Lizzie Borden Society Forum

After being acquitted, and for the duration of her life, Lizzie likely felt betrayed by Fall River due to her general ostracization in the community.

But if she had been honest with herself, her decision (likely recommended by her lawyers) to not testify at the trial or to use other means to inform the public of her knowledge of the day of the murders, really left little room for any other outcome. To a reasonable person, her failure to 'clear the air', would always be interpreted one way....she was hiding something.

This opinion piece published mid-trial does a nice job of stating this perspective. Being found 'not guilty' by a jury does equal being found innocent.

On a personal note, if the purpose of a trial is to learn the truth, why isn't a suspect required to testify? If they chose to plead the 5th amendment and not answer questions, at least the jury has the opportunity to factor that decision by the accused into their deliberations.

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Correction to opening post.

Being found 'not guilty' by a jury does NOT equal being found innocent of the crime.

Oh yes, I agree that Lizzie set herself up to be ostracized, but in my mind it was by not talking to a reporter or two after the verdict and "clearing the air" in that way. I think she and her attorneys were wise not to have her testify on her own behalf at the trial after the treatment she got at the inquest at the hands of the district attorney. Whether guilty or innocent, she wilted before him. And after all, she did not need to prove her innocence at trial, she was already legally presumed innocent, it was up to the prosecution to prove her guilty, which they did not do. Perhaps in part due to those controversial rulings by the judges regarding the prussic acid evidence (which I think was too bad and should have been heard), and the admissiability of her inquest testimony (which I agree with the judges it was tainted testimony due to the deceptive maneuvers by Hilliard and Knowlton to get her to take the stand)

I think about Judge Dewey's charge to the jury about why they shouldn't hold it against Lizzie that she didn't testify for herself, and how it poses legal jeopardy to the defendant, even if one is innocent. “She may be asked questions which she is not able to answer, or she may answer questions truly and yet it may be argued against her that her answers were untrue, and her neglect to answer perverse… She is exposed to peculiar danger of having her conduct on the stand and her testimony severely scrutinized and perhaps misjudged of having her evidence claimed to be of little weight, if favorable to herself, and of great weight so far as any part of it shall admit of an adverse construction.” Those things are exactly what happened to her when she sat before Knowlton at the inquest.

So I get why she didn't testify at trial, I don't quite have the same understanding of why she didn't talk to reporters, at least the ones from papers who were sympathetic to her up through the verdict. Maybe she naively thought the verdict spoke for itself. But then almost no one involved ever spoke on the record to journalists about the case again. Apparently none of the attorneys even spoke to their own families about the case. It was understood from the values of the time I suppose that it was unseemly to talk about it anymore. So frustrating to us trying to understand what happened all these years later....

100% Agree.....telling her story to a reputable set of reporters would have been much smarter than testifying at her trial. If her story came across as plausible, I really think she might have hung onto many of her previous supporters and she might have led a much more satisfying life.