History/Law

1 .0 INTRODUCTION

`Law ' is defined as a rule of conduct of procedure established by custom , agreement or authority . This makes an attempt to bring out the main themes of the course of Law , namely the changing definition of homicide , the treatment of the accused before the bar and changes in the justice system as to how the system tracked and identified those accused of murder . It also tries to shed light on the neutrality or otherwise of the justice system in the light of making of the laws by the society

. As first part of the goes , the perceived miscarriage of justice resulted by the wide involvement of the media in the respective trials is brought out by a comparative review of the sensational murder trials conducted in the American Legal History over the past century , of Lizzie Borden ax murders happened in 1892 and kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh boy by Bruno Hauptmann happened in the year 1932

2 . A REVIEW OF THE OUTCOMES OF THE BORDEN AND HAUPTMANN TRIALS

A comparative study and review of how the two trials of Lizzie Borden and Bruno Hauptman was conducted and judgment delivered would explain the basic concept of the belief that an innocent man being punished is generally a more serious miscarriage of justice than a guilty man being set free . The analysis of the trial of Lizzie Andrew Borden goes like this

2 .1 CASE OF LIZZIE BORDEN

Lizzie Andrew Borden , an American woman born in the year 1860 turned out to be a murder suspect in the killings of her parsimonious father and step mother , who were brutally mutilated with a sharp weapon and slain on the 4th of August 1892 at their Fall River home . Lizzie was arrested and tried for both the crimes with the maid being suspected as an accomplice '- (Article : Britannica Concise Encyclopedia . However she was acquitted because the prosecution was not able to prove the crime and the evidences produced were only circumstantial . A descriptive study of the conduct of the investigation and the subsequent trial brought out the following issues . Although quite subjective , these issues are of great importance in the matter of analyzing the justice system for its effectiveness in the conduct of trials

In the circumstances of the criminal forensics and the sociocultural limitations on the police investigations present at the time of the incident , the Lizzie Borden case definitely presupposes the inactive police work to thoroughly search the wardrobe of Lizzie Borden for the evidence of her cloths with blood stains . Because of this inactiveness it was alleged that Lizzie was able to burn afterwards , the dresses she wore on the day of murder . Here the prosecution lost effective evidence which would have otherwise proved Lizzie 's guilt

Without precedence the judge admitted the exclusion of the contradictory and incriminating statements made by Lizzie at the time of an inquest simply on the basis of the fact there was no counsel present at the...