i>Sic semper tyrannis!<\/i> There followed, of course, shock, horror, disbelief and uncertainty much as that we saw last August. Against all we <i>knew<\/i>, or had known, the <i>unthinkable<\/i> had come to pass, standing stark and bare before us in our very homes and dooryards. Mr. Lincoln breathed no more, but was commended to the ages. <i>Who would dare to do such a vile thing?<\/i> was the question on every tongue. Such has been the question, the focus of this proceeding here and now, some twenty-eight years later.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">The answer our shaken intellect offers today (that <i>no one<\/i> could do such a vile thing) <i>will not stand<\/i>\u2014will not stand, Mr. Foreman, any more than that answer stood twenty-eight years ago, when the poet studded dooryards with lilacs as markers of sorrow.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">The facts of this matter, as you have seen<i> with your own eyes<\/i> will not permit such blind foolishness!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">My brother Moody, Gentlemen, has done an admirable job in relating the facts of the case to you upon a prior occasion, and you yourselves have seen the venues in which the horrible butchery took place; so I shall but touch briefly upon the main points this afternoon:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">An old couple, man and wife, were struck down and viciously hacked in the autumn of their years, within the bounds of the very domicile in which they made their home.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">It was as I have said, and as you good gentlemen will doubtless recollect, a sheer case of unprovoked assassination, a raw and bloody compound act committed in the largest city of this county in the full light of the day. The sheer <i>impossibility<\/i> of the act\u2014its incomprehensible nature\u2014does not readily contribute to a solution. The good people of this county are unaccustomed to the notion that a murderer might live among them, passing unnoticed and utterly unremarkable. Unaccustomed as they are, however, it is not to be denied that this is so\u2014the <i>corpus dilecti<\/i> lies before them as proof of the impossible. Murder was done; yes indeed, it was done!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">We face today much the same in considering the <i>fact<\/i> of the prisoner. The facts\u2014and indeed, the eyes of any human endowed with sight\u2014the facts tell us that the prisoner at the bar is a woman of about 32 years; the own daughter of Andrew Jackson Borden, born of a mother now deceased. She is marked among her peers as \u201ca Christian woman\u201d to use the common phrase. Hers is the rank of \u201cLady\u201d such as we know it; it puts her on equal footing, I may say, with <i>your<\/i> wife and <i>my<\/i> wife\u2014with <i>your<\/i> friends and <i>my<\/i> friends\u2014of whom such foul and fiendish acts would never be dreamed in a thousand or a million years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">I hope, Gentlemen of the Jury, that I may never forget, nor lose sight of the terrible significance of that fact in anything I might say today. We try a crime that heretofore would have been deemed <i>impossible<\/i> even to the minds of the most cynical of reasonable men. The prisoner charged is a woman, one whom we would heretofore have thought <i>incapable<\/i> of such foul and miserable deeds. We would have thought her so Gentlemen, but for the <i>evidence<\/i>\u2014that which it is my painful duty to recall to your attention today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Nay, Gentleman, it is a sad and yet true fact that the practice of things which are commonly called \u201cChristian acts\u201d\u2014this is no insular barrier against crime and its temptations, no more a protection than is femininity.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">I say to you Mr. Foreman and gentlemen that you cannot dispose of this case upon these two facts alone. The law, gentlemen, does not permit that; for if it did permit that, the prisoner who sits at the bar today would have been told some months ago: \u201cLizzie, I judge you probably not guilty. You may go home.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">No, gentlemen, no station in life is a pledge or a security against the commission of crime; you know that just as well as I. Would that it were only so!<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Now gentlemen I must say to you\u2014do not think by my words here that I for one moment underestimate, or speak lightly of the strength of the Christian character. I do not for a moment mean to say that a man who is a good Christian is not therefore a good man. Most of them are. Many times all of them are. But we are all sons of Adam and Eve. Each of us bears the same weakness, the same liability to fault, fallings, and failings. We strive to do as best we might, yet we are all of us the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. So it is that when a Christian falls, one known for good works and charity, his fall is all the greater because the outward, public life appeared so pure before.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">We are none of us secure. But gentlemen, let me not be misunderstood here. Not for <i>one single moment<\/i> would I urge that because a man or a woman has led an upright and devout life that therefore there should be any reason for suspecting him or her of crime. To the contrary, good repute itself\u2014proof of good character, life and work\u2014helps to buttress the very foundation of the presumption of innocence. Our good words and works at times are all we have to speak upon our behalf.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">I would though, give you this, of a learned writer well-known in the field of the law: \u201cAs men do not generally violate the Penal Code, the law presumes every man innocent; but some men do transgress it, and therefore evidence is received to repel this presumption. This legal presumption of innocence is to be regarded by the jury, in every case, as matter of evidence, to the benefit of which the party is entitled.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Every prisoner brought to the bar for trial in any cause shall be presumed innocent; but with that, as Dr. Greenleaf expressed it\u2014with that goes hand to hand the knowledge that while the <i>majority<\/i> do not generally violate the Penal Code, there will be those who do, and against <i>them<\/i> evidence must be put which is sufficient to repel that universal presumption of pristine innocence.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\"><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>That, gentlemen, is what we have been about here the past fortnight.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Now gentlemen I find myself obliged to tread upon the most delicate of ground. I do so, I will assure you, most carefully. I must ask you for a moment to ponder a difficult and yet most intriguing matter. The prisoner at the bar is a female, of that sex which generally all high-minded men revere; that all generous men love, that all wise men acknowledge their indebtedness to. It is difficult, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury, most difficult to conceive that woman could be guilty of these crimes. It is a most difficult and unsettling thought.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">But I must propose to you the following: That a woman, loved and revered as she may be\u2014she be no better, no worse than we, her male counterparts. <i>Humanity<\/i> is as much her enemy as it is our own, Gentlemen. She is gifted of the same faults, failings, and fallings as we are. What she may lack in strength and \u201cgrit\u201d as it is commonly called, does she not compensate for in cunning, in dispatch, in swiftness, in ferocity? If a woman\u2019s <i>love<\/i> were stronger and more enduring than that of a man, Gentlemen, is it saying too much on the other hand that her <i>hatreds<\/i> are deeper, more persistent, and more immortal than our own? It is difficult, gentleman, as we ponder this question, not to recollect the old maxim, which warns that Hell hath no wrath like a woman\u2019s fury.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Now Gentlemen, do not misunderstand me. I do not mean here to tar the whole of womanhood with the same brush as it were. They are not <i>all<\/i> vicious. They are not <i>all<\/i> evil. But you, Mr. Foreman, and gentlemen\u2014you have read and I have read, in works of history and of fiction\u2014you know, as do I that while they are not <i>all<\/i> like that, there <i>are<\/i> those who transgress, falling prey to the seductive siren-song of wickedness, of crime, and of murder.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Yet at the same time, even as we sit here dumbfounded and puzzling that a woman be <i>charged<\/i> with such brutality, much less that she might <i>commit<\/i> it\u2014is it not also within the bounds of recollection of every man here, the case of a woman who murdered a whole cart load of relatives for the sake of money?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Now Gentlemen, mark me, I do not offer that lightly but merely as reminder. We may <i>honor<\/i>, we may <i>love<\/i>, we may <i>revere<\/i> them\u2014and yet they too are the daughters of Adam, as we are the sons. They possess the same weaknesses, the same liability to fault, fallings, and failings, as do men. We cannot approach this case as gallants, Mr. Foreman; we must face it with clear, open eyes!<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">You yourselves, gentlemen have heard and seen the evidence, trod the very venue of that humble home wherein did reside an old man of nearly threescore years and ten. You have seen the domicile, spare in ways perhaps but not entirely without its comforts, which he did share with his wife, who was in age threescore and four years. You have seen too, the rooms of ease, comfort and slumber which were in moments converted to no more than slaughter pens, spattered and violated with blood shed in anger\u2014vicious, passionate anger.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Distasteful and alien as it may be, gentlemen, to everything you were taught and raised to know of woman, you must today face the bald fact that here one sits before you at the bar. Her crime as charged, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, is nothing less than compound parricide.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">I do not stand before you today happily, gentlemen. Would that I was able, I should gladly have said to the Attorney General, \u201cPlease, let this cup pass from me.\u201d I do not, however, have that luxury. I must stand before you today as advocate, the spokesperson for two people; two people through whom life\u2019s blood once coursed. I speak today in behalf of an aged man and woman, two who, had their final lot been kinder, should have proceeded untroubled down the hill of life, secure and serene as they lived and perhaps reflected upon a life of happiness, earned by virtue of fidelity and honest toil.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\"><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>I do not stand before you today as some crazed village boob waving the bloody shirt of vengeance. Rather, today I deliver unto you the simple plea of a man, nearly threescore years and ten. I bring to you the soft request of the shy and fidelitous wife. Through me, today, these two voices now stilled do utter one final request: \u201cLet us have justice!\u201d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">That today is my duty, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury. It is my duty to speak for them. But in turn, it is your duty\u2014and in ways the more sacred duty\u2014you Gentlemen are <i>the only twelve upon this earth who can do these victims justice!<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">It is in that spirit, Mr. Foreman, one of honest and earnest advocacy, which I shall now pass to some discussion of the evidence in this matter.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">First, I may remark upon its unique character. We regret, gentlemen, that we cannot put before you today\u2014particularly today as you begin your solemn consideration of this matter\u2014direct evidence, undeniable proof that the prisoner at the bar is a foul and vicious murderess whose neck is worthy of the rope\u2019s tender caress.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">A photograph of course, might exemplify such direct evidence. Those we lack\u2014indeed the only photographic evidence that exists is that which you have seen, those stark and repulsive images that record the <i>wake<\/i> of the carnage in all its foul and bloody bitterness.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Nor do we have direct evidence of other sorts. No witness has come forward to say \u201cI saw it, Sir\u2014saw the swing of the weapon, heard the last piercing cries of both victims, \u2018ere their life\u2019s blood began to flow in torrents. It made me ill, Sir . . . ill to the point of retching . . . Who? Oh yes Sir, I <i>did<\/i> see who . . . It was the daughter Sir, she who is presently at home. It pains me under the circumstances to say it, but yes . . . I have known her many years, and would easily know her by sight.\u201d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">We cannot, as I have said Mr. Foreman, give you such direct evidence as that. If it were so, the job of the Commonwealth in this matter would be so much more easily done! What we <i>can<\/i> give you\u2014indeed as we have <i>tried <\/i>to give the past fortnight here\u2014our evidence, gentlemen, is very like the pieces of a child\u2019s puzzle, pieces which if turned and examined sufficiently, soon reveal that there is <i>one single way<\/i> in which the pieces will fit together, and form a picture. That then, is the nature of our evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">I should like next to briefly address an issue upon which you shall be instructed again at some point before beginning your deliberations. You will as I say, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury, hear this again, but I would like to utter a word or two about that which is known as \u201creasonable doubt.\u201d It is, as you may suppose, a most vital issue.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">The highest court of this Commonwealth defined it for us two score and three years ago, in the same case I may add, as was alluded to by the learned Chief Justice in his preliminary remarks to you before we entered upon the trial of this case. Your questioning beforehand\u2014that practice was born of the same case, that of the Commonwealth against Professor John White Webster, decided in 1850.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">About \u201creasonable doubt\u201d that same Court said:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">\u201cProof beyond reasonable doubt, is not beyond <i>all possible<\/i> or <i>imaginary<\/i> doubt, but such proof as precludes <i>every reasonable hypothesis or theory<\/i> except that which it tends to support. It is proof to a moral certainty, as distinguished from an absolute certainty. As applied to a judicial trial for crime, the two phrases, <i>beyond reasonable doubt<\/i>, and, <i>to a moral certainty<\/i>, are synonymous and equivalent. They mean the same thing. Each has been used by eminent judges to explain the other, and each signifies such proof as satisfies the judgment and conscience of the jury as reasonable men, and applying their reason to the evidence before them, that the crime charged has been committed by the defendant, and so satisfies them as to leave no other reasonable conclusion possible. In other words, they must have as clear and strong a conviction in their own minds of the proof of that conclusion as they would require to have in the truth of a conclusion to be acted on by them in matters of the highest importance to themselves.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">With that definition and standard in mind, let us then, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury\u2014let us proceed to a review of the case, and of the evidence which has been set forth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Here unfortunately the District Attorney halted his composition, or the remainder has been lost. The first seems the most likely possibility, owing mainly to fatigue or frustration. Or perhaps, at the moment he ceased, Hosea Knowlton recalled the words of an eminent jurist of the Commonwealth, who observed in 1880:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">\u201cThe life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, institutions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed. The law embodies the story of a nation\u2019s development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">Knowlton\u2019s reason is impossible to divine, but a <i>completed<\/i> address would certainly have proved interesting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">We are judged by the words we use. This tidbit of wisdom (heard so often in recent years that it\u2019s nearly clich\u00e9) is no less common to the lawyer than it is to the writer. Each, in the end, has no more weapons than words at his or her disposal. The tune may be a bit different, but the fox-trot is in essence the same.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\"><i>It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">So it is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\" style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000000;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Doug Walters takes a whimsical look at modern day from the perspective of a Victorian.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5253,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-notes-from-the-compositors-bench"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3716"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5908,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716\/revisions\/5908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/hatchetonline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}