Publication Date: Friday Sep 19, 1997

STANFORD: Lizzie Borden walks free once again

Popular opinion convicted her of the dastardly deeds more than 100 years ago. But the evidence was as thin then as it was Tuesday when Lizzie Borden walked free again after a Stanford jury refused to convict her of killing her father and stepmother.

The jury in this case was about 720 people who filled Dinkelspiel Auditorium. In this mock trial, Lizzie Borden was actually played by third-year Stanford law student Julia Wilson, but the two judges were real enough: Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The mock trial was held this week because Rehnquist and O'Connor, members of the Stanford Law School Class of 1952, were on campus participating in their 45-year class reunion. Both are distinguished now and were distinguished then--Rehnquist finished first in the class academically, and O'Connor finished third.

The dramatization of the trial of Lizzie Borden was held in honor of installing Barbara Babcock as the first Judge John Crown Professor of Law, a newly endowed professorship. Babcock played the role of Borden's defense attorney. Fittingly enough on a day to honor her, Babcock's client walked free.

Lizzie Borden was charged with hacking to death her father and stepmother in Fall River, Mass. in 1892. She was convicted in the court of popular opinion, but set free by a jury of 12 men.

There were no witnesses to the grisly murders, and no murder weapon was ever found.

Babcock, in her closing summary to the jury (audience), made an impassioned and at times funny plea for her client's freedom. "This was the work of a madman," Babcock argued. "Lizzie Borden was not mad and not a man."

Borden was arrested and tried, Babcock explained, "because this was the biggest case the Fall River police ever saw, and the press from all over the world was breathing down their necks."

With tongue firmly in cheek, Babcock then spun her own rhyme (a la "If the glove don't fit you must acquit."): "Without an axe or a bloody dress, she is not a murderess."

Charles Olgetree, a Harvard Law School professor and member of the Stanford University Board of Trustees, who played the frustrated prosecutor, argued convincingly for a conviction. But he simply didn't have enough evidence to convict.

Kathleen Sullivan, a law school professor who was the narrator for the dramatization, urged the members of the audience to carefully consider all the evidence they heard, and then gave people 60 seconds to decide on guilt or innocence. The audience, including law school faculty, students, alumni, and the general public, voted for acquittal by a wide margin.

Stanford President Gerhard Casper and Provost Condoleezza Rice were seen to raise their hands to vote for acquittal. When asked afterward, Rice replied, "it was all circumstantial. There was no murder weapon."

Paul Brest, dean of the law school, was later asked how he had voted. Brest smiled and said, "That stays within the jury room."

The Lizzie Borden trial was chosen for the 90-minute dramatization because Judge John Crown, a Chicago jurist for 22 years, was particularly interested in rules of evidence. And evidence, or the lack of it, was the pivotal element in the Borden trial.



Back up to the Table of Contents Page