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Articles 1 - 30 of 45
Full-Text Articles in Legal History
The Earp-Holliday Trial: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
The Earp-Holliday Trial: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
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The Old West's most famous gunbattle lasted all of about thirty seconds, but it left three men dead, three other men shot, and enough questions to occupy historians for more than a century. The gunfight also led to criminal charges being filed against the three Earp brothers (Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan) and Doc Holliday who, near the O. K. Corral on October 26, 1881, decided to enforce the law against four notorious cowboys. The hearing that followed the shoot-out considered the question of whether the Earps and Hollidays killed out of a justifiable fear for their own lives or simply …
The Treason Trial Of Aaron Burr, Douglas O. Linder
The Treason Trial Of Aaron Burr, Douglas O. Linder
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The high-stakes treason trial of Aaron Burr came at an unstable time, both in Europe and in America. The American and French revolutions worried traditional European powers, Great Britain and Spain, who were determined to keep the radical new doctrine from undermining the power of their royalty. Meanwhile, Napoleon's empire-building produced sustained military conflict on the Continent. The United States seemed on the verge of a war with Spain, even as the Administration struggled to preserve neutrality. Americans west of the Alleghenies rejoiced in President Jefferson's acquisition of the Louisiana Territory, but boundary disputes and Spanish prohibitions on Louisiana residents' …
The Trial Of Charles Guiteau: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
The Trial Of Charles Guiteau: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
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A sense of having been wronged, together with a warped idea of political duty, brought Charles Julius Guiteau to the Baltimore and Potomac Station in Washington on July 2, 1881. On that same Saturday morning, President James Abram Garfield strode into the station to catch the 9:30 A.M. limited express, which was to take him to the commencement ceremonies of his alma mater, Williams College - and from there, Garfield planned to head off on a much-awaited vacation. He never made the 9:30. Within seconds of entering the station, Garfield was felled by two of Guiteau's bullets, the opening act …
The Trial Of John Brown: A Commentary, Douglas O. Linder
The Trial Of John Brown: A Commentary, Douglas O. Linder
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The arrest, trial, and execution of John Brown in the fall of 1859 came at a critical moment in United State history. According to historian David S. Reynolds in his biography, "John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights" (2005), Brown's actions and statements following his failed attempt to begin a slave insurrection near Harper's Ferry, Virginia so polarized northern and southern opinion on the slavery issue as to ensure Abraham Lincoln's election and cause the Civil War to occur perhaps two decades earlier than it might have otherwise. Reynolds is quick …
The Trial Of John W. Hinckley, Jr., Douglas O. Linder
The Trial Of John W. Hinckley, Jr., Douglas O. Linder
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The verdict of not guilty for reason of insanity in the 1982 trial of John Hinckley, Jr. for his attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan stunned and outraged many Americans. An ABC News poll taken the day after the verdict showed 83% of those polled thought justice was not done in the Hinckley case. Some people - without much evidence - attributed the verdict to an anti-Reagan bias on the part the Washington, D. C. jury of eleven blacks and one white. Many more people, however, blamed a legal system that they claimed made it too easy for juries to …
The Trials Of Alger Hiss: A Commentary, Douglas O. Linder
The Trials Of Alger Hiss: A Commentary, Douglas O. Linder
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No criminal case had a more far-reaching effects on modern American politics than the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers spy case which held Americans spellbound in the middle of the twentieth-century. The case catapulted an obscure California congressman named Richard Nixon to national fame, set the stage for Senator Joseph McCarthy's notorious Communist-hunting, and marked the beginning of a conservative intellectual and political movement that would one day put Ronald Reagan in the White House. Even without its important influence on American political debate, the trials of Alger Hiss for perjury have the makings of a great drama. They featured two men …
The Black Sox Trial: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
The Black Sox Trial: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
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The players on Charles Comiskey's 1919 Chicago White Sox team were a fractious lot with plenty to complain about. The club was divided into two gangs of players, each with practically nothing to say to the other. Together they formed the best team in baseball -- perhaps one of the best teams that ever played the game -- yet they were paid a fraction of what many players on other teams received. Comiskey's contributions to baseball were beyond question, but he was both a tightwad and a tyrant. The White Sox owner paid two of his greatest stars, outfielder Shoeless …
The Oklahoma City Bombing And The Trial Of Timothy Mcveigh, Douglas O. Linder
The Oklahoma City Bombing And The Trial Of Timothy Mcveigh, Douglas O. Linder
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A bomb carried in a Ryder truck exploded in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995. The bomb claimed 168 innocent lives. That a homegrown, war-decorated American terrorist named Timothy McVeigh drove and parked the Ryder truck in the handicap zone in front of the Murrah Building there is little doubt. In 1997, a jury convicted McVeigh and sentenced him to death. The federal government, after an investigation involving 2,000 agents, also charged two of McVeigh's army buddies, Michael Fortier and Terry Nichols, with advance knowledge of the bombing and participation …
An Introduction To The My Lai Courts-Martial, Douglas O. Linder
An Introduction To The My Lai Courts-Martial, Douglas O. Linder
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Two tragedies took place in 1968 in Viet Nam. One was the massacre by United States soldiers of as many as 500 unarmed civilians - old men, women, children - in My Lai on the morning of March 16. The other was the cover-up of that massacre. On March 14, a small squad from C Company ran into a booby trap, killing a popular sergeant, blinding one GI and wounding several others. The following evening, when a funeral service was held for the killed sergeant, soldiers had revenge on their mind. After the service, Captain Medina rose to give the …
The Amistad Case, Douglas O. Linder
The Amistad Case, Douglas O. Linder
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The improbable voyage of the schooner Amistad and the court proceedings and diplomatic maneuverings that resulted from that voyage form one of the most significant stories of the nineteenth century. When Steven Spielberg chose the Amistad case as the subject of his 1997 feature film, he finally brought it the attention the case had long deserved, but never received. The Amistad case energized the fledgling abolitionist movement and intensified conflict over slavery, prompted a former President to go before the Supreme Court and condemn the policies of a present Administration, soured diplomatic relations between the United States and Spain for …
The Leonard Peltier Trial, Douglas O. Linder
The Leonard Peltier Trial, Douglas O. Linder
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The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in Minnesota in 1968 to promote traditional Native American culture and instill pride in the Native American community. AIM's targets included both the federal government, with whom it had a long list of grievances (especially focused on its record of many broken treaties) and progressive Indians, who they believed undermined native traditions and solidarity. In February 1973, AIM instigated a seventy-one day takeover of the site of a famous 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The massacre had resulted in the deaths - at the hands of the United States Calvary - …
The Trial Of Sacco And Vanzetti, Douglas O. Linder
The Trial Of Sacco And Vanzetti, Douglas O. Linder
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Sacco and Vanzetti: for a generation of Americans, the names of the two Italian anarchists are forever linked. Questions surrounding their 1921 trial for the murders of a paymaster and his guard bitterly divided a nation. As the two convicted men and their supporters struggled on through appellate courts and clemency petitions to avoid the electric chair, public interest in their case continued to grow. As the end drew near, in August 1927, hundreds of thousands of people - from Boston and New York to London and Buenos Aires - took to the streets in protest of what they perceived …
The Trial Of Susan B. Anthony For Illegal Voting, Douglas O. Linder
The Trial Of Susan B. Anthony For Illegal Voting, Douglas O. Linder
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More than any other woman of her generation, Susan B. Anthony saw that all of the legal disabilities faced by American women owed their existence to the simple fact that women lacked the vote. When Anthony, at age 32, attended her first woman's rights convention in Syracuse in 1852, she declared that the right which woman needed above every other, the one indeed which would secure to her all the others, was the right of suffrage. Anthony spent the next fifty-plus years of her life fighting for the right to vote. She would work tirelessly: giving speeches, petitioning Congress and …
The Trials Of Oscar Wilde: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
The Trials Of Oscar Wilde: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
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Old Bailey, the main courthouse in London, had never presented a show quite like the three trials that captivated England and much of the literary world in the spring of 1895. Celebrity, sex, witty dialogue, political intrigue, surprising twists, and important issues of art and morality - is it any surprise that the trials of Oscar Wilde continue to fascinate one hundred years after the death of one of the world's greatest authors and playwrights?
Trial Of The Rosenbergs: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
Trial Of The Rosenbergs: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
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The Rosenberg Trial is the sum of many stories: a story of betrayal, a love story, a spy story, a story of a family torn apart, and a story of government overreaching. As is the case with many famous trials, it is also the story of a particular time: the early 1950's with its cold war tensions and headlines dominated by Senator Joseph McCarthy and his demagogic tactics. The Manhattan Project was the name given to the top-secret effort of Allied scientists to develop an atomic bomb. One of the Manhattan Project scientists working in Los Alamos was a British …
The Story Of The Court-Martial Of The Bounty Mutineers, Douglas O. Linder
The Story Of The Court-Martial Of The Bounty Mutineers, Douglas O. Linder
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The true story of the 1789 mutiny on the Bounty is far more complicated than suggested by film versions of the event, which have emphasized the gratuitous cruelty of the ship's captain, William Bligh. The psychological drama that played out in the South Seas starring Bligh, the efficient disciplinarian, and his mate, the sensitive and proud Fletcher Christian, led to, among other things: one of the most amazing navigational feats in maritime history, the founding of a British settlement that continues to exist today, and a court-martial in England that answered the question of which of ten captured mutineers should …
The Haymarket Riot And Subsequent Trial: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
The Haymarket Riot And Subsequent Trial: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
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When an anarchist - whose identity remains a mystery even today - tossed a homemade bomb into a great company of Chicago police at 10:20 P.M. on the night of May 4, 1886, he could not have appreciated the far reaching consequences his reckless action would have. His bomb, thrown in a light drizzle as the last speaker at a labor rally climbed down from the speaker's wagon, set off a frenzy of fire from police pistols that would leave eight officers and an unknown number of civilians dead, and scores more injured. It led to the nation's first Red …
The Massie (Honor Killing) Trials 1931-32, Douglas O. Linder
The Massie (Honor Killing) Trials 1931-32, Douglas O. Linder
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Two dramatic criminal trials, one for rape and one for murder and both involving multiple defendants, forever changed the nature of Hawaiian race relations and politics. Filled with twists and turns and unanswered questions, the trials have all the elements of a good mystery. The second of the so-called Massie Affair trials also closes out the courtroom career of America's greatest defense attorney, Clarence Darrow. No trials ever had a more significant effect on a state's history than those that shocked and shook Hawaii in 1931 and 1932.
The Mcmartin Preschool Abuse Trial, Douglas O. Linder
The Mcmartin Preschool Abuse Trial, Douglas O. Linder
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The McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial, the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history, should serve as a cautionary tale. When it was all over, the government had spent seven years and $15 million dollars investigating and prosecuting a case that led to no convictions. More seriously, the McMartin case left in its wake hundreds of emotionally damaged children, as well as ruined careers for members of the McMartin staff. No one paid a bigger price than Ray Buckey, one of the principal defendants in the case, who spent five years in jail awaiting trial for a crime (most …
The Charles Manson (Tate-Labianca Murder) Trial, Douglas O. Linder
The Charles Manson (Tate-Labianca Murder) Trial, Douglas O. Linder
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In the annals of crime, there might never have been a more bizarre motive for killing than that revealed in the 1970-71 trial of four Manson Family members. In the twisted mind of thirty-four-year-old Charles Manson, a wave of bloody killings of high-society types in Los Angeles would be the spark that would set off a revolution by blacks against the white establishment. When blackie, as Manson called black people, proved unable to govern, they would turn to Manson and his tribe of followers, who would have survived Helter Skelter by hiding out in an underground cave in the Death …
The Chicago Eight Conspiracy Trial, Douglas O. Linder
The Chicago Eight Conspiracy Trial, Douglas O. Linder
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What did it all mean? Was the Chicago Seven Trial merely, as one commentator suggested, a monumental non-event? Was it, as others argue, an important battle for the hearts and minds of the American people? Or is it best seen as a symbol of the conflicts of values that characterized the late sixties? These are some of the questions that surround one of the most unusual courtroom spectacles in American history, the 1969-70 trial of seven radicals accused of conspiring to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Culturally and politically, 1968 was one of the …
The Dr. Sam Sheppard Trial, Douglas O. Linder
The Dr. Sam Sheppard Trial, Douglas O. Linder
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On July 4, 1954, Marilyn Sheppard, the wife of a handsome thirty-year-old doctor, Sam Sheppard, was brutally murdered in the bedroom of their home in Bay Village, Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie. Sam Sheppard denied any involvement in the murder and described his own battle with the killer he described as bushy-haired. Did Sam do it? It's rare for a murder mystery to endure for over half a century. Almost always, if the mystery is not fully resolved at the trial, subsequent admissions, previously uncovered clues, or more sophisticated forensic tests reveal what the trial did not. Not …
The Impeachment Trial Of Andrew Johnson, Douglas O. Linder
The Impeachment Trial Of Andrew Johnson, Douglas O. Linder
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Andrew Johnson was a lifelong Democrat and slave owner who won a place alongside Abraham Lincoln on the 1864 Republican ticket in order to gain the support of pro-war Democrats. Johnson was fiercely pro-Union and had come to national prominence when, as a Senator from the important border state of Tennessee, he denounced secession as treason. In May, 1868, the Senate came within a single vote of taking the unprecedented step of removing a president from office. Although the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson was ostensibly about a violation of the Tenure of Office Act, it was about much more …
The Impeachment Trial Of President William Clinton, Douglas O. Linder
The Impeachment Trial Of President William Clinton, Douglas O. Linder
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In 1999, for only the second time in United States history, the Senate conducted an impeachment trial of a President. The acquittal of William Jefferson Clinton on February 12 came as no great surprise, given the near party-line vote on impeachment charges in the House of Representatives leading to the trial. The impeachment saga of President Clinton has its origins in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought in Arkansas in May, 1994 by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee. Lawyers for Clinton argued that the Jones suit would distract him from the important tasks of his office and should not …
The Leopold And Loeb Trial: A Brief Account, Douglas O. Linder
The Leopold And Loeb Trial: A Brief Account, Douglas O. Linder
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Few trial transcripts are as likely to bring tears to the eyes as that of the 1924 murder trial of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold. Decades after Clarence Darrow delivered his twelve-hour long plea to save his young clients' lives, his moving summation stands as the most eloquent attack on the death penalty ever delivered in an American courtroom. Mixing poetry and prose, science and emotion, a world-weary cynicism and a dedication to his cause, hatred of bloodlust and love of man, Darrow takes his audience on an oratorical ride that would be unimaginable in a criminal trial today. Even …
The Mississippi Burning Trial (U. S. Vs. Price Et Al.), Douglas O. Linder
The Mississippi Burning Trial (U. S. Vs. Price Et Al.), Douglas O. Linder
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It was an old-fashioned lynching, carried out with the help of county officials, that came to symbolize hardcore resistance to integration. Dead were three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney. All three shot in the dark of night on a lonely road in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Many people predicted such a tragedy when the Mississippi Summer Project, an effort that would bring hundreds of college-age volunteers to the most totalitarian state in the country was announced in April, 1964. The FBI's all-out search for the conspirators who killed the three young men, depicted in the movie …
The Sweet Trials: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
The Sweet Trials: An Account, Douglas O. Linder
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The automobile and manufacturing boom that began in Detroit about 1915 made the city a magnet for blacks fleeing the economic stagnation of the South. In the decade from 1915 to 1925, Detroit's black population grew more than tenfold, from 7,000 to 82,000. A severe housing shortage developed, as the city's compact black district could not accommodate all the new arrivals. Blacks brave enough to purchase or rent homes in previously all-white neighborhoods faced intimidation and violence. The spring and summer of 1925 saw several ugly housing-related incidents. It was in this violent summer of 1925 that a black doctor …
The Trial Of Lindy And Michael Chamberlain ('The Dingo Trial'), Douglas O. Linder
The Trial Of Lindy And Michael Chamberlain ('The Dingo Trial'), Douglas O. Linder
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On August 17, 1980, at a campsite near Australia's famous Ayer's Rock, a mother's cry came out of the dark: My God, my God, the dingo's got my baby! Soon the people of an entire continent would be choosing sides in a debate over whether the cry heard that night marked an astonishing and rare human fatality caused by Australia's wild dogs or was, rather, in the words of the man who would eventually prosecute her for murder, a calculated, fanciful lie. A jury of nine men and three women came to believe the latter story and convicted Lindy Chamberlain …
The Trial Of Zacarias Moussaoui, Douglas O. Linder
The Trial Of Zacarias Moussaoui, Douglas O. Linder
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On the horrific morning of September 11, 2001, when planes crashed into buildings and fell from the sky, Zacarias Moussaoui was sitting in a jail in Minnesota facing immigration charges. Even if he had not been arrested three weeks earlier, when he raised suspicion by paying large sums to a flight training school to learn to pilot a Boeing 747 despite his never having piloted a small plane, it seems unlikely that Moussaoui would have been the twentieth hijacker on one of the four doomed planes. Nonetheless, largely because of the convenient fact that he was alive and in custody, …
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Trial, Douglas O. Linder
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Trial, Douglas O. Linder
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It was a warm spring Saturday in New York City, March 25, 1911. On the top three floors of the ten-story Asch Building just off of Washington Square, employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory began putting away their work as the 4:45 p.m. quitting time approached. Most of the several hundred Triangle Shirtwaist employees were teenage girls. Most were recent immigrants. Many spoke only a little English. Just then somebody on the eighth floor shouted, Fire! Flames leapt from discarded rags between the first and second rows of cutting tables in the hundred-foot-by-hundred-foot floor. Triangle employee William Bernstein grabbed pails …