GUILTY OR NOT!
Fate of Lizzie Borden in the Balance.
Arguments and the Charge Next.
Resume of Evidence For and Against.
Wherein Case Against Her is Weak
Howard Predicts that Prisoner Will be Acquitted.
What Others Think Will Be the Result.
Case will be continued at New Bedford Monday.

 

New BEDFORD,. June 18- Tomorrow morning the superior court will convene in New Bedford for the purpose of listening to the arguments in the case of the commonwealth against Lizzie A. Borden and the charge of the court, which is, I understand, to be delivered by Mr. Justice Dewey of Springfield, a college professor in appearance, a clear-headed logician, a tender hearted man.

The Bordens were murdered in Fall River, which like New Bedford and Taunton, is a shire town, but it was deemed best to try the cause in New Bedford, and to exclude from the jury all residents of Fall River, because of the intense prejudice for and against the prisoner in that place, and because of the almost superhuman activity the police in their endeavor to convict one of the occupants of the Borden household of the Borden household.

Therefore it is that all parties concerned, with the majestic court itself have been here during the past two weeks and will come again tomorrow morning.  Their coming tomorrow morning will, however, find them occupying  very materially altered relative positions, the one to the other, from those we found them in two weeks ago.

The Judges are not changed a whit.  Chief Justice Mason, who approximates as nearly as possible to one's idea of an old-fashioned gentleman, will be tomorrow as he has been from the first, receptive, impassive, quick to appreciate and prompt to decide.  He went home last night delighted and charmed beyond adequate description with the calm and peaceful conduct of the trial and delighted beyond measure at the courtesy manifested from first to last by the belligerent counsel on the one side and the impassioned counsel on the other.

In speaking of it he said that in all his experience he had never before encountered such a degree of considerate courtesy as had attracted his attention and merited his approval on this occasion.  That it is as it should be the chief justice fully recognized, as also that it is as it usually is not.

On the judges left side his associate, Judge Dewey of Springfield, Mass, a scholarly looking man with a large head, thickly covered with silver gray hair, which falls upon a massive face, lighted by kindly eyes and shaded by a carefully kept beard. While the chief justice is deliberate in his movements, brother Dewey might properly be described as logy in his.  However, unless I am greatly in error, there is nothing slow about his gray matter and nothing turgid in the movements of his brain.

Judge Blodgett, who sits at the right hand of the supreme judge, is younger and of a more modern type of individual scrupulously careful as to the cut of his hair and beard with an intellectual forehead, a piercing eye, a noticeably neat habit of attire, clad indeed a la mode from his white necktie to his well-polished boots.

The three men have been a triple target for 1000 curious eyes, an attractive subject for scores of artists’ pencils, a study pregnant with suggestion to dozens of men accustomed to read, divine and portray character thought and probability.  All this they have borne with perfect composure, maintaining an unruffled dignity, delighting common sense satisfying every cavalier and showing them in the full glare of unaccustomed publicity, the very embodiment of discretion and the personification of manner in its best estate.

To outsiders the dignity of the court the solemnest of the scene, the un-whispering presence of spectators, the marked deference shown by counsel to the bench, the urbanity of the court and the form and ceremony strictly observed by the people, and rigidly enforced by the sheriff, present a picture at once unique and suggestive.

The judges believe in it, the counsels have been brought up in it, the sheriff finds it a pleasurable duty, and the people stand it because they have to.

Doubtless on Tuesday night a verdict will be reached.  The evidence is all in.  Let's see for a moment, where we stand.  The Borden’s' are dead; there's no doubt about that to begin with.  On the 4th of August last the two were assassinated, one up stairs and one down, by a hatchet wielded by the well-disciplined hand of some frenzied individual, name and occupation as yet unknown.  Not content with two savage blows in the face either of which would have caused instant death, according to the testimony of the experts, the assassin must have straddled the body of Mrs. Borden and rained upon her prostrate form 18 blows, one after the other in quick succession, the blood spurting in all-defiling sprays upon the bed clothes, tile furniture, the carpet and presumably the murderer.

The police being notified took possession of the house, and all there was in it.  They occupied the premises, and drove all strangers even from the sidewalk in front of the house.  They put under surveillance the daughters of the murdered, their uncle and their servants.  They carefully examined these Individuals and searched the house from attic to cellar, not forgetting the premises of the barn, until, as one of them said they, had not only gone through everything, but; had taken the plaster from the ceiling and the carpet from the door.

Public Excitement Ran High

 An excitement in New England is analogous to frenzy in other sections in the land, where crime is of more frequent occurrence.  Recognizing the universal demand for the detection and punishment of the assassin, conscious of the lack or evidence against anyone, the police appear, in their wild-eyed way, to have made up their minds that a victim must be found and found, too, near the scene of the infamy.  As Miss Emma Borden, the elder of the sisters, was out of town at the time, it was evident she had nothing to do with it.  As Mr. Morse, uncle of the young ladies, could establish an alibi from early in the morning until after the murder, it was equally clear that he had nothing to do with it, so the matter narrowed itself down to Miss Lizzie Borden and Bridget Sullivan, the servant.

For reasons satisfactory to themselves, the police selected Miss Borden as their game and from that moment to the present time have done nothing but seek to fasten the guilt upon her.  Armed with police testimony Dist. Atty. Knowlton and Dist. Atty. Moody called Lizzie Borden to the bar two weeks ago tomorrow morning and confronted her with the commonwealth which charged her with murdering on the morning of the 4th of August 1892, with an axe or hatchet, her father and her stepmother.  The charge you see is clean cut, straightforward, concise and understandable.

Did they prove it, and how? They pretend that they did and this is the way they did it.

They showed by unimpeachable testimony that the brutally butchered remains of Mrs. Borden were found lying under the bed near the wall of the guest's chamber, and that any quantity of blood was spattered about the room.  Having cut off her head and bleached the skull, they showed that she had received many serious wounds with a hatchet.  Having taken out her stomach, they showed that part of her breakfast had been digested and the remainder had not.

By equally incontrovertible testimony they proved that Mr. Borden's body was found lying upon the sofa in the sitting room, also mutilated in a frightful manner.  Having taken out his stomach, strange to relate they ascertained that some of his food had been digested and that the remainder had not; and also that any quantity of blood was spattered on the wall and saturated in the carpet.

They searched the house, not only permitted, but aided and begged so to do by Miss Emma and Miss Lizzie.  They went through it thoroughly, but found absolutely nothing which could in any way connect anybody-Lizzie, Bridget or uncle Morse -with the bodies or the blood.  In the cellar they found sundry axes and hatchets, rusted, but not with blood, but even with these had they been covered with blood and steeped in core they found no connection leading to any individual in the house.

The Prosecution, fully aware of their inability to bring any direct evidence, resorted by police methods to circumstantiate proof and argued that; because of certain financial transactions Lizzie hated her stepmother, thereby showing a motive: that she was alone in the upper part of the house with her mother, thereby showing opportunity and that she had attempted a short time previous unavailingly, however, to purchase prussic acid, thereby arguing premeditation.

The police, in their anxiety to serve their chiefs, swore with abundant and amazing recklessness at the inquest held a year ago, and strange enough every one of them has since been promoted, presumably for his zeal.

The matron of the station house where Miss Lizzie was held a prisoner, swore that she had heard Lizzie charge her sister with having given her away, and in order that there might be no doubt as to her having heard it, with extraordinary lack of thought she testified that she stood in the open doorway some four feet only from the sisters, where she could be seen and was seen by them both.

Miss Russell swore that Lizzie on the Sunday following the murder burned one of the dresses.  Then the prosecution rested and the counsel for defense looked up in unfeigned amazement, astonished at the weakness of the assault.

What a chance was there for a moment of courage confidence and skill.

Not a thing had been shown which by the wildest presumption could lead Lizzie Borden anywhere near a weapon as yet undiscovered with which those murders were committed.  Not a scintilla of proof connected her in any way with any incident having the faintest bearing upon the tragedies of the eventful morning.

The defense should instantly have moved the dismissal of the case.  I dare say the chief justice and his learned associates, in view of the enormity of the crime would have hesitated and very likely refused to grant the motion and then go to the jury.  And how about that jury?  We, who have studied them for two weeks past agree with an estimate formed by Dr. T. S. Robertson of this city, who looked at them with the eye of an expert, that they are a fair-minded, honest-appearing, well meaning set of men, not intellectually great, but morally substantial.  They know this story by heart.  They saw Dist. Atty. Knowlton as vigorous in mind as he is in body, as adroit in cross-examination as he is in seducement, pale, as witness after witness contradicted each other standing under oath in the presence of almighty God and the jury in the box.  There has been no communication between the jury and the public since they were impaneled two weeks ago, save that indefinable communion of saints and sinners which proceeds from contemporaneous human nature, all embracing like the atmosphere itself, sending on wings of electric communication the subtlest impression an all-convincing argument.

Tell me they don't know what popular sentiment is and public feeling?  That's nonsense, for they are part of the populace themselves, and in this particular instance the conceit essence of the public.

Then came the defense, standing off against a cordon of self-contradicting policemen a band of New England ladies and gentlemen, giving evidence of birth and breeding, as they stood in a God fearing oath-respecting attitude before the court and jury.

Dead, of course they were.  Blood, certainly, quantities of it.  Agitation, why not?  Undigested food, who cares?  Where is the weapon? Where's the handle to the hatchet found by Marshal Fleet and since mysteriously disappeared?  Any quantity of blood, but not on Lizzie’s garments.  Considerable ill-feeling toward the stepmother, but in Emma's breast it rested, according to her own testimony.  Dislike of Mrs. Borden, I dare say, but the affectionate father was killed that morning as well as the irritating stepmother.

Mystery by the cord, but what has the jury to do with the mystery?  Mysteries are for the police.  The charge is for the jury.  So it all narrows down to this, that the police charged Lizzie Borden with the murder of her father and stepmother, have sworn falsely to that end according to their own testimony, have allowed the matron to become hopelessly involved in a series of extraordinary statements, explanations, contradictions, and denials, and all to what end?

That's where we are today.

That's where the commonwealth and the prisoners will be tomorrow when the crier will announce the presence of the court, and the jury, sitting in the presence of a multitude of fellow-citizens, will be addressed by the facile tongued ex-governor of the commonwealth, argumentatively bombarded by the brainy headed district attorney for the county of Bristol and elaborately charged as to the law in the case by one of the accomplished jurists on the bench.

Trial of Lizzie Borden Homepage