Black Rage Confronts the Law. Paul Harris
woman has ever appeared with more decency, modesty, and propriety than she has exhibited here. No witness has dared to say or think that Sally Freeman is not a woman of truth. Dr. Clary, a witness for the prosection, who knows her well, says, that with all her infirmities of temper and of habit, Sally “was always a truthful woman.”
Seward finished his two-day-long closing argument with a rhetorical flourish and poetic language rarely found in today’s courtrooms.
The Prisoner, though in the greenness of youth, is withered, decayed, senseless, almost lifeless. He has no father here. The descendant of slaves, that father died a victim to the vices of a superior race. There is no mother here, for her child is stained and polluted with the blood of mothers and of a sleeping infant; and “he looks and laughs so that she cannot bear to look upon him.” There is no brother, or sister, or friend here. Popular rage against the accused has driven them hence, and scattered his kindred and people...
I must say to you that we live in a Christian and not in a Savage State, and that the affliction which has fallen upon these mourners and us, were sent to teach them and us mercy and not retaliation; that although we may send this Maniac to the scaffold, it will not recall to life the manly form of Van Nest, nor reanimate the exhausted frame of the aged matron, nor restore to life, and grace, and beauty, the murdered mother, nor call back the infant boy from the arms of his Savior. Such a verdict can do no good to the living, and carry no joy to the dead. If your judgment shall be swayed at all by sympathies so wrong, although so natural, you will find the saddest hour of your life to be that in which you will look down upon the grave of your victim, and “mourn with compunctious sorrow” that you should have done so great injustice to the “poor handful of earth that will lie mouldering before you.”
John Van Buren did not have the oratorical skills of William Seward, but his presentation was a model of logic and persuasiveness. Van Buren, like most prosecutors faced with a political trial, tried to deny the politics of the case, defining it solely as “a criminal case.” When confronted with racial issues the typical prosecutor will reject the idea that racial oppression can lead to a crime, stressing instead the criminal nature of the defendant and commending the law for its equal treatment of different races and classes. Van Buren’s argument is an early example of this traditional response of the state’s representatives. He praised the “impartial administration of justice” and told the jury that the trial had taken place in an atmosphere of “calm and dispassionate examination.” His opening words describe Bill as a member of an inferior race, a criminal personality who is fortunate to have the benefit of a great lawyer and distinguished witnesses.
It is a gratifying feature in our institutions, that an ignorant and degraded criminal like the prisoner, who has spent a large portion of his life in prison; vicious and intemperate of his habits; of a race socially and politically debased; having confessedly slaughtered a husband, wife, son and mother-in-law, composing one of the first families of the State; and arrested with but one cent in his pocket, can enlist in his defense the most eminent counsel in the country, bring upon the witness’ stand Professors of the highest distinction in their departments of science, members and trustees of churches, and even pious divines. It is particularly gratifying to those whose official duty requires them to participate in this prosecution, because it assures them that there is no danger that the slightest injustice can be done to the prisoner from an inability to secure friends and testimony, at any distance or at any cost.
Van Buren’s argument contains within it the contradiction of a system of justice built on democratic rules in a society that reeked of racial and class inequality. He correctly praised the system for securing the finest defense for a man with no financial or social resources. But he avoided the reality that even with such a fine defense William Freeman could not find justice in front of an all-white jury sitting in the same county in which the murders had taken place. Van Buren was also correct when he suggested that the law, on its face, applies to all races equally. But in reality the application of the law was warped by racism. That is why Bill was convicted of horse stealing and sent him to state prison at the age of sixteen, even though he was innocent.
With regard to the medical testimony, Van Buren made the same argument prosecutors are making today—doctors don’t decide the case, jurors do. He accurately stated the law: “had the prisoner, when he killed John G. Van Nest, sufficient capacity to judge whether it was right or wrong so to do? And if he had, did any disease divest him of control over his actions?” He then spent six hours going over all the evidence in support of his argument that Bill planned the murders in a rational, legally sane manner, and had control over his behavior when he committed them.
I hope I have satisfied you that this Prisoner is clearly responsible for his acts. He is not an idiot. This is not pretended. He has not dementia. His attention, coherence, memory of events, ancient and recent, keen and steady glance, healthy appearance—all triumphantly repel the idea of dementia. He had no disease when these murders were committed, nor has he now. He has never had an insane delusion.
Van Buren was afraid that testimony linking racial oppression to mental illness might have found a sympathetic ear among some of the jurors, so he tried to scare them by implying that civilized society will be destroyed if these theories are accepted.
Doctrines have been advanced by counsel and witnesses in the course of this trial, dangerous to the peace of society and fatal to good government. The laws and institutions under which we live have been assailed. The maxims of law which have emanated from the wisest and most humane jurist that ever lived—maxims of which the security of liberty, property, and life have reposed for ages; which the successive wisdom of centuries has confirmed, and under which the safety of Prisoners, as well as of society, has been protected—are now openly derided and defied.
In many ways Van Buren’s closing argument foreshadows the arguments of twentieth-century prosecutors. He raised theories that find support today when he suggested that acquittal would cause other criminals to excuse their behavior by pleading insanity. He informed the jury that Freeman attended Henry Wyatt’s first insanity trial, which ended in a hung jury, suggesting that Bill got the idea from the defense that he could commit a murder and get away with it by pleading insanity like Wyatt.
Now, is there not reason to fear that this depraved criminal may have caught from the theories broached on Wyatt’s trial, and from the result, an impression that he could commit this crime with impunity? Far be it from me to suggest that the distinguished Counsel or witnesses on that occasion ever imagined or contemplated such a frightful consequence. But is it beyond the range of possibilities?
It is hard to take such an argument seriously, particularly when we recall that a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity would cause Bill to be locked up for the rest of his life in the state lunatic asylum.
Van Buren attempted to frighten the jury by raising the image of cunning individuals committing crimes all over the state and using the defense of insanity as a justification for their acts.
Is it not the imperative duty of those charged in any way with the faithful execution of the laws, to remember that the audience who throng a Criminal Court Room, are not exclusively composed of the upright, the intelligent or the humane, and when theories are advanced in such a presence, which strike at the root of Law and Order, and furnish a perfect license for Crime, by rendering its detection impossible, to sift them thoroughly, and if as unsound as they are dangerous, to condemn them publicly and boldly? It needed not the fearful conjectures as to the origin of this crime, to induce courts, juries and public prosecutors, by very just means, to extinguish sparks which threaten such wide-spread conflagration.
Van Buren’s arguments were not foolish attempts to manipulate the jurors’ prejudices. His closing argument is a fascinating historical document precisely because it represents the same values prevalent in the law today, 150 years and one Civil War later. Van Buren viewed Seward’s attempt to tie together the concepts of racial oppression, mental illness, and criminal responsibility as an attack “at the root of Law and Order.” The fears and responses of government to this argument in our day have been strikingly similar. The law of insanity has been changed in every federal jurisdiction so that it is now the same conservative rule that it was in 1846. Three states have abolished the insanity defense altogether.