What mistakes did the law make involving the Lizzie Borden case?

Answer 1

"Lizzie Borden took an axe/ gave her mother forty whacks/ when she saw what she had done/ she gave her father forty one." On August 4th of 1892, Andrew Jackson Borden and his wife Abby were brutally murdered with a hatchet, (considered to be the most likely instrument of death), in their own home. No one knows for certain who actually killed the Borden's but Andrew's beloved daughter Lizzie was the only one ever arrested and charged with the crime. There were several reasons why she was the one charged for the murder. The first is that she was home at the time of the murders. Her sister Emma was not. The family maid, Bridget, (Maggie), Sullivan was also in the house but after questioning her the authorities did not consider her to be a likely suspect.

At the inquest Lizzie's testimony struck the District attorney, Hosea Knowlten, as highly suspicious. For one thing she kept giving different answers to simple questions. When asked where she was when her father came home that day, Lizzie at first answered in the kitchen reading a Harpers magazine. When the District Attorney then asked if she was sure she was in the kitchen she changed her answer saying she wasn't sure and it might have been in the dining room. Just a few minutes after that the same question was phrased in a slightly different way and Lizzie then answered that she was upstairs in her bedroom but just a split second later amended that answer and said she was on the stairs. This looked suspicious because Lizzie's step mother Abby was upstairs in her bedroom all ready dead when Lizzie said she was upstairs in the bedroom and then quickly modified that story to mean the stairway. Within just minutes of testimony Lizzie had given several different answers to the same question. During that inquest Lizzie Borden continued to answer evasively or suspiciously claiming confusion. The transcripts to this testimony reveal District Attorney Knowlton's obvious suspicions as the testimony went on. This testimony was what convinced Knowlton to charge Lizzie with the murders. However, since she had not been charged of any crime at the time of the inquest, she was not allowed to have a lawyer present. Therefore no legal advice as to her rights had been given by any defending lawyer, nor the court nor by the District Attorney. Both the court and Knowlton had assumed the other had already done this. Because of this, her testimony at the inquest was not allowed into evidence at her trial. It should also be pointed out that if Lizzie Borden did kill her father and step mother there was no blood on her nor her clothes when the police arrived.

It was not solely on her testimony at the inquest that led to her arrest and trial. She did have motive as her father had recently given property to his wifes family and Lizzie had made it clear that she disagreed with this decision believing the property should have been given to her and her sister. Lizzie also did not much care for her step mother Abby at all. Knowlten had made clear at the trial that he was asking for the death penalty if a conviction was rendered by the jury. At this time the electric chair was the newly invented device used for execution and had she been convicted she would have been the first woman to be executed by electric chair. Since, at the time of her trial, women were not allowed to serve on a jury, it was twelve men who heard the circumstantial evidence and who were expected to either acquit or render a guilty verdict which would send her to her death. It is believed that because it was a jury of twelve men, they were unwilling to condemn this woman to death and so acquitted her instead. However, there are others who believe they just did not believe she was guilty nor capable of brutally killing her father that no one doubted she loved.

If she was indeed guilty then there were two crucial mistakes the District Attorney had made. The first was by not apprising Lizzie of her rights before leading her into damaging testimony. This was a violation of her rights and ultimately prevented the prosecution from using it against her at trial. The second mistake was by asking for the death penalty which meant a particularly hard decision for a jury to make in terms of convicting Lizzie Borden based solely on circumstantial evidence. In terms of the juries decision to acquit, given that the damaging testimony she gave at the inquest was information not privy to the jury, it seems the acquittal was justified as there was indeed reasonable doubt. Simply being home at the time of the murder and not liking a step mother and not being happy with her father for giving away family property to a family she considered not to be family is hardly damaging evidence for a jury to convict a woman of murder and send to her death.