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FIVE CONTROVERSIAL CRIMES TELL MUCH ABOUT THE CENTURY
CHICAGO --- A new book highlights five controversial "Crimes of the Century," exposing much more than the underlying tensions of our criminal justice system. The cases -- including Leopold and Loeb (1924), Scottsboro (from 1931), Bruno Richard Hauptmann (1932), Alger Hiss (1949) and O. J. Simpson (1994) -- also offer provocative insights into the nation's passions, politics and prejudices.
A fascinating barometer of shifts in society as well as the law, "Crimes of the Century" (Northeastern University Press, November, 1998) was written by Leigh B. Bienen, a senior lecturer at Northwestern University School of Law, and Gilbert Geis, professor emeritus in the department of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine.
"Geis and Bienen are to be commended for having said fresh and interesting things about matters one would have thought had been discussed quite literally to death," says Jonathan S. Shapiro in a book review in The American Lawyer (December, 1998)."What makes the book so enjoyable and worthwhile -- beyond the riveting, sometimes gory details of the misdeeds it chronicles -- is its sophisticated exploration of the myriad social and intellectual currents that combine to create a crime of the century."
The intense media focus on the colorful cases magnified the dramas played out in the courtroom, both affecting and exposing the complex interplay of mismatched legal resources, race, class, money, politics and celebrity, says Bienen. Sometimes the scrutiny pushed the law in a significantly better direction, but other times the ensuing politics merely inflated issues and skewed outcomes. The outcomes of the cases were as various as the crimes and the times, with no single or simple way to tie together the lessons they convey. "When these high profile cases go into orbit, they take on a life of their own," Bienen says.
But, perhaps of little surprise, one thing was for certain: money buys good attorneys and diligent, clever investigators. "The criminal justice system is sufficiently malleable to provide openings for skilled lawyers if the evidence is -- or can be made to appear to be -- somewhat ambivalent and ambiguous," Bienen and Geis say in the book. "But it takes a very large defense fund to overcome the enormous initial advantage in resources enjoyed by the prosecution."
The weight that a judge carries in the trial outcomes was most surprising to the book's authors. While judges are generally viewed as being "wise, sober and above the battle" the book concludes that their influence -- virtually shutting down an effective defense, for example, or refusing to endorse a verdict built on a charade -- made a big difference in the trial outcomes.
Highlights of the cases and Bienen's and Geis's conclusions:
--The callous, senseless and confounding murder of a 14-year-old boy in Chicago by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, both under 20 years of age and from prominent Jewish families, stunned the world in 1924. The victim, Bobby Franks, had been selected by "pure accident" in the young murderers' words, and the murder was committed simply for excitement, the authors conclude. Though gruesome and incomprehensible, the murder was handled differently because of the extraordinary media frenzy, bringing the anti-Semitism of the time to the fore and stirring up bias against the young men's social position. Ironically, a lower-class Leopold would have been back on the streets in a much shorter time than the elite Leopold was, the authors conclude. At the same time, without the advocacy of Clarence Darrow, one of the most colorful and successful litigators of the time, it is likely that Leopold would have been hanged.
--In the Scottsboro case, nine illiterate black hoboes, two under the age of 16, all called "boys," were pulled from a train in 1931 and charged with raping two white women during the ride. The events that followed would reverberate around the world, with observers referring to the trials as lynchings camouflaged in judicial proceedings. Finally after several perfunctory trials, sentences of death and numerous appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down two landmark rulings. The groundwork for the decisions was laid by John Anderson, then the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, a courageous and brilliant judge who dissented from a majority ruling upholding the verdicts. Ironically the two landmark decisions were handed down by a decidedly conservative U.S. Supreme Court. The decisions dealt with the right to adequate legal representation and the inclusion of blacks on juries, forever changing criminal justice in the United States.
--Charles Lindbergh's sensational solo flight to Paris captured the world's imagination, propelling him into super-celebrity status, and when his baby was kidnapped in 1932 so too was the pressure to convict extraordinary. By 1937, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, an illegal immigrant from Germany, a despised country at the time, was sent to the electric chair. His attorney, Edward Reilly, a drunk hired by the Hearst newspapers, talked with Hauptmann for less than an hour before the trial. Because of complications of the law regarding the child's kidnapping and death, David Wilentz, the New Jersey attorney general, crafted a high risk indictment alleging felony-murder, based on breaking and entering the house and theft of the child's sleeping garment. The bizarre strategy worked, and Wilentz' career took off. After a careful examination of the evidence, including the fact that a large portion of the ransom money was found in Hauptmann's possession, the authors conclude that he probabl! y was guilty of something. But the evidence fell far short of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
--The Hiss case was described as one of the first morality plays of the red-baiting era. It started with Whittaker Chambers' testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) against Alger Hiss, a former staffer at the U.S. Department of State. At first, Chambers, an unkempt senior editor of Time magazine and former communist, accused the cool, well-bred Hiss only of being a communist. Ultimately Chambers, known to be loose with the truth, added espionage to the charge against Hiss, delivering the accusation with a bombshell -- copies of authentic State Department documents that he said he got from Hiss. Richard Nixon, a first-term congressman and junior member of HUAC, who despised Hiss'haughty style, helped Chambers every step of the way, pursuing Hiss with a vengeance that would mark Nixon as a brilliant political strategist. After a grand jury indictment of perjury (the statute of limitations precluded espionage charges) and two trials, Hiss spent forty-f! our months in prison. Although the case was tainted by leaks, lies and politics, the authors conclude that the case against Hiss was compelling. Most certain of all was the boost that the case gave to Nixon's career. When he ran for the U.S. Senate, his victory margin exceeded that of every other Senate winner in the country.
--The savage killing of Nicole Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman outside her upscale Brentwood, Calif. home in 1994 unleashed a cascade of events that ultimately engaged the nation in a heated debate about the role that race and money played in the case. America became obsessed with the arrest and trial of Nicole's ex-husband, O. J. Simpson, a former football player whose famous face was recognized by just about everyone. The response to the not-guilty verdict on Oct. 2, 1995 was captured immediately by one television image after another of downcast whites and cheering, jubilant blacks across the country. Johnnie Cochran, the smooth talking black lawyer, had defended the black football hero to a mostly black jury primarily by arguing against the racism and misbehavior of the Los Angeles police department. In particular, Cochran zeroed in on the outrageous racist remarks of Mark Fuhrman, a white policeman who found the evidence.
Bienen and Geis suggest that money did indeed buy a highly effective, albeit controversial, defense for Simpson and ultimately played a critical role in the not-guilty verdict. At the same time they point out that the prosecutors stumbled badly in presenting their case and in responding to the defense. In particular, prosecutor Marcia Clarke made a fatal flaw in portraying the racist Fuhrman as a choir boy. Overall, Bienen and Geis argue, the prosecutors could have acknowledged the sometimes brutal police behavior and insisted that the jury differentiate such acts from the framing of innocent suspects, a behavior that made little sense in the Simpson case. The evidence against the defendant would have had to be planted well before the police even knew whether Simpson might have had an airtight alibi. (1/14/99)
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