Publication Date: Friday Sep 12, 1997

STANFORD: Lizzie Borden is on trial again

Legend has it that Lizzie Borden took an ax and killed her father and stepmother in 1892 in Fall River, Mass. But Lizzie was acquitted. She said she wasn't there at the time.

Lizzie Borden goes on trial again for the murders, in absentia, on Sept. 16 at Stanford.

This time, Borden will be defended by Stanford Law Professor Barbara Babcock and will be prosecuted by Harvard Law Professor Charles Olgetree, Jr., a member of the Stanford Board of Trustees.

Presiding over the trial will be Supreme Court Justices William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor, who are both Stanford Law School alumni, and former classmates. Rehnquist was first academically in the law school's class of 1952, and O'Connor was ranked third academically in the same class. In addition, both earned their bachelor's degrees at Stanford.

The trial, or performance, will be narrated by Stanford Law Professor Kathleen Sullivan, and will be open to the public. It will be held at 5 p.m. Sept. 16 in Dinkelspiel Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public, but people are advised to get there early.

The mock trial is also an opportunity for Stanford to honor Babcock and install her as the inaugural Judge John Crown Professor of Law, a newly endowed law professorship at Stanford. The chair is named for Judge John Crown, who served on the Cook County, Ill. Circuit Court for 22 years. Crown received a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford in 1951, later received his law degree from Northwestern University, and served as a judge from 1974 to 1996.

Babcock said Stanford picked Lizzie Borden's trial to dramatize because of its parallels to the O.J. Simpson trial. The evidence against Borden was entirely circumstantial, no murder weapon was ever found, and Borden's own "dream team" of attorneys convinced the all-male jury that she didn't do it, even though the public believed she did.

Will Babcock, a former public defender, be able to convince the Supreme Court justices that Lizzie Borden was innocent? "I have a lot to work with," Babcock said with a chuckle, as the prosecution has no witnesses and no murder weapon.

Babcock has taught at Stanford since 1972 and was the first woman to be awarded tenure in the law school. She also served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney General in the Carter Administration from 1977 to 1979.



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