Edwin H. Porter

“ There is that in the tidings of a murder that thrills the human heart to its depths. When the word passes from lip to lip and from mouth to mouth that a human life has been taken by an assassin, the stoutest hearts stop beating, lips pale and cheeks blanch, strong men grow pale with the terror of the unknown and mysterious, and if that be so with what I may, perhaps, by comparison call an ordinary assassination, what were the feelings that overpowered the community when the news of this tragedy was spread by the lightning to the ends of the world? ”

“ We are none of us secure. Have you led, sir, an honorable, an upright life? Thank your Heavenly Father that the temptations have not been too strong for you. Have you, sir, never been guilty of heinous crime? Is it your strength of character or is it your fortune that you have been able to resist what has been brought against you? Mr. Foreman, let me not be misunderstood. Not for one moment 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 a crime. ”

“ Did you ever hear of a murderer getting a witness to his work who could see it or hear it? Murder is the work of stealth and craft in which there are not only no witnesses, but the traces are attempted to be obliterated. What is called sometimes circumstantial evidence is nothing in the world but that presumption of circumstances, it may be one or fifty. There isn’t any chain about it: the word “chain” is a misnomer as applied to it; it is the presentation of circumstances from which one is irresistibly driven to the conclusion that crime has been committed. ”

“ Medical Examiner Dolan and a corps of physicians held an autopsy on the bodies in the afternoon and found that thirteen blows had rained upon the head of the unsuspecting Mr. Borden, and that no less than eighteen had descended upon the skull of Mrs. Borden. The cuts were deep and long and any one of them would have produced instant death.
Could any but a maniac have inflicted those pitiless wounds; or could any but a madman have struck so ruthlessly and unerringly and watched the effect as the weapon sped on its mission of death, time and time again? ”

“ Is youth a protection against crime. It is a matter of the history of the commonwealth that a boy of tender years was the most brutal, the most unrelenting, the most cruel, the most fiendish murderer that the commonwealth ever knew. Is sex a protection to crime? Is it not a matter of common knowledge that within the remembrance of every man I am talking to, a woman has been found who murdered a whole cart load of relatives for the sake of obtaining a miserable pittance of a fortune. Ah, gentlemen, I do not underestimate, I do not speak lightly of the strength of a christian character. ”

“ One to commit such a murder must have been without heart, without soul, a fiend incarnate, the very vilest of degraded and depraved humanity, or he must have been a maniac. The circumstances, execution and all the surroundings cover it with mystery profound. Explanations and evidence as to both perpetrator and motive are shrouded in a mystery that is almost inexplicable. That such a crime could have been committed during the busy hours of the day, right in the heart of a populous city, is passing comprehension. As we ponder, we exclaim in our perplexity, why was the deed done? ”

“ Lizzie Borden was pale as she entered, but she flushed a vivid crimson as the District Attorney arose to speak. He said: “I can fully appreciate Your Honor’s feelings, now that the end of this hearing is about to be reached. The crime of murder touches the deepest sensibilities of feeling. There is the deepest feeling of horror about it, and above all in the unnaturalness that brings the thrill of horror to every mind. The man who is accustomed even to conflicts of arms may not be expected to be free from horror at the thought of the assassin. ”

“ I ask you to consider her, to put her into the scale as a woman among us all, to say as you have her in charge to the commonwealth which you represent, it is not just to hold her a minute longer, and pleading for her I plead for you and myself and all of us that the verdict you shall register in this most important case shall not only command your approval now, unqualified and beyond reasonable doubt, but shall stand sanctioned and commended by the people everywhere in the world, who are listening by the telegraphic wire to know what is the outcome as to her. ”

“ The street in front of the house was blocked before noon with wagons, teams and pedestrians, and the people stood for hours in the hot sunshine of an exceptionally warm midsummer day and speculated and theorized as to what possible motive any one could have had in so heartlessly butchering the aged man and woman. Inside the yard and house, policemen in uniform and in citizen’s garb, hurried to and fro with an air of mystery which was becoming them, for to all appearances the assassin had vanished as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed him. ”

“ It is a tremendous fact, Mr. Foreman. It appears in this case from the beginning to end. She had not an enemy in the world. You and I sometimes have our jars and discords. Andrew J. Borden had had his little petty quarrels with his tenants, nothing out of the ordinary, but Mrs. Abby Durfee Borden had not an enemy in all the world. There she lay bleeding, dead, prone by the hand of an assassin. Somebody went up there to kill her. In all this universe there could not be found a person who could have had any motive to do it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the solitude of that house, with ample fire in the stove, with ample wit of woman nobody has suggested that as to the first crime there was not ample opportunity, ample means and that nothing could be suggested as a reason why all the evidence of that crime could not have been amply and successfully concealed. But as to the second murder the question is one of more difficulty. I cannot answer it. You cannot answer it. You are neither murderers nor women. You have neither the craft of the assassin nor the cunning and deftness of the sex. ”

“ He was a man that wore nothing in the way of ornament or jewelry but one ring, and that ring was Lizzie’s. It had been put on many years ago when Lizzie was a little girl, and the old man wore it and it lies buried with him in the cemetery. He liked Lizzie, did he not? He loved her as his child. And the ring that stands as the pledge of plighted faith and love, that typifies the dearest relationship that is ever created in life, that ring was the bond of union between the father and the daughter. No man should be heard to say that she murdered the man that so loved her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Never an intimation of objection is the unanimous testimony of everybody that went there. They say she was cool. Thank the Lord there was enough left of her so that she could be cool under the visitations of gentlemen who flocked there by the score. Her clothes, her dress, her unmade dress, her shoes, her stockings, everything, her absolute freedom from the marks of the crime, her readiness to do anything that was wanted, and then that scene of Saturday night which transcends all in exhibition of innocence. There has been that woman shut up in that house, the premises crowded by the police. ”

“ But Lizzie Borden has ears as well as eyes. If she was downstairs she was in the passageway of the assassin. If she was upstairs there was nothing to separate her from the murder but the thinness of that deal door that you saw. And do you believe for a moment, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, do you believe for a moment that those blows could have been struck—that woman was struck in a way that did not make her insensible—that she could have been struck without groaning or screaming ”

“ It is not a matter for you to sit down in the jury room and criticise the theory that I have advanced to you, because you are going to sit down in the jury room and criticise the theory that the government advances, and you will see that it is vulnerable, and when you see that a person can take one of those theories as well as another, you will hear from the court that you cannot convict upon such evidence, because all the essential facts must be in harmony with this charge against the prisoner, and must not be in harmony with any other theory or any other reasonable explanation. ”

“ It was the hand of a person strong only in hate and desire to kill. We have not proved anything yet, but we must take things as they come, no matter where they lead us. It was not the work of a man who, with a blow of that hatchet, could have smashed any part of that skull, and whose unerring aim would have made no false blow or false work. It was the indecisive blow of hatred, the weak, puttering, badly aimed, nerveless blows—I forbear for the present to bring that sentence to a conclusion, for I won’t do it until I am obliged to. ”

“ The defendant may say: “I have already told to the officers all that I know about this case, and my statements have been put in evidence. Whatever is mysterious to others is also a mystery to me. I have no knowledge more than others have. I have never professed to be able to explain how or by whom these homicides were committed.” There is another reason why defendant might not wish to testify. Now she is sacredly guarded by the law from all unfavorable inferences drawn from her silence. If she testifies she becomes a witness, with less than the privileges of an ordinary witness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jubb stepped to the side of the pulpit and said slowly and impressively:
“I cannot close my sermon this morning without speaking of the horrible crime that has startled our beloved city this week, ruthlessly taking from our church household two respected and esteemed members. I cannot close without referring to my pain and surprise at the atrocity of the outrage. A more brutal, cunning, daring and fiendish murder I never heard of in all my life. What must have been the person who could have been guilty of such a revolting crime? ”

“ Then if she had led the way in treachery and repeated crime Lizzie might have led Bridget right into the toils in which she herself became involved to the relief of Bridget by her statement that Bridget is not to be suspected. It is not every human being who can stand that strain. It is not every man that has strength of purpose and purity of mind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lizzie Borden’s life was in Dr. Dolan’s hands and by the goodness of God’s providence Prof. Wood came, and, like that shot at Concord, which rang round the world, his story went like a song of joy from Maine to Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They haven’t proved that this girl had anything to do with the murder. They can’t find any blood on her dress, on her hair, on her shoes. They can’t find any motive. They can’t find the axes, and couldn’t clean the axe, and so I say I demand the woman’s release. The grand jury, if they meet more evidence, can indict her. ”

“ Let mercy be taken care of by those to whom you have intrusted the quality of mercy. It is not strained in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is not for us to discuss that. It is for us to answer questions, the responsibility of which is not with you nor with me. We neither made these laws, nor do we execute them. We are responsible only for the justice, the courage, the ability with which we meet to find an answer to the truth. Rise, gentlemen, rise to the altitude of your duty. Act as as you would act when you stand before the great white throne at the last day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before she was old enough to go to school, before she arrived at the age of five years, this woman, the choice of her father, the companion of her father, who had lost and mourned and loved again, had come in and had done her duty by that girl and had reared her, had stood in all the attitudes which characterize the tenderest of all human relations. Through all her childhood’s sicknesses that woman had cared for her. ”

“ We get down now to the elements of ordinary crime. We get hatred, we get malice, we get falsehood about the position and disposition of the body. We get absurd and impossible alibis. We get contradictory stories that are not attempted to be verified. We get fraud upon the officers by the substitution of an afternoon silk dress as the one that she was wearing [302] that morning ironing, and capping the climax by the production of evidence that is beyond all question, that there was a guilty destruction of the dress that she feared the eye of the microscope might find the blood upon. ”

“ The house had not been robbed and the friends of the dead had never heard of such a thing as an enemy possessed of hatred enough to commit so monstrous a deed. As the hours passed a veil of deepest mystery closed around the scene and the most strenuous efforts of the authorities to clear the mystery away seemed more and more futile as their work progressed. Men with cool heads, and with cunning and experience sought in vain to unearth some facts to indicate who the criminal might be, but their skill was unavailing, they were baffled at every turn. ”

“ 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. ”