America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation

by Alan M. Dershowitz

Overview

The renowned attorney and bestselling author reveals how notable trials throughout our history have helped to shape our nation. Offering insights into the human condition, these trials serve as a historical document, chronicling the struggles and passions of their time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780446694735
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	05/19/2005
Pages:	608
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Alan Dershowitz has been involved in some of the most notorious cases of the past three decades including, O.J. Simpson's trial, Muhammad Ali's appeal, and Bill Clinton's impeachment trial. Dershowitz resides in Cambridge and is a professor at Harvard Law School. He is the author of Chutzpah, The Advocates Devil, America on Trial, and The Genesis of Justice, among others.

Read an Excerpt

America on Trial

Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation

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By Alan M. Dershowitz

Warner Books

Copyright © 2005 Alan M. Dershowitz
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0446694738

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Chapter One

The Salem Witchcraft trials

Date: 1692

Location: Salem, Massachusetts

Defendants: Approximately twenty-five in 1692, but several hundred men and women were arrested and imprisoned on charges of witchcraft between 648 and 1706

Charge: Witchcraft

Verdict: Guilty

Sentence: Thirteen women and six men hanged; one man pressed to death with heavy stones; at least four others imprisoned (two dogs were also executed as suspected accomplices)

Although the Inquisition never reached the colonies-Catholics were tiny minority among the colonists-the Salem witchcraft trials bore some striking resemblances, writ small, to what had roiled the Continent two centuries earlier. They paralleled, in some ways but not in others, the trial of Joan of Arc in 1431. The pre-Enlightenment church was a dominant influence in the Bay Colony during the seventeenth century, but other influences were also at play against the women who were accused-primarily by other women-of the capital crime of witchcraft.

As is typical with most episodes of legal persecution, a small kernel of truth may have provided an early explanation, if not justification, for the concerns that led to the prosecutions. In a society that believed in the lower of the devil and in the phenomenon of witchcraft, it should not be surprising that some young girls may well have experimented with magic spells and other aspects of the occult. Nor should it be surprising that some of the girls may have experienced the functional equivalent of psychosomatic symptoms of being bewitched-symptoms that were manifested by convulsions, fits, screeching, and pain. A doctor, summoned by the minister, diagnosed affliction by the devil, and before long dozens of "witches" were arrested and prosecuted. Informers named names, including those of a former minister and several young children nineteen people were hanged, others imprisoned. Several of the condemned were of Native American heritage. This, too, should not be surprising, since warfare between the Puritans and Indians was wreaking havoc among the northern settlements. In a recent account of the trials, a distinguished historian found that "the key affected accusers in the Salem crisis were frontier refugees whose families had been wiped out in the wars. These young women said they saw the devil in the shape of an Indian." The Puritans needed a scapegoat to explain why "God's chosen people" were being slaughtered by the Indians. They decided that "their Indian enemies had the Devil on their side."

In reading accounts of the witchcraft trials of three centuries ago, a modern-day lawyer's mind naturally turns to the roles played by the seventeenth-century lawyers, prosecutors, judges, and defense attorneys-and how they used the forms of the law to perpetrate such injustice. One courtroom observer criticized the magistrates' contributions to the increasing hysteria in Salem: "The chief Judges very zealous in these proceedings, and says, he is very clear to all that hath as yet been acted by this Court, and, as far as ever I could perceive, is very impatient in hearing any thing that looks the other way." (I've certainly encountered judges like that!) Indeed, in several occasions, the Salem magistrates dispensed even with any pretense of impartiality. During one trial in May 1692, the accused said that she felt faint, and she asked the court if she might lean against her husband. "She had strength enough to torment those persons," he magistrate replied, "and she should have strength enough to stand."

In his play and motion picture The Crucible, Arthur Miller apparently intended his audience to think about the McCarthy prosecutions of contemporary "witches" and those who refused to testify against them. The Crucible certainly made me think, as a young man interested in the law, about the relationship between legal procedures and justice. The descriptions of the legal proceedings by which citizens charged with witchcraft were tried make numerous references to justices, judges, and magistrates. There are prosecutors as well, though the roles of magistrate and prosecutor often seem to be merged. The Salem magistrates viewed themselves as inquisitors eliciting confessions and repentance, father than interpreters of a body of law. Deodat Lawson, a courtroom observer, recounted an episode from the proceedings against Martha Corey: "On Monday the 21st of March, the Magistrates of Salem appointed to come to Examination of Goodow C. And about twelve of the Clock, they went into the Meeting-House, which was thronged with Spectators.... The worshipful Mr. Hathorne [the magistrate] asked her, Why she Afflicted those children? She said, she did not Afflict them. He asked her, who did then? he said, 'I do not know.'"

As Justice Hawthorne vigorously pursued a confession, Corey was on fronted with the live testimony of some ten "afflicted persons," including three young girls. With the interaction among Corey and her accusers, the proceedings grew chaotic. Lawson "observed several times, that if she did but bite her Under lip in the time of Examination the persons afflicted were bitten on their armes and wrists and produced the Marks before the Magistrates, Ministers and others." One accuser "complained of grievous torment in her Bowels as if they were torn out," and hit Corey on the head with a shoe. Corey still did not confess, but she was convicted and hanged, long with six other persons, in September 1692.

There are few references to defense attorneys, certainly not in the way he have come to know them over the past two centuries. It is clear that the principal legal officers in these notorious proceedings are the "honorable" and "distinguished" judges who conducted the trials, rendered the verdicts (sometimes with the assistance of a special jury), and imposed the death sentences.

As I read about the judges, I could not help wondering how our own supreme Court and lower courts would react if a hysteria comparable to the witch trials were to occur today. I also could not help wondering whether the presence of a vigorous defense bar would not have made, and would not now make, a difference in the processes and outcomes of the cases.

There is, of course, some relevant history to look to for guidance. The Salem travesty was neither the first nor the last of its kind. The Spanish inquisition employed the forms of the law and the legitimation of judges. Even in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union, "good" and "decent" judges went along to get along. During the McCarthy period in our nation, many judges willingly participated in the Red-baiting and career-destroying paranoia of the time; and during the Jim Crow era in the South, most of the judges perpetuated a system of apartheid that not only kept the races separate but also imposed double standard of justice on blacks and whites. Although some of these ignoble judges believed in the "justice" of the cause they were serving, most were motivated by simple opportunism, careerism, and a need to please those in power.

Today's "witches" may be those suspected of complicity with terrorism, especially if they are not citizens. Terrorism, unlike witchcraft, poses real dangers to vulnerable citizens, but what must been called is that in seventeenth-century Salem, many good people honestly believed that witches posed a real danger. Too many of today's judges are prepared to ignore-or manipulate-the law to assure that none they release becomes the next Mohammed Atta or Osama bin Laden.

It is possible, of course, that, even without the complicity of the judiciary, people would have hanged witches, burned heretics, gassed Jews, hot "cosmopolitans," imprisoned fellow travelers, subjected lacks to apartheid, and denied due process to Muslims suspected of terrorism. Nevertheless, that the imprimatur of the judges legitimized entirely illegitimate undertakings becomes clear in reading these accounts of the witchcraft trials and seeing how the trials relied on the forms of the law. (It also becomes clear when one reads, as every judge should, thee cord of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi judges.)

Throughout history, some judges have had the courage to stand up to the abuse of the legal system. A few paid with their lives, others with their careers. In some instances, most notably McCarthyism, dissenting judges had an impact on slowing down and finally halting the evil. (During the McCarthy period, as distinguished from the others, vigorous defense attorneys also played an important role in vindicating the rights of the accused.) Even so, too few judges have risked going against powerful and popular tyrants.

When I look at our current judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, I see some judges in the mold of those who went along with the excesses of tyrants. Oh, sure, today's judges would find some contemporary rationale for their unwillingness to intercede on behalf of the victims of tyranny: judicial restraint, executive and legislative prerogative, separation of powers, original intent, national security, and many other watch phrases can be selectively invoked to justify inaction. Nevertheless, the real reason why the Rehnquists, Scalias, and Thomases of today's judiciary would not intercede is that they are statists rather than true conservatives: Conservatives believe in limited governmental power over individuals; statists believe in virtually unlimited governmental lower and limited individual rights (except, in some instances, when it comes to property rights or the right to bear arms).

Consider what former chief justice Warren Burger had to say in 1986 about the "crime" of private homosexual activity between consenting adults-a "crime" akin to witchcraft in many ways, including its biblical source and its lack of actual victims. In the case of Bowers v. Hardwick, Chief Justice Burger, in a concurring opinion, approvingly quoted Blackstone's characterization of "'the infamous crime against nature' as an offense of 'deeper malignity' than rape, a heinous act 'the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature,' and 'a crime not fit to be named.'" The judges in Salem might also have quoted Blackstone on the evils of witchcraft (had his book, which was published a few decades later, been available to them): "The civil law punishes with death not only the sorcerers themselves, but also those who consult them; imitating in the former the express law of God, 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' And our own laws rank] this crime in the same class with heresy, and condemn both to the lames." (In June 2003, the Supreme Court reversed Bowers v. Hardwick, striking down a Texas law that prohibited private consensual sex between same-sex couples. "The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority. "The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime." The court concluded that "Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today." Chief Justice Rehnquist, long with Justices Scalia and Thomas, dissented. You can read an account of the Texas sodomy case starting on page 551.)

Burger's successor, Chief Justice Rehnquist, has rendered similar decisions, nearly always siding with claims of governmental power over individual rights. This is especially true when rights have been claimed by weak and unpopular, even despised, minority groups. I can picture Rehnquists a German judge during the 1930s and 1940s. (Indeed, when he was dominated to be an associate justice in 1971, I learned from several sources who had known him in the 1940s that as a Stanford Law School student, he had outraged Jewish classmates by imitating Adolf Hitler and goose-stepping around the campus with brown-shirted friends.) The German judges who were tried at Nuremberg included several distinguished jurists and professors with an authoritarian bent not so different from Rehnquist's. This is not to deny that Chief Justices Burger and Rehnquist have sometimes sided with unpopular individuals and against the prosecution, but the judges of Salem and Germany also occasionally acquitted persons accused of witchcraft or of violating the Nuremberg laws. Indeed, when challenged about their complicities in a system of injustice, many judges rationalized their participation by pointing to the ameliorative role they played in helping some victims of injustice. I have little confidence that most current Supreme Court and other federal and state court judges would act courageously and independently in the face of witchcraft trials today, especially if the atmosphere of the country were much that it would require personal and career risks to do so. Despite lifetime appointments, too many judges seek popularity and acceptance by the powers that be.

It seems more likely that several of our current justices and judges could become part of the problem, going out of their way to give an imprimatur to the evil at hand, as former chief justice Burger did in the homosexuality case and as numerous judges did during the McCarthy period. Nor is this an issue that falls neatly on any right-left continuum. In today's world, left-wing zealots on the bench-of which there are, thankfully, very few-also pose a danger of using the imprimatur of the law to exorcise their devils. For example, some feminist extremists regard sexual crimes-rape, pornography, and child molestation-as so heinous that even innocence should not be regarded as a valid defense! But the dominant contemporary danger still does come from the extreme right for two reasons: There are far more right-wing ideologues on the bench today than left-wing ideologues; and extreme right-wingers are more likely to be statists, especially during times of political right-wing domination.

Former justice Robert Jackson, who took a leave from the Supreme Court to serve as our nation's chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, wrote of the role of judges and law in legitimating tyranny, "[t]he most odious of all oppressions are those which masks justice." Jackson was echoing the caution of Lord Coke, expressed even before the Salem witch trials: "It is the worst oppression that is done by colour of justice." And Justice Brandeis warned us, three-quarters of a century ago, that even good intentions are no protection against zealotry: "Men [and women] born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men [and women] of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." We should keep the words of these great judges in mind as we recall the judges of Salem and as we assess our own Supreme Court.

Continues...

Continues...

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Excerpted from America on Trial by Alan M. Dershowitz Copyright © 2005 by Alan M. Dershowitz. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
	Introduction	xiii
	Prologue: The Foundations of American Law	1
Part I	Colonial America	27
	The Salem Witchcraft Trials	35
	The Trial of John Peter Zenger	44
	The Slave Revolt Trial	49
	The Boston Massacre Trials	54
Part II	The Early History of the United States	63
	The Trials of Aliens and Seditioners	68
	The Trial of Aaron Burr	75
Part III	From Jacksonian Democracy to the Pre-Civil War Period	83
	The Boorn-Colvin Murder Mystery	88
	The Richard Lawrence Case	93
	The Harvard Medical School Murder	101
Part IV	The Prelude to the Civil War	109
	The Dred Scott Case	117
	The John Brown Case	124
Part V	The Civil War	131
	The Savannah Case	139
	The Trial of Captain Henry Wirz	146
	The Trial of the Lincoln Assassins	152
Part VI	The Post-Civil War Period	161
	The Trial of Andrew Johnson	170
	The Trial of Susan B. Anthony	174
	The Trial of Mary Todd Lincoln	178
	The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau	183
	The Trial of Lizzie Borden	187
Part VII	The Early Twentieth Century	195
	The Trial of Stanford White's Killer	203
	The Great Labor Union Trials	208
	The Trial of Leo Frank	218
	The Abrams Case	227
	The Shoeless Joe Jackson Case	233
Part VIII	The Roaring Twenties and the Depression Thirties	245
	The Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti	251
	The Trial of Leopold and Loeb	256
	The Scopes Trial	262
	The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell	268
	The Lindbergh Kidnapping Trial	272
	The Scottsboro Trials	276
Part IX	World War II	283
	The Nuremberg Trial	290
	The Ezra Pound Case	297
Part X	The Cold War and McCarthyism	305
	The Alger Hiss Case	313
	The Trial of the Rosenbergs	319
	The Remington Case	329
Part XI	The Civil Rights Movement	337
	The Brown Case	346
	The Prosecution of Martin Luther King Jr.	356
	The Case of Clarence Earl Gideon	361
	The Trial of Jack Ruby	369
Part XII	The Vietnam War Era and Its Aftermath	375
	The Trial of Dr. Spock	382
	The Trial of the Chicago Seven	390
	The Court-Martial of Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr.	395
	The Pentagon Papers Case	400
	Roe v. Wade	405
	The American Indian Movement Trials	412
	The Bakke Case	419
	The Trial of Richard Herrin	428
	The Trial of Jeffrey MacDonald	434
Part XIII	The 1980s and 1990s	445
	The Trial of Jean Harris for the Scarsdale Diet Doctor Murder	452
	The Attempted Assassination of President Reagan by John Hinckley Jr.	458
	The Trials and Appeal of Claus von Bulow	462
	The John DeLorean Trial	470
	Flynt v. Falwell	477
	The Bernhard Goetz Case	482
	The McMartin Case	486
	The Central Park Jogger Case	490
	The Trial of Mike Tyson	493
	The Two Trials for the Beating of Rodney King	507
	The O.J. Simpson Trial	514
	The Clinton Impeachment Trial	522
Part XIV	The New Millennium and the Future	537
	Bush v. Gore	541
	The Texas Sodomy Trial and Appeal	551
	The Cases of the Terrorist Detainees--in Guantanamo, on the U.S. Mainland, and in Unknown Places Around the World	559
	Index	569

Editorial Reviews

Harvard law professor Dershowitz discusses several dozen cases that he believes provide insight into the transformation of the country and its legal system from the colonial period to the present. As the broad historical sweep of the project suggests, he is forced to compromise by simplifying events that are, by their nature, complex. Consequently, readers familiar with these legal cases will find many of his conclusions one-dimensional. The following observation, drawn from the prologue, gives a sense of how rudimentary the historical treatment often is: "The American colonists were generally familiar with the stories of the Bible." Although Dershowitz claims to have read more trial transcripts than any other living lawyer, his recounting of the legal proceedings is remarkably lackluster. The whole enterprise has more than a little scent of student research about it, supplemented by observations that those familiar with the author's various hobbyhorses willrecognize: his contempt for Justices Scalia and Thomas, whom he implies would have voted to uphold slavery had they participated in the Dred Scott decision; his own self-aggrandizement as he offers critiques of other lawyers, such as Clarence Darrow and Robert Bennett; and his love for the clich masked as insight "[T]he acquittal of a guilty murderer may also constitute a miscarriage of justice." While the book reminds readers of many interesting cases that have lapsed into relative obscurity, it is not the place to look for their elucidation. Agent, Helen Rees. (May) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

In his 21st book, multitalented author, attorney, and professor Dershowitz (law, Harvard) describes 63 famous trials in American history and offers his pointed opinions about the quality of justice. The book is arranged chronologically and includes the Colonial Salem witchcraft trials, the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the impeachment trial of President Clinton, and Bush v. Gore. What is remarkable about the book is Dershowitz's ability to distill the essence of a case into three or four pages, including excerpts from the trial transcripts. The writing is sparkling and places the trials in their historical context. The book is a blend of fact and commentary, as shown by the author's occasional jibes at current Supreme Court justices, whose decisions he considers corrupt. Dershowitz deftly explains his legal positions and does an excellent job of separating myth from reality in American legal cases. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries. Harry Charles, St. Louis Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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