Twelfth Day of the Trial.
On Monday morning Ex-Governor George D. Robinson made his plea for the
prisoner which was as follows:
May it Please Your Honors, Mr. Foreman and Gentlemen—One of the
most dastardly and diabolical of crimes that was ever committed in
Massachusetts was perpetrated in August, 1892, in the city of Fall
River. The enormity of it startled everybody, and set all into diligent
inquiry as to the perpetrator of such terrible acts. Our society is
so constituted, gentlemen, that every man feels that the right must
be done and the wrong punished and the wicked doer brought to his
account as promptly as due procedure of law will permit. Here, then,
was a crime with all its horrors, and well may those who stood first
to look at the victims have felt sickened and distressed at heart,
and human nature be broken so that the experience of a lifetime will
never bring other such pictures. “Who could have done such an act?”
says everybody. In the quiet of home, in the broad light of an August
day, upon a street of a populous city, with houses within a stone’s
throw, nay, almost within touch, who could have done it? Inspection of
the victims disclosed that Mrs. Borden had been slain by the use of
some sharp and terrible instrument, inflicting upon her head eighteen
blows, thirteen of them crushing through the skull; and below, lying
upon the sofa, was Mr. Borden’s dead and mutilated body, with eleven
strokes upon the head, four of them crushing the skull. The terrors of
those scenes no language can portray. The horrors of that moment we can
all fail to describe. And so we are charged at once, at the outset, to
find somebody that is equal to that enormity, whose heart is blackened
with depravity, whose whole life is a tissue of crime, whose past is a
prophecy of that present. A maniac or fiend we say. Not a man in his
senses and who has heart right, but one of those abnormal productions
that deity creates or suffers, a lunatic or a devil. So do we measure
the degree of character or want of it, that could possibly prompt a
human being to such acts. They were well-directed blows. They were not
the result of blundering. They were aimed steadily and constantly for
a purpose, each one finding its place where it was aimed, and none
going amiss on the one side or the other. Surely we are prompted to say
at the outset that the perpetrator of that act knew how to handle the
instrument, was experienced in its control, had directed it before or
others like it, and it was not the sudden, untrained doing of somebody
who had been unfamiliar with such implements. Now, suspicion began to
fall here and there. Everybody about there was called to account so far
as could be. That is proper. That is right and necessary. Investigation
proceeds. The police intervene. They form their theories. They proceed
to act. They concern this one and that one. They follow out this and
that clew. They are human only. When once a theory possesses our minds
you know how tenaciously it holds the place, and how slow the mind
is to find lodgment in something else. Now, no decent man complains
of investigation. No one says there ought not to have been anything
done. Everything ought to have been done. Nay, more, we say everything
was not done and that the proper pursuit was not taken. Now, proceed
with this matter a little and let us see how it stands. A person is
charged with a crime, like this defendant, suspicions surround her,
investigations in regard to her proceed, and inevitably, naturally, if
the matter is deemed of consequence, she is brought before the court,
the district court in that instance, to have an examination preliminary
into the probabilities of the crime on her part. Then if she, having
nothing to do with it, having no control of it, having no opportunity
to accept, to be heard, be bound and compelled to answer to this
court, what then? Then the grand jury of the county is called together
and sits by itself under the direction of the district attorney,
to investigate and see whether it ought to come before a jury like
yourselves. Now remember that at that time, and when this indictment of
last December was framed, this defendant had no voice, it was purely
one sided. They said, “We make this charge, serious as it is, against
the defendant. We will ask her to come to the Bristol county court
house and meet that charge, and if we cannot prove it against her in
the ordinary way she shall go free: she is not guilty.”
Now, that is one sided up to that point, practically, and so you are
to draw no inference whatever, and I know you will not; you will draw
no inference whatever as against this defendant until you have heard
the evidence in this case, in this court room, at this time. You have
nothing to do with what was done in Fall River any more than you
have with what is now proceeding in Australia. The finding of Judge
Blaisdell of the district court in Fall River, worthy man as he may
be, is of no sort of consequence here, and has no sort of influence
or obligation over you. We would not be safe if in these great crises
our lives hung upon the decision of a single man in a prejudiced and
excited community. No, we walk away from Fall River, we come down
to the broad seashore, we sniff the breezes of the sea, and here is
freedom, here is right, here are you, gentlemen. I say, then, at
the outset, as you begin to contemplate this crime and its possible
perpetration by the defendant, you must conclude at the outset that
such acts as those are morally and physically impossible for this
young woman defendant. To foully murder her stepmother, and then
go straightway and slay her own father is a wreck of human morals;
it is a contradiction of her physical capacity and her character.
Now, before I pass, let me say that this defendant complains of no
prosecution on the part of the district attorney of this district. He
has only one duty, and that is, as a gentleman and lawyer, to conduct
this investigation so that the truth as to her may be elicited. With
his well-earned reputation and his high standing at the bar he would
have no need to search for laurels for his fame, and he is one of
the last men that would demean himself so as even to think of it. He
stands above the miserable assertions that unthinking people will
make, and he walks into this court room only as the representative
of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, that is, yours and mine and
his, and says: Gentlemen, all I have to show you is the case we have
against this woman. And if the case I have brought to me by the Fall
River police is not sufficient, or you have any doubt about it, he
will say, if he speaks what his heart prompts him to utter, he will
say, “For God’s sake, say so, like men, and Bristol county will be the
happier and the securer afterward.” He is not here for blood, neither
is he helped to such dishonorable work, if it were attempted, by our
excellent friend, the district attorney from the great county of Essex,
one of our best and most reliable lawyers. So you will see no small
play, you will see no mean tactics on the part of the commonwealth
here, but only a presentation not overstrained in one jot or one
tittle, a presentation of what has been proven here, and only that.
So merciful is our provision of the law that a defendant shall have a
decent chance that she becomes convinced how faithfully that is carried
out when she recalls the numerous kindnesses and considerations on
the part of the sheriff of this county. He has done with her, not as
a convicted criminal, but as a young woman of his county, entitled
to her rights, guaranteed to her in the constitution and laws of our
State. And so she comes into this court, presided over by our best of
the judiciary, clean, able, honorable gentlemen, who sit vigilantly
upon the bench to guard against any possible wrong, who want the
commonwealth’s case tried, but the defendant to pass without abuse or
wrong, and taking the law into your hands as they will give it to you,
you have only to deal with the facts. I said the case was brought to
the district attorney by the Fall River police. I have not time to go
into sarcasm or denunciation of those gentlemen. They are like a great
many bodies of police that you find in all communities. Policemen are
human, made out of men, and nothing else, and the blue coat and the
brass buttons only cover the kind of a man that is inside. And you do
not get the greatest ability in the world inside a policeman’s coat.
You may perhaps get what you want, and what is sufficient, but you must
only call upon him for such services as he can render. Now, when a
police officer undertakes to investigate a crime, he is possessed and
saturated with the thoughts and experiences he has with bad people. He
is drifting and turning in the way of finding a criminal, magnifying
this, minimizing that, throwing himself on this side in order to catch
somebody, standing before a community that demands the detection and
punishment of the criminal, blamed if he does not get somebody into the
lockup before morning. “What are the police doing?” says the newspaper,
and the newspapers, you know, are not always right, mostly. Saying to
him: “Look here, Mr. Marshal, these murders were committed yesterday
and we haven’t a murderer in the lockup. Get somebody in.” Now they are
sensitive to all those expressions. Naturally policemen, feeling the
responsibility of their office, must go there and do just such work as
that, in that way. That can only be expected of them. And when they
come upon the witness stand they reveal their weakness, do they not?
They knock their own heads together. They make themselves, as a body
of men, ridiculous, insisting that a defendant shall know everything
that was done on a particular time, shall account for every moment of
that time, shall tell it three or four times alike, shall never waver
or quiver, shall have tears, or not have tears, shall make no mistakes.
But they, stripped of their blue clothes, and in their citizens’ garb,
show themselves to be only men here, and liable to human infirmities
and errors. Now I dismiss them without any unpleasant reflection. I
will talk about them a little later on: but I have nothing to say
now, any more than this, that you must not ask of them more than they
ought to give, you must not be surprised that they fail even of the
standard that they set up for everybody else. So I say to you, as a
distinguished advocate in a similar cause expressed himself to the
jury: This defendant comes before you perfectly satisfied that the jury
is the most refreshing prospect in the eye of accused innocence ever
met in human tribunal. Who are you twelve men, and how came you here?
Selected out of one hundred and fifty men that were drawn from the
body of this county, passing the gauntlet of criticism and objections
put upon you by the court or the attorneys, you are sworn here in this
cause. Who are you? Men: Bristol county men. Men with hearts and men
with heads, with souls, and men with rights. You come here in obedience
to the laws that we prescribe for the orderly administration of our
courts. You come here because, in answer to the demand, you feel that
you must render this great service, unpleasant and trying as it may
be, exhaustive as are its labors; you come here because you are loyal
men to the State. Nay, more. You are out of families, you come from
firesides, you are members of households, you have wives and daughters
and sisters and you have had mothers, you recognize the bond that
unites and the flash that plays throughout the households. Now bring
your hearts and your homes and your intellects here and let us talk to
you as men, not as unmeaning things.
The clerk swore you to your duty, and perhaps you did not hear that
oath so closely as I did. But I heard him say, “You shall well and
truly try and true deliverance make between the commonwealth and the
defendant, whom you shall have in charge.” In no case except a capital
case is the oath offered in that way—“whom you shall have in charge.”
And Lizzie Andrew Borden from the days when we opened this trial until
this hour, has been in your charge, gentlemen. That is the oath you
took. And not alone with you, Mr. Foreman, or any one of you, but with
each and all of you. You have her in charge. Now has come the time
when not alone her lawyers are to speak for her, not alone the judges
are to watch for protection, not alone is the learned attorney of the
commonwealth to ask no more than he ought to have, but the twelve men
who sit here to try this question take the woman in this charge, and
the commonwealth says, “We intrust her to you.” Now that is your duty.
She is not a horse, she is not a house, she is not a parcel of land,
she is not the property of anybody, but she is a free, intelligent,
thinking, innocent woman, in your charge. I noticed one day as we were
proceeding with this trial, a little scene that struck me forcibly. It
was one morning as the court was about to open, when you were coming
into your seats and standing there and the judges were passing to
the bench to take their positions and the defendant was asked to pass
around from the place where she now sits in order that she might come
in so as to be near her counsel, and right at that moment of transition
she stood here waiting between the court and the jury; and waited in
her quietness and calmness until it was time for her properly to come
forward. It flashed through my mind in a minute; there she stands
protected, watched over, kept in charge by the judges of this court and
by the jury who have her in charge.
If the little sparrow does not fall unnoticed to the ground, indeed,
in God’s great providence this woman has not been alone in this court
room, but ever shielded by his providence from above and by the
sympathy and watchful care of those who have her to look after. You are
trying a capital case, a case that involves a human life, a verdict
in which against her calls for the imposition of but one penalty, and
that is that she shall walk to her death. You are then to say, “I will
critically consider this question, and I will make no mistake, because
if I do, no power on earth or in heaven can right the wrong.” You come
here without prejudice or bias, I take it. You said you did. I believed
you. I believe you now. You said that though you might have read
about this transaction, you might have formed an opinion, might have
expressed an opinion, as I think some of you with perfect honesty said,
because in this intelligent age people do think and read and talk, and
it is all right they should, but when a man is big enough to walk up
and say in answer to the questions the chief justice put to him, “I
have read and thought and judged about it, and I stand up here now,
and before my God and my people, say I will find a true verdict on the
evidence under the law.” That is a man we all want to see in the jury
box. I would rather see him there than to have one of these miserable
pieces of putty on whom the last man who stuck his finger into him
can make an impression. You will need at the outset, gentlemen, to
dismiss from your minds entirely everything that the press ever said
about the case, anything that your neighbors have ever said about it,
anything that you have ever heard about it except in this court room
at this time. Every rumor, every idle tale or every true tale that has
been told you must banish from your minds absolutely and forever. Why,
gentlemen, if we were to try the case on the street we need not have
spent these days and you would have been enjoying your entire freedom
like the rest of us, you would not have been prisoners yourselves. But
we are not trying the case in this way. And so certainly, I believe,
does the court guard it, that you are shut off from reading the
newspapers, from having communications, from indulging in conversation
about the case during the progress of the trial. What use in taking
these precautions if you are all coming in with your heads brim full of
what you have heard before and will not give that up? Now every man of
you is man enough to say, when you go to the jury room to deliberate
on this thing, and somebody presents an idea. “Well, that is not in
this case. You have no right to consider any such thing. You have no
more right to do it than you have to take a knife and cut this woman’s
throat”—I mean under your duties as prescribed by the law. Then
you come here patiently day after day, and you will sit here again
and again until this case is concluded, and then proceed with your
deliberation with that calmness and fidelity that is guaranteed in the
expression of your countenance.
When the life of man is in debate
No time can be too long, no care too great.
Hear all, weigh all with caution. Now, gentlemen, it is not your
business to unravel the mystery. You are not here to find out the
solution of that problem. You are not here to find out the murderer.
You are not here to pursue anything else. You are simply and solely
here to say, is this woman defendant guilty? That is all, and though
the real criminal shall never be found, better a million times that
than you find a verdict against this woman upon insufficient evidence
and against your human experience and contrary to the law, so that an
unhealthy appetite may be satisfied, and blood be given that belongs to
the owner of it beyond anybody’s taking. Not who is it? Not how could
it have been done? Did she do it? That is all. Reflect if you have not
yet been able to bring that evidence with a certainty and a reasonable
construction to a conclusion, so that you, as decent gentlemen, can
go to your homes and sit down and say, “We have done our whole duty.
We have brought in a verdict against her,” although perhaps, within a
week we wish we had not, when we think of it. Nor must you think for
a moment that this defendant is set to the business of finding out
who did it. If she cannot find out and tell you who perpetrated these
acts, somebody says, “Go hang her.” She is not a detective, and the
commonwealth has put her in a place for the last ten months so she
could not be very vigilant or active if she had all the ability in the
world. She has been in jail in this county; she has been under control
of the police from the very time, from Thursday, August 4, as you know
from all these facts, and do not expect her to do things that are
impossible. Pray, do not load upon her the responsibility of setting
her to go when she cannot go, or do what she cannot do, or else hold
her to account for it with the severest penalty known in the law. The
commonwealth does not want any victim, either. In the old days they
had sacrifices of lambs and goats, and even human beings were offered
in expiation and in sacrifice. But we have got over all that. We do
not even burn witches now in Massachusetts. The commonwealth wants
no victim, and so, gentlemen, I have attempted in this way to array
before you what I consider, in my own manner, the duties that lie upon
you and the limitations under which you act. And what is the call upon
you? Why, simply to be true to yourselves. “To thine own self be true,
and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false
to any man.” Now there always goes with any person the presumption of
innocence of crime. I stand here at this moment addressing you, and I
am clad all over with that presumption of innocence of every crime; so
is each one of you. That is your bulwark; that is born with you, nay,
rather is given to you out of the great consent of all the people, and
you say “guilty?” Why I think not. I am innocent, and the court will
tell you that that presumption started with this prisoner on August 4,
and has been with her by night and by day. When you had her in charge
that presumption of innocence has been in her favor and it never leaves
her until by the verdict of a jury that presumption is overcome and she
is declared guilty.
It is true that people who have heretofore been innocent commit
crime, and so the law says, “We will not demand the unreasonable and
impossible thing, but you, the defendant, shall have that presumption
go with you until it is entirely overturned and it says that you are
of a criminal heart and criminal act.” Now, bear that in mind, if it
comes to any question in the discussion of the evidence of a doubtful
consideration, then that presumption is all the time in the scale.
The beam of the scale does not stand level to start with. We say the
scales of justice hang even, but there is always with the defendant
the presumption of innocence that tips the scale in her favor, and the
commonwealth must begin and load in on the other side facts until they
shall overcome the presumption—nay, more, and overbalance the facts
that the defendant shall produce.
I shall not attempt to talk to you at length about the different kinds
of evidence, direct evidence and circumstantial evidence. The learned
court will explain those different features to you, and the lines
have been drawn so clearly in the many cases that have been tried that
it is wholly unnecessary for me to take your time and your patience.
You know, or will know, when his honor has uttered to you the charge
in the best way what we mean by direct evidence, and what we mean
by circumstantial evidence. Direct evidence, testimony from actual
observation and actual knowledge, is what we very frequently rely upon.
But that is not always certain. I am bound to say to you, not always
sure, because the man who gives the direct evidence may be a miserable
liar and you would not believe him under oath unless you kept your hand
on him. Now, that is direct evidence and then sometimes facts are found
out by circumstances. You reason from hearing a noise or from seeing
a person in a given place. You see a man going somewhere and you say
he has gone in there for that particular business there, whether it is
banking or insurance or grocery. Well, you may be right or you may be
wrong. You have been given different circumstances to try to draw out a
reasonable conclusion, but I am not going to enlarge upon that because
I deem it unnecessary and because I have other things in my mind
which are more important. You do not start in here to try to convict
anybody—other people may, but you do not. If you are asked to convict
upon any evidence, whether that is direct or circumstantial, you will,
of course, bring it your clearest perception and strict honesty, and
look to see whether it fits in, whether it is all right, and whether
it has not run against this corner and also knocked itself to pieces,
whether the circumstances are all in and whether something has not been
left out, whether the chain is not broken with which it is sought to
bind the defendant. Look it over, search it through and through, as I
will in the argument as I proceed, and discover whether there is any
claim that is insufficiently proved. Then, too, the court will tell you
that by whichever method you proceed as to this defendant, the proof
must come up in your mind as a moral certainty—not a mathematical
certainty, but a moral certainty. It must be beyond a reasonable doubt.
Now, you saw in criminal cases before—very likely you have had a man
before you on trial who had stolen five dollars or something of that
kind, and the same rule applies. And you are told that you must not
convict him unless you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt. It is
not different in this case. In the one case you are perhaps dealing
with a man who will be subjected to a penalty of a fine, or a brief
imprisonment at the most. Here the same rule applies, and you are
dealing with a woman, whose life is at stake, and nothing else. Now,
you will see that while the rule of law is the same in the one case as
in the other, the magnitude of a mistake about it is not to be lightly
considered. So that when you are asked to find these essential facts
beyond a reasonable doubt of a curmudgeon who sits off in a corner and
says, “I won’t talk with anybody; I am an ugly fellow: I will make
myself disagreeable in this jury room,” that is not it. That is not
a reasonable doubt, no matter which side he is on. He is not fit for
service in the jury room. It is the doubt of such men as I take you to
be, with your home influences, with your church belongings, with your
business associations, with your social relations, with all that binds
you up to each of us.
It is the reasonable doubt of a reasonable man, confronted with the
greatest crisis he has ever met in the world. Yes, the greatest crisis;
because, though I doubt not some of you have worn the blue and faced
the cannon shot, though you may have heard and felt the thunders of
war, and you may have seen blood flow in streams, yet that is one
thing; this—to sit here and to have in charge this young woman and
to say upon your oaths you are satisfied that she is guilty or not
guilty, is a duty to which very likely none of you have ever been
called, and which probably you will never be asked to perform again.
You will go to your graves thinking of how you performed this task, and
it ought not to be that you can have any compunctions that you made
a mistake which nobody could retrieve. Then again, under the laws of
this State, the defendant in a criminal case is permitted to testify
upon the stand as she desires to, but if she does not desire to she
can refrain from testifying, and then the statute says, specifically
and directly, no inference shall be drawn against her from the fact
that she has not testified. And so the learned district attorney in his
closing argument will not by the slightest suggestion or insinuation
insult this court and jury by intimating that the defendant ought to
have testified. That law was born under two considerations. Formerly
the defendant could not testify. Later it seemed to be wise to give
a defendant an opportunity to testify, but it says at once, although
he does not come to the stand, you shall not take that against him in
any way. And again, too, as if in the charity of human nature our law
givers felt that it was too great a strain oftentimes to put upon a
defendant to place him in such a position that he must either go upon
the stand or have that argument laid against him, that he ought to have
done it, the law which I have cited to you—not in its exact term, but
in its essential features and expressions—was framed in the way I have
stated. And I dismiss that again. The court will tell you in emphatic
and clear language, and it will look you in the eye, and touching your
sense of justice, say to you: Gentlemen, you must not consider that,
and you will not as you go to yonder room under your oath depart from
that, because if you do so what is the use in having scales for justice
to hold or courts for the apparent administration of it either. Now
I said you must leave out rumors, reports, statements which you have
heard before the trial commenced. That is true. I repeat it; but more,
you must leave out of your minds absolutely every single thing that the
learned gentleman who opened this case, Mr. Moody, said that he was
going to prove, unless he has actually proven it. Now I would not like
to say that about him in private affairs. I would not be pleased to
intimate to you that he would say anything that he was not going to do,
because he is the soul of honor. But he speaks for the commonwealth,
that is all, and the commonwealth tells him: “You must not say anything
but what you are going to do and you must tell them that and that
only.” And I shall expect the learned district attorney to withdraw
the things that brother Moody said he was going to prove, because he
has not proved them. The court room ought not to echo still with the
utterances of the gentleman who opened this case, because they tend to
create a prejudice against the defendant. Now let us tell you about
that so that you will understand it. Mr. Moody said that the government
was going to claim and prove that this defendant was preparing a
dangerous weapon on August 3, the day before the murder. You heard him
say that. I did. He said it. They have not proved it, have they? Was
there a thing about it in the evidence? You have heard some discussion
that we have had at the bar because, in order that there should be no
prejudice, you have been asked to stop. Many of those things which have
been offered in good faith have not been proved, because the court has
said that they are not proper to be proved in this case. They have
nothing to do with it. They will only mislead the jury, and the jury
shall not hear them in this case. Whenever another case arises, if
these things are pertinent and proper they shall be heard, but not now.
No, the commonwealth came with the idea of putting these things before
you, I say, with good intention, but the court says, “No, though your
intention is good, it is not proper, and we will not complicate this
thing. It will create a bias against the prisoner which may divert
the course of justice, and that shall not be introduced here: it has
no right here though you mean to be right.” Now, there is no proof at
all, gentlemen, about any dangerous weapon having been prepared upon
the 3d of August. And to make it more specific, Mr. Moody said in his
opening that they would prove that this young woman went out to buy a
poison on August 3. You have not heard any such evidence. It is not
proved: the court did not allow it to be proved, and it is not in the
case. Now you will not go to the jury room with the thought that if it
had been allowed you would have considered that it was proven. But it
is not allowed: no such evidence came before you, and I shall expect
the district attorney, man fashion, to get up and say so, and I think
you will, and I shall be disappointed in him if he does not. He will
tell you that upon that subject, and that the case is not touched at
all. Then he said that they were going to show you that the defendant
had contradicted herself under oath about these occurrences. Well,
there is another question which went to the court, and the court said:
“That is not proper in this case. You cannot show that.” And so there
is nothing of the kind. Now, are you not going to sit back there and
say, “Well, I rather think Mr. Knowlton and Mr. Moody would not have
offered it unless there is something behind it.” That is not the way
to try cases. That is not the way you hold this defendant in charge.
You might just as well have got your verdict before you started, and
said, “Guilty, because she is here.” You might as well say, “We don’t
want to hear any evidence.” You do not want to say that you do not care
whether you hang her right or wrong,—“give us somebody.” Now, the
court sits here to guard you and all of us against any such mistake.
That will not do. The court says: “Here, gentlemen, decide this case
on the evidence given right here from the witness stand and on nothing
else.” When you stand there in the box ready to answer, and somebody
says to you, “O, don’t mind what they put in about particular evidence,
whether competent or incompetent,” you say, “No, I want my rights. I
am here under the protection of the law, and I call upon these twelve
men, decent men, under their oaths, to stand by me and see that I am
not wronged.” So you will leave those things out, gentlemen. No prussic
acid, no preparation of a weapon by this woman, no statement made by
her under oath in this trial, or anywhere that you know anything about
or have a right to consider—I do not care what you have read. Now, we
shall agree in the consideration of this case very largely upon many
things. My position in this case, in speaking for the defendant, is not
to misrepresent or distort facts, but to take the proofs as they are,
put them against each other and find out what is right. This defendant
wants nothing but justice, and she desires to have it in the proper
administration of the law. Things that are not in dispute I hope I
shall not contest. I hope I shall array before you the facts altogether
in an intelligent and clear way, and then ask you to give me your
judgment on them by and by, and I just as sincerely trust that I will
not, even by a single letter, step over the line of the proof or deal
unjustly, even with the commonwealth that is really so dear to us all.
Now, let us see if we cannot get at these things in a fair way without
prejudice.
Mr. Andrew J. Borden left his house and went down street that morning,
Thursday, August 4, about 9:30 o’clock, so that he arrived at the
Savings Bank, upon the evidence, about 9:30. He went into several
places along the street, not material now to consider, walked back
along South Main street toward his house, stopped at a store of his
that was being repaired, talked with Shortsleeves and Mr. Mather, and
after picking up an old block, which he wrapped up in paper and took
home, he started to go to his house. You recollect something was said
that it is not material to consider in this connection, but he walked
along up toward his house, arriving there, the defendant thinks, about
10:45. It did not vary, probably, more than two, or possibly three
minutes from that time. It must have been as much as that because you
recollect how Mr. Mather put it, his looking at the clock and the time
that Mr. Borden lingered at the store, went upstairs, came down, went
out into the middle of the street, went back and talked with Mather and
Shortsleeves a minute or two and then went on. It was 10:40, twenty
minutes of 11, as he came up to the store. Now he probably consumed two
or three or four minutes in doing those things that they have spoken
of, and so you may well, perhaps, infer that he reached his house about
10:45. We have learned of several things that he did, that he came
into the house, sat down, went upstairs to his room, laid down his
little package, and so on, was occupied with a few things that would
consume a short space of time, so that we can say that he was murdered
somewhere within a given fifteen or twenty minutes of time which may be
between five minutes of 11 and ten minutes past 11. I presume that the
commonwealth will not differ with me about this. At any rate, if there
is a clearer statement of it to be made, the defendant has no objection
if it lies within the proofs. That is the way I propose to argue, to
take that as a fact. Mrs. Borden had died earlier. On the testimony of
the physicians, inspecting the character of the wounds, the condition
of the blood, the state of the stomachs and the intestines, they put
it from an hour to an hour and a half earlier than he died. That is
probably correct. At any rate, no issue is made about it; and so, if
I may be permitted to state it, she would seem to have died between
9:45 o’clock and 10:15, somewhere within that half hour, taking all
the evidence into account. That answers the demands of the physicians,
and seems to me, if I may be permitted to say it, to accord to the
facts. Now you have those tragedies within that short space of time in
that place, and it is for us to see whether the defendant is connected
with them: whether the defendant alone or the defendant with any
confederate, if there is any proof about it, did the deed. I am at
a loss to know where there is any evidence about any accomplice or
anybody else connected with it at all, and so it is only my inquiry
to find out if there is any truth as to this defendant. Of course, I
need only suggest to you that until there is some sort of evidence
that connects somebody with it, it is not well to assume that she must
have had somebody, because you cannot think of anything else. That is
not the way to try this case. Now it will be my endeavor in discussion
of these questions to be very guarded about giving my opinion of the
evidence. I have no right to put in whatever personal weight I may have
in my construction of the evidence. That is bad practice, and I should
expect, if I get over the line, for the learned court to call me to
order, because I trust I know my place.
I have no right to tell you that I believe so and so about this case. I
may believe all I want to, but my duty is to keep it inside of me, that
is all. And so the district attorney will do the same: carrying his
great weight and the strength of his convictions every way into this
case, he is not so to demean himself as to tell you that he believes so
and so. You do not want our beliefs, we want yours and your judgment.
Now there sits the defendant. In yonder city were the crimes. Those
crimes were the foulest and the darkest kind. She comes here under
this presumption of innocence. It must be overcome absolutely and you
must bind her up to the acts before you can say she is guilty. What is
the cord that holds her to those terrible criminal acts? Let us see
where it is to be found. It is not in the charge that is read in the
indictment; it is not in the procedure of the court, but it must be
in that chain of circumstances or in that line of direct proof that
shall show you that she is tied up to this thing, that she is the one,
and that it is not reasonable that anybody else did it or could have
done it; that there is no reasonable way of accounting for the things
that are proved except that she did it. That is the kind of bond that
you must frame in order to hold her or to permit you even to think of
holding her.
If a person commits a murder like this and we know it, we have no
occasion to inquire for what reason he did it. If he did it then it
does not make any difference whether he had any motive or not. He might
have done it for pure deviltry, without a motive. He may have done it
in insanity, and then the law comes in, in another way, to intervene
in his behalf. But if it is proved—proved, I say, not guessed, but
proved—that he did it, it is not of the slightest importance whether
he had a motive or not. If he did it, that is all there is about it.
Now, why is the commonwealth bound in this case to attempt to show a
motive for doing? merely this, gentlemen, because they say here are
the crimes—there are the crimes, there sits the defendant, you see
her over there? Now, in order to hold her responsible for the crimes
we have got to bind her up to the crimes. We have no direct evidence
that puts her there, we have some circumstances that look as if she
might get there: and so in order to bring her to it, we must show
a reason why she would do it. What moved her to do it, that is the
motive, that is to say the motive in this case, is only to explain the
evidence. You get my idea I think. It is only to tell you how you can
explain her acts or her words. If you can explain them in a reasonable
and honorable way she is entitled to that. But if they cannot explain
except that you find a criminal thought running through them, then that
motive operates against her. Not to make her commit the crime, but to
show you that what is said about it is a reasonable construction, that
she was led to do it. That is it, if I understand the case properly,
and I state it just as I believe it to be—the court will correct me
if I am wrong—and I believe I state it about as the commonwealth
attorneys would state it, intentionally I do; and so that motive is
only to be inquired into to help out about the circumstances, and I
think I can explain it to you—and I am guarding myself against saying
anything I ought not to. Suppose the crime were committed in another
place, and a man was suspected of it, and he proved that he were in the
state of Georgia at the time, at the very instant, and everybody knew
it. Well, now, you could not bind him for doing the crime anyway, no
matter if he stood down there and swore profanely that if he could only
get home he would have killed that man. That would not be anything,
because the circumstances do not come up to it, they are not connected.
So you do not want his motive to explain his acts. He hasn’t any acts
to explain. Now, the government says that Miss Lizzie Borden has some
acts to explain, therefore they will find out whether there is anything
in her motives that will put a color on it. I think you see that, and
they are inseparable from the conditions. Now, I say that the argument
will be only this, that you are to look at the motive to see what
effect you shall give to the evidence. It will not do to say that no
adequate motive is shown and none is necessary. That is true when the
crime is proved. That is true when you have the facts. But that is not
true when you are trying to show the motive in order to explain the
facts. Now there is absolutely (and I think the commonwealth will say
it) no direct evidence against Miss Borden, the defendant. You know
what I mean. Nobody saw or heard anything or experienced anything that
connects her with the tragedies. No weapon whatever, and no knowledge
of the use of one, as to her, has been shown. You know if you had
found her with some weapon of that kind in her control, or in her
room, or with her belongings, that would be direct evidence. But there
is nothing of that kind. It is not claimed. It is not shown that she
ever used an implement of the character that must have produced these
murders. It is not shown that she ever touched one, or knew of one, or
bought one, or had one. In fact, the evidence is that she did not know
where the ordinary things in the house of that kind were.
And the murders did not tell any tales on her either. There was no
blood on her, and blood speaks out, although it is voiceless; it speaks
out against the criminal. Not a spot on her from her hair to her feet,
on her dress or person anywhere. Think of it. Think of it for an
instant. Yes, there was one drop of blood on the white skirt as big as
the head of the smallest pin, says Prof. Wood. Less than a sixteenth
of an inch in diameter; and that is every particle of blood that was
found upon her clothing. And that was not where you could expect it to
be; not in the front of the skirt that must, if she had it on and had
done these foul deeds, have first come in contact, but around back down
toward the bottom near the placket, as I believe the women call it, out
of the way. I do not know but the government are going to say that she
turned her skirt round hind side before, before she began, in order to
get at it in a practical way. I don’t know what they are going to say
yet. I shall have occasion to speak of that by and by. But Prof. Wood
does not claim now—I don’t know as there is a Fall River policeman,
from the top down, that claims now—that that little fly speck, as it
were, of blood tells any tale here. I forbear to allude to what is
proved in this case—Miss Borden’s illness, monthly illness, at that
time—and to tell you or remind you that Prof. Wood said he would not
undertake to say that that blood was not the menstrual blood. You know
the facts. I need not give them in detail. You know enough in your own
households; you know all about it. You are men and human. You have your
feelings about it. I am not going to drag them up, but you must not
lose sight of these things. Then there was some talk about a roll of
burned paper in the stove, where Mr. Philip Harrington, I believe, was
the officer. He took off the cover and saw what he said looked like the
embers of a rolled up piece of paper, burned, that is all. And there
was some sort of dark insinuations here floating around that didn’t
clothe themselves in words, but there was something in the manner that
meanly intimated that Dr. Bowen was doing something about it—Dr.
Bowen—I suppose they don’t make any allegation that he committed these
murders, or helped to cover up, or assisted in doing anything about it.
When the evidence is heard, it seems that Mr. Philip Harrington says
that Dr. Bowen was throwing in some pieces of an old letter that had
nothing to do with these transactions, something about his own family
matters of no account. And Mr. Harrington, I think I am right in the
name of the officer, when they were thrown in, saw some little piece
of paper, rolled up paper, about an inch in diameter, that had been
rolled up and was lying there, the embers of it, and there was a small,
low fire. Well, we thought the handle was in there. We thought that
was the plan that the government possessed itself with the idea that
that handle was rolled up by the defendant in a piece of paper and put
down in there to burn; and it had all burned up except the envelope of
paper. Did you ever see such a funny fire in the world? What a funny
fire that was. A hard stick inside a newspaper and the hardwood stick
would go out beyond recall, and the newspaper that lives forever would
stay there. What a funny idea; what a theory that is. And we wrestled
with that proposition here, on the part of the defense, through weary
nights, troubled about it, until Fleet and Mullaly got here together,
and then we were relieved from every doubt. For the handle is in it,
and it is out of it. Fleet did not see it; Mullaly did see it. Fleet
did not take it out of the box, and Mullaly saw him do it. And it is
in the box now, and they run over to Fall River to get it, or they
wanted to, and can’t get into our house, and explain about it. So we
rather think that the handle is still flying in the air, a poor orphan
handle without a hatchet, flying around somewhere. For heaven’s sake
get the one hundred and twenty-five policemen of Fall River and chase
it till they can drive it in somewhere and hitch it up to its family
belongings. Then, too, upon the best testimony of the experts, and
probably in your own common sense, whoever committed that murder of
Mrs. Borden stood astride her body. She was a large, stout, fleshy
woman, weighing two hundred pounds. Conceive of the situation. You
looked at the place. You saw the little gap between the bureau and the
bed, stated to be about thirty to thirty-four inches, and you are to
conceive of the murderer standing over the body in this way. Here she
lies, there, and the murderer standing over her and literally chopping
her head to pieces. I shall have more to say about that by and by, but
I call it to your attention. And they all agreed that Mr. Borden was
butchered by somebody who stood at the head of the sofa and between
that and the parlor door. You know how it is placed and we make no
question about it. That looks reasonable, we will say, and so we take
the things as they are. Now, what reason is there for saying that this
defendant is guilty? The commonwealth asks you to come up here and
hear all this evidence and point out whether you think she is guilty
or not. If you do not think she is, why, you say, “Not guilty;” and
the commonwealth is satisfied, and the district attorney goes away,
having done his whole duty, satisfied to let it alone. He does not
find any fault about it, he is relieved of it. It is a great relief
to him to get rid of the case. He does not enjoy it. He says, come up
and hear all we have got against her and let the jury say she is not
guilty and that will stop this matter, or if you come up and hear it
and you say she is guilty, then that relieves me about it. I put this
responsibility on you. And the court says, “I put this woman into your
charge.” Now you have got it all. Now what right have they to say
anything about it? Well, I want to run it through, which I have done
with some care, and tell you why they claim that she did it.
In the first place, they say she was in the house in the forenoon.
Well, that may look to you like a very wrong place for her to be in.
But it is her home. I suspect you have kind of an impression that it
would be a little better for her than it would be out traveling the
streets. I don’t know where I would want my daughter to be, at home
ordinarily, or where it would speak more for her honor and care, and
reflect somewhat of credit upon me and her mother (who is my wife,
I want to say), than to say that she was at home, attending to the
ordinary vocations of life, as a dutiful member of the household, as
belonging there. So I don’t think there is any criminal look about
that. She was at home. She is shown to have been upstairs to her
room, the government says, about ten minutes before ten, and she must
have seen, as they claim, the dead body of Mrs. Borden, as she, the
defendant, went up and down the stairs. Now, let us look at that,
because that is an important feature in the case, important for the
commonwealth, important for the defendant. You went there and saw the
situation. You know how the stairs go up, turning around as you go up,
and at the top of the landing you are right there at Miss Lizzie’s
door. When you stand at the top of the landing you cannot see into the
guest chamber, you know. It is as if you stood over there where the
officer stands, or a little further. You are not looking into the door
at all. It is not like a good many houses where you come up at the top
and are looking in at both doors at the same time. Then it is said that
at a certain point on the staircase, right on one tread of one stair,
if you look in under the bed across the floor of the guest chamber you
could see any object that was over between the bed and bureau. And
you were all asked to do that by traveling up and traveling down—you
remember the experience you had—and looking. And therefore they say
that, although Miss Lizzie, when she was at her door as she undertook
to pass down, could not see Mrs. Borden over there behind the bed, that
if she went downstairs she could have seen Mrs. Borden lying there
behind the bed, and, therefore, that she must have seen her. Now if
we had marched up and down the stairs and told you nothing of what we
wanted you to look at, there is not one of you that would have squinted
under that bed on that particular tread of the stairs. You would not
have thought of it. But you were going to see if you could see, and
you were told to look all you could, and see if you could see. So you
got ready to see, and made up your minds that you were going to see
if there was anything to see. You have not been home for the last two
weeks. But when you get home, and after you get over this in two or
three weeks from now, and I meet you, I want you to tell me where you
looked when you came down stairs that morning, and whether you looked
to see what you could see at any particular stair. How was it the last
day you were at home? Do you remember anything about it? What time in
the morning did you come down? At what stair did you look to see what
you could see? Right in your own house where nothing had happened. Now
we are talking of a time with regard to Miss Lizzie when nothing had
happened, when everything was all right. It was so at that time as
to her. Now people do not go searching and squinting and playing the
detective and all that to begin with. I do not. If I did I should think
I was a rascal some way or other, and that something was happening to
me. If she did that thing, if she was looking to see if anybody could
see it, if she walked down and looked under and not said anything about
it—there goes the murderess, see her; she didn’t see it, and she
might. Therefore she is the criminal. She did see it because she could,
and, therefore, she is the criminal. No, no. You and I, until we get
to be too old, run up and down stairs just as we have a mind to. They
are our stairs. We do not ask anybody’s pardon or qualify our act a
particle. Then there is not the slightest evidence that that door was
open at that time. Remember that there is evidence that it was open
later but no evidence that it was open before Mr. Borden came in. I am
right about that, and that is very important. So that if, when Miss
Lizzie was down stairs and went upstairs, as she undoubtedly did during
that forenoon, to her room, if she went up and down stairs and the door
was closed or nearly closed or stood ajar, then, of course, she could
not see. She had no occasion to go into that spare room. Wouldn’t go in
there. As you know about the habits of the family in which she lived,
the spare room was closed up practically. Mrs. Borden had gone there
to make the beds, and after she had left it all right, undoubtedly she
would push to the door. The door was pushed to, at any rate. There is
no evidence that it was wide open. Now the government starts out with
the idea that the door was standing wide open, and, therefore, that she
could see: and I have told you how you can reason it very plainly out
in your own common experience you wouldn’t look. If she had been lying
right in front of the bed, outside, why I should have said it would be
very improbable that a passer up and down the stairs would not have
seen her, and yet that is not impossible. You walk along the streets
sometimes, possibly—I do not want to say anything wrong about you—and
you meet your own wife and don’t see her, go right along. They used to
tell a story about Prof. Peirce over at Cambridge who didn’t know his
own wife when he met her, and he had been spoken to about it so much
that finally he thought to make amends, he would speak to the first
thing he met, and that was a cow. He said “Good morning.” He didn’t
make any more mistakes. People are not looking for everything at every
minute, especially if they are innocent. It is the guilty man that is
always looking around to see when there is somebody round going to
catch him, lay hand on him. Now do not ask her to do things that nobody
else does. Besides, you remember the testimony from Dr. Bowen and
Mr. Manning and some others—it is not necessary to state them—that
the upper hall was dark when they went up there, and that the guest
chamber was dark. You remember that in that guest chamber there are
these tight board shutters that shut up. And you know the New England
housewife does not like to have her carpet fade, and the more they live
in the old style the more careful they are.
I remember with some reflections about my old mother, how she looked
after the carpet and the boys, and they did not get the light in. The
boys wanted to live out in the sunlight, and she did not want her
carpets there. And so the natural thing in that room in the Borden
house was to keep the shutters shut, those tight shutters. And the
doctors say, they all of them say, that when they went in it was
dark and they had to open them so they could see something. Now you
recollect that we tried that on you over there. You marched up and down
in the first place, with the shutters all flung open, so that that room
was as light as this, or more so. Then we shut the shutters and asked
you to go up. You know the instance. You can see across the street, but
it is always difficult to look down into a well and see what is at the
bottom. Now, they say further, as a reason, that she is guilty, or they
claim it, that Mr. Fleet tells you that Lizzie said she saw Mrs. Borden
about 9 o’clock, when she, meaning Mrs. Borden, was making the bed.
Now, taking that as true, there is no contradiction of it, I am bound
to say, however, in fairness to the defendant, that it is possible that
Mr. Fleet was mistaken. But it is of no great account, as the defense
looks at this case. Admit that, then, for the time being, for this
discussion, to be true, I do not say it is, but just assume it. See
what it comes to, then: that is, Miss Lizzie said to Mr. Fleet—assume
that it is a fact—that as she went down stairs or went upstairs she
saw Mrs. Borden making the bed in the spare room. Well, what of it?
what of it? True, you say. Your daughter goes upstairs this morning
to her room and she sees her mother in the spare room making the bed.
Well, what of it? Well, they say she was upstairs when Mrs. Borden was
making the bed. That is true. But she was upstairs in her own house, in
her own room, at a time when the orderly woman of a house goes to look
after the morning work. It does not appear one way or the other whether
they were in conversation or not, and it does not appear whether she
went up and down stairs that morning two or three or more times or
not. Why, you would naturally infer, I should say, that it would be
the commonest thing in the world for this young woman to pass up and
down stairs to her room in the ordinary way of living? Why not? Do you
suppose that your wives and daughters can tell the number of times they
went up and down stairs six months ago on a given day? Not at all, or
even the day before, unless they were very careful about something.
Now, there is no doubt at all in my mind that she did go up and down
stairs. Mrs. Borden was making the bed. That was before she had been
killed, of course. And while she was there, pursuing that work, nothing
whatever except the passing up and down is what is claimed here. Now,
grant it all. Grant that she did go up and down stairs that morning
about 9 o’clock. Mrs. Borden was alive. It is not claimed that she
killed them at that time. But the commonwealth undertakes to tell you
without any evidence, gentlemen, without any evidence that she stayed
up there that forenoon, practically, until her father came in. I say
there is no evidence of it, and I will show you that later. That she
went up and down I do not care to question. I should expect it. That
she stayed up, no; or that she was there, having stayed all the time
until her father came, no. Now, she told about the note, they say, and
that is evidence of guilt. She told about Mrs. Borden having a note.
Now, there is considerable interest in that question, and I ask your
attention to it. You know that after the tragedies, when Miss Lizzie
was asked about where Mrs. Borden was, she told Bridget, so Bridget
tells us, that Mrs. Borden had a note and had gone out. I said: “Who is
sick?” “I don’t know; she had a note this morning; it must be in town.”
Now, that is what Bridget said to Mrs. Churchill and she says: “I
said,” meaning herself, “I said, ‘where is your mother?’ She said, ‘I
don’t know: she’s just had a note to see some one who is sick.’” Next
question: listen to it. “What did Bridget tell about Mrs. Borden having
a note?” and, “She said Mrs. Borden had a note to go and see some one
that was sick, and she was dusting the sitting room, and she hurried
off and said she didn’t tell me where she was going: she generally
does.” Now, that is what Bridget told Mrs. Churchill. You get the idea.
Both Bridget and Lizzie had learned from Mrs. Borden that she had had
a note. Mrs. Borden had told Lizzie. Mrs. Borden had told Bridget. She
had given Bridget the work to do, washing the windows. She says to her:
“I have got a note to go out and see some one that was sick.” That was
when she was dusting in the sitting room. That is when Bridget says it
was to Mrs. Churchill: that was at the first, when there was no mistake
about it. And Bridget says: “She didn’t tell me. She hurried off.” No,
Lizzie didn’t say anything about her hurrying off; nobody says that.
Bridget told it to Mrs. Churchill. She hurried off, and “She, Mrs.
Borden, didn’t tell me, Bridget, where she was going; she generally
does.” Now have you the slightest doubt about that Mrs. Churchill
you saw? She was called upon three times to tell that and she told
it very clearly and I think convincingly. Now notice the questioning
that follows: “That was what Bridget told you?” “Yes, sir.” “That was
not what Lizzie told you?” “No, sir.” “Bridget said Mrs. Borden had
a note?” “Yes.” “And she hurried off?” “Yes, sir.” “She was dusting
the sitting room?” “Yes, sir.” “And Bridget says, ‘she didn’t tell me
where she was going; she generally does,’ Bridget says.” “Bridget said
that?” “Yes, sir.” “That was not what Lizzie said?” “No, sir.” “Now,
you have got that right, haven’t you; no doubt about that?” “Bridget
said that Mrs. Borden had a note to go and see some one who was sick.
‘She was dusting in the sitting room; she hurried off. She didn’t tell
me where she was going: she generally does.’” Now, my friend who opened
this case for the commonwealth said that Lizzie told a lie about that
note. He used that word. I submit that that will hardly stand upon his
evidence. If he had heard the evidence fully through he would not have
uttered that expression, because here you have proved that Bridget gave
the clearest and fullest statement about this matter, and you will
probably infer from this that Lizzie learned from Bridget that Mrs.
Borden had gone out, and she had a note to go because Bridget tells it
with exact detail and holds it down herself. That is not criminal on
the part of Bridget at all. I am only calling your attention to the
directness of the testimony at the time, right on the very moment.
Now, there is not anything in the testimony that really qualifies that
at all. Miss Russell says that she heard the talk about the note, but
she did not know who told it. Now notice that, and Bridget was there,
Lizzie there, Mrs. Churchill there, and Miss Russell says she heard the
talk about the note, but she does not know who told it, so that you
see that you are uncertain there. Then Miss Russell tells about the
conversation with Dr. Bowen, and with Lizzie about the note. Listen to
it: “Lizzie, do you know anything about the note your mother had?” And
she hesitated and said, well, no, she didn’t. Said Dr. Bowen, “I had
looked in the waste basket,” and Miss Russell said “have you looked
in your pocket?” and I think I said, “Well, then, she must have put
it in the fire.” And Lizzie said, “Yes, she must have put it in the
fire.” You see that the suggestion of putting it in the fire came from
Miss Russell, not from Lizzie. Dr. Bowen had been searching the waste
basket. He had looked around to see if he could find the note. He did
not succeed, he calls their attention to it in this way I have stated,
and they all assent to it and very likely that was true. It was not of
any account. The woman had got the note and had tossed it away, very
likely threw it in the kitchen stove and burned it, but we do not know
anything about it. But they all seemed satisfied right there on the
spot.
[Illustration: EX-GOVERNOR ROBINSON.]
Then he said that he had searched for it, Dr. Bowen; it is Miss Russell
telling it, and at any rate she says what was said about that was said
in the presence of Lizzie and “the same person said she must have
burned it?” “I think I answered that question.” That is Miss Russell.
Well now you get nothing from the officers, merely that Mr. Fleet
learned from Miss Lizzie that Mrs. Borden had a note and had gone out.
Officer Wilson says the same thing, that she said she had received a
note and that she thought she had gone out. That was after the murder,
and she said that Mrs. Borden had a note and she thought she had gone
out, that is during the forenoon she thought she had gone out. Dr.
Dolan says the same thing, so that when you come to consider it you see
that the evidence in regard to the note comes from what was told at
the very first. If you believe that Mrs. Borden told both Lizzie and
Bridget about the note it all looks plain. And why should it not? They
were all in the family there together, and she receives a note to go
out, and she did have the note, or else they both tell something that
Mrs. Borden told that was not true, and we are not going to believe
that. Taking the evidence that comes from the living and that drops
from the lips of the dead, you must find that Mrs. Borden did have
the note and that she told the two women about it and hurried off, as
they thought, and did not tell Bridget or either one of them where she
was going. It was not of any great account probably. She got a note
to go out, and see a woman, and did go out, as far as we learn to the
contrary. It was a natural and ordinary thing, and the note was thrown
away and tossed into the fire. It was not a bank note to be kept, but
a little scrap of paper probably indicating what was wanted. Now, a
person may say “Where is the note?” Well, we would be very glad to
see it, very glad. They looked after it and they could not find it.
The construction of Miss Russell was that she had burned it up. Very
likely that was it. They say that nobody has come forward to say that
she has sent it. That is true. You will find men now, perhaps living
in this county, who do not know that this trial is going on. They do
not know anything about it, don’t pay much attention to it, they are
about their own business: do not consider it of any consequence. And
after a lawsuit, it very often happens in every court room that some
one will come forward and say, “Well, if I had really known that that
question was in dispute, I could have told you all about it.” Bless
his dear heart, why didn’t he come out of the cellar so we could see
him? Well, sometimes people don’t want to have anything to do with
it. They don’t want to get into the court room, even if a life is in
danger—women especially; they have a dread of all sorts of things.
The note may have been a part of the scheme in regard to Mrs. Borden.
It may have got there through foul means and with a criminal purpose.
We don’t know anything about it. But that a note came there on this
evidence you cannot question. That Lizzie lied about it is a wrongful
aspersion, born out of the ignorance of the facts as they were to be
developed in this case, not with a purpose to wrong her but mis-stating
the evidence as we all do when we do not know quite what is coming,
really anticipating something that is not proven. So I say that it is
not true that Lizzie told a lie about it. If she did Bridget did the
same. I would not say that for a minute. There is nothing to connect
Bridget with this transaction. See how quickly you would suspect
anybody because you get them under pressure. Now look at it. Suppose
that Bridget were suspected of this crime, and Mrs. Churchill came
forward and told that Bridget said these words that I read, how quick
some people would be to say, “O, Bridget!” “She did it. She did it
because she told a lie about that note.” Do you see it? It is plain,
it is a demonstration. Now I dismiss it with the remark that nobody
thinks that Bridget Sullivan had anything to do with this crime at
all. Lizzie does not think so, because she has said so openly. Now she
told about her visit out to the barn they say. She told the officers
that she went out to the barn; went out in the yard, some twenty or
thirty minutes. Now remember that we get this information in regard to
the time from the police officers. The others tell us that she said she
went to the yard and the barn. It takes assistant marshal Fleet here to
tell us about the thirty minutes. You see him. You see the set of that
moustache and the firmness of those lips and the distinction he wrought
in the court room telling that story.
And there he was, up in this young woman’s room in the afternoon,
attended with some other officers, plying her with all sorts of
questions in a pretty direct and peremptory way, saying to her: “You
said thirty minutes, and now you say twenty minutes: which way will
you have it?” Is that the way for an officer of the law to deal with a
woman in her own house? What would you do with a man—I don’t care if
he had blue on him—that got into your house and was talking to your
wife or daughter in that way? You would do just what Marshal Hilliard
did with Caldwell, get him out. That is the way to do. Recollect that
this was after the tragedies, this was when the terrible pall was
over that house and the neighborhood, and an officer should be pretty
careful. Recollect that the air was full of policemen at that time;
they were running all over that house, putting her to every possible
strain, asking her in her loneliness, her absence from any friend, her
sister gone—following her up in this way, insinuating in that way and
talking to her as if she were a liar. Well I can tell the truth and
behave pretty well, if a man treats me decently, but I want to get
him out if he talks to me as a liar to begin with. Now she told about
her visit to the barn, and they undertake to tell you that she did
not go out to the barn. Now let us see about it. They say that it’s
another lie. We have got so we know what the small words in the English
language mean in the idea of the commonwealth. We can get rid of three
letters pretty quick, but you cannot dispose of the facts. Now, let’s
see about that. Did she go to the yard or the barn? She told them she
did, and they bring it in here, and they say she could not have gone
to the yard or the barn. Now let us see whether she did or not. If she
did not go out to the yard or the barn then she was there upon her own
showing at the time when the murder of her father was committed. You
see that. That will end the case if you see it. Now, Bridget Sullivan
said: “I went right over to Dr. Bowen’s and when I came back I asked
her, ‘Miss Lizzie, where was you?’ I says ‘Didn’t I leave the screen
door hooked?’ She says, ‘I was out in the back yard and heard a groan
and came in and the screen door was open.’”
I am going to talk about going to the barn, and by and by talk about
the groan—take them separately. Now, she says that she went into the
yard. You understand? What did they have in the yard? Pear trees.
That is the evidence, and the evidence that in the partially digested
contents of the stomachs pear skins were found. Bridget says Mr. Borden
had been out and had brought in a basket of pears and they had these
in abundance. You saw the trees; the neighbors saw the trees; Patrick
McGowan saw them and got in one of them and helped himself. We know
that there is no lie about it. This was an August morning, and it
appeared that before this time Lizzie had been ironing, had been around
the kitchen trying to iron some handkerchiefs. No doubt about that.
She had been in and out about her work. She tells us she has been out
in the yard. That was true, we will say, upon that statement. Now,
Dr. Bowen said, “where have you been?” Her reply was, “in the barn,
looking for some irons,” or “iron.” Both can be reasonably true, can’t
they? She could not get into the barn unless she went into the yard,
naturally, and that she should stop there by the trees five or ten
minutes is perfectly consistent. Does that look unreasonable? Do you
not see families out in the yard, strolling about in your own yards,
stopping under the trees, sitting under the trees, especially when they
have a right to have a little leisure. Mrs. Churchill says, “I stepped
inside the screen door, and she was sitting on the second stair, at
the right of the door. I put my right hand on her arm, and said, ‘O
Lizzie.’ I then said: ‘Where is your father?’ She said, ‘In the sitting
room,’ and I said, ‘Where were you when it happened?’ and said she,
‘I went to the barn to get a piece of iron.’” Miss Russell says, “she
told about going to the barn, she says she went to the barn, she told
us when she came in she saw her father, and he was killed.” “Did she
say anything about why she went to the barn?” “Not until I asked her.”
“State what you asked her and what she replied?” “I said ‘What did
you go to the barn for, Lizzie?’ and she said, ‘I went to get a piece
of tin or iron to fix my screen.’” “Did she refer to any screen in
particular, or simply ’my screen?’” “My screen.”
Now, Mr. Fleet told us that she went into the dining room, she said
that her father lay down and that she went out into the barn: and he
brings in the half-hour—he is the only one that does. And then he goes
there and talks to her about it, as to whether she means a half-hour
or twenty minutes. Now just listen to this man. Recollect when this
was, Thursday afternoon. Recollect he is the same man that said “Dr
Bowen was holding the door on him—holding the fort.” Think of it.
And Mrs. Holmes and Dr. Bowen and Miss Russell tell you, and Wilson,
the officer who went with him, comes right up here and says there was
not the slightest resistance, that he knocked at the door, and just
as soon as Dr. Bowen could ask them if they were ready to have the
officers come in, and I am sure that was perfectly proper—they were
admitted without any trouble. Now this man Fleet was troubled, and he
was ascent for a job. He was ferreting out a crime. He had a theory.
He was a detective. And so he says, “You said this morning you were up
in the barn for half an hour. Will you say that now?” I think the man
impertinent. I beg your pardon, the defendant thinks he was: thinks he
was impertinent. She said, “I do not say half an hour; I say twenty
minutes to half an hour.” “Well, we will call it twenty minutes then.”
Much obliged to him. He was ready to call it twenty minutes, was he?
What a favor that was; now Lizzie has some sense of her own, and she
says, “I say from twenty minutes to half an hour, sir?” He had not awed
her into silence. She still breathed although he was there. Think about
a woman saying something, ordering something in the presence of a man
who talks that way to her, under such circumstances. Mr. Harrington
states that she said to him that she was there about twenty minutes. He
asks her whether she would not have heard the opening or closing of the
door. Why not? “You were but a short distance away, and you would have
heard the noise if any was made.” But Bridget said she did not hear
the screen door shut at all and she said she would not hear it in her
room, and never heard it when it shut unless somebody slammed it or was
careless about it. You remember that.
Now you see there is no inference to be drawn from the fact that Miss
Lizzie did not hear it when she was in the barn or in the yard for that
matter. And you recollect how the side door stands with reference to
the yard. That when a person is out around the corner, under the pear
tree, or even under the first pear tree that stood from the south door
to the barn, he cannot see up to that door because of that jog. So that
if she was even out under that pear tree anybody could have passed in
or out that side door without her hearing him, much more if she were
in the barn, either upstairs or down stairs. Wilson has told us that
she said, “twenty minutes to half an hour.” He was there with Fleet.
Medley says, “She says she was upstairs in the barn—I am not positive
as to the stairs part, she was up in the barn.” Now take that, is there
anything unnatural or improbable in her going to the barn for anything
she wanted? She was, you will say, a person who was free to go about,
and did go about, and went in the natural call of things that she was
going to do. You have heard talk of the party at Marion, and you know
where it is better than I do, but I suspect from what has been said
about it that it is somewhere near the water and where the fish swim,
and it would not be strange if a party of women were going there, they
would try to catch something—I mean fish; and when they got there they
would want something to catch fish with. Perhaps they do; that is the
way we bob around for fish up in the country. We don’t have much to do
with seafish, but isn’t that common? She said she wanted some lead for
sinkers. She also said she wanted something to fix the screen. Perhaps
she had both things in her mind. It is perfectly natural. She wanted
a piece of tin or iron to fix the screen. If she had set out to be
this arch criminal that they claim, she would have had it all set down
in her mind so that she would tell it every time just the same, line
for line and dot for dot. He had to stay in the court room until the
other fellow was heard to hold him. We had twins here; they didn’t look
alike. We kept them here; that is Mr. Mullaly.