Trial summary as of closing of prosecution case

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This New York Herald editorial was published June 16, 1893 in the New Bedford Evening Standard. The editorial is an excellent and balanced recap of the trial as of June 15th, which is when the prosecution closed its case against Lizzie. If you are relatively new to the Borden case, this article should help as a kick off to your study. It touches on the many indicators of Lizzie's involvement, but the lack of hard/slam dunk direct evidence that she committed the killings. It being a Capital case (guilty = death sentence) added to threshold the prosecution needed to meet to eliminate any 'reasonable doubt'.

New Bedford Evening Standard. June 16, 1893. Reprint of editorial published in the New York Herald.
The government is expected to close its case in the Borden trial today, when evidence will be offered to show that Lizzie Borden tried to buy poison on the day before the tragedy. Its evidence substantially all in now, and hence may be reviewed and judged by the public.
In the mind of everyone who has taken an interest in this absorbing trial, the uppermost question now is, has the commonwealth of Massachusetts solved the mystery of the most remarkable tragedy of this generation? Has it revealed in the unfortunate woman at the bar the heartless criminal who struck down the aged couple in their Fall River home last August with such fiendish ferocity?
Whether the jury will convict, acquit or disagree, no one can tell. But it is safe to say that while opinions may differ as to whether Lizzie Borden committed that ghastly crime, the great popular verdict is likely to be that the government has failed to prove her guilt and leaves the mystery as unfathomable as ever.
The cornerstone of its case is that no one else could have been the perpetrator and escape detection. But that is merely negative proof, and while it has its force, it still leaves guilt to be shown by affirmative evidence.
In the affirmative evidence produced by the government there is much that bears against Lizzie Borden’s innocence. It was shown that she was upstairs when her stepmother lay murdered on the floor and must have seen her mangled body. The young woman declared she was in the barn where her father was murdered. Yet no one saw her go or come from there, and the government witnesses swear they found the barn locked and no footprints in the dust that covered the loft floor. She explained that her stepmother had been summoned by note to a sick friend. Yet no trace of any such note could be found, and the sick friend appears to have been a myth. Moreover, it is significant that after the alarm of the father’s murder had been given, Miss Borden suggested that someone go upstairs and look for Mrs. Borden, saying that she thought she heard her come in. Then there was the extraordinary composure shown by the daughter in a crisis that would have overcome any ordinary woman with shock and uncontrollable emotion.
But is all this sufficient to prove guilt? In every capital trial it is all important to prove the motive and produce the weapon. In this trial it was further imperative to produce the blood-bespattered garments worn by the murderer or account for their nonproduction. No one of these vitally essential points has been established by the government.
To supply a motive, it was charged that Miss Borden’s home life was not happy, and, furthermore, that she dispatched the couple that she might inherit her father’s wealth. The evidence offered in support of this theory is vague and weak, and even if the motive were proved it would hardly account for a double murder characterized by such atrocity. As for the weapon, the prosecution has produced a varied assortment of axes and hatchets but has failed to show that any one of them was even probably the instrument of death.
But the weakest feature of the government’s case is its failure to produce any blood-stained garments of the accused, to account for their nonproduction, or person. Even its own experts have testified that the murderer must have been bespattered with crimson. Yet all the witnesses who saw Lizzie Borden immediately after the alarm was given observed no trace of guilt on her, and science itself has not since been able to reveal any on the clothing she then wore.
The government has offered evidence to show that on Sunday, three days after the tragedy, Miss Borden burned a dress in the presence of two witnesses because it was “all covered with paint.” But would any criminal of intelligence keep for three days such damning proof of guilt and then seek to destroy it in the face of others? Even the witness who gave this testimony saw on the garment no trace of either blood or paint. Moreover, according to the government’s witnesses, it was the same dress worn by Lizzie Borden when the alarm was given and no stain on it was then seen by anyone.
While the government has shown much which is hard to account for on any theory of her innocence, its failure to establish a motive, produce the weapon, or fix any blood stains on the person or the appeared of Lizzie Borden must be taken as a failure to provide guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The trial bids fair to leave the mystery as much a matter of speculation as ever.

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