defenses. And commentators are suggesting, like Van Buren, that insanity defenses based on the oppressive nature of social conditions are “a perfect license for Crime.”
In Van Buren’s argument we find the myth of an impartial system of equal justice that is still the prevalent ideological underpinning of American law. We also find the deeply ingrained fear of allowing social reality into the courtroom. A defense which contends that there is a link between social conditions such as racial oppression and antisocial acts is interpreted as a threat to law and order and to America’s institutions.
Identifying with the forces of law and order, Van Buren closed by appealing to the patriotism and fears of the jurors.
The danger to the peace of this community only affects me, as a lover of good order. If crimes of this magnitude are to go unpunished, and thus to invite imitation, it is your hearth-stones, not mine, that may be drenched in blood. But I do confess to a feeling of pride at the administration of justice in our State. Elsewhere, the murderer may go at large as a Somnambulist, an Insane Man, or a Justifiable Homicide. But in New York, thus far, the steady good sense and integrity of our Juries, and the enlightened wisdom of our Judges, have saved our Jurisprudence from ridicule, and firmly upheld Law and Order. Thus may it ever be; and I feel entire confidence, not withstanding the extraordinary appeals that have been made to you in this case, that your verdict will be in keeping with the high character our tribunals have thus acquired, and will prove that the Jurors of Cayuga fully equal their fellow citizens of other counties, in intelligence to perceive, and independence to declare the guilt of a criminal.
The jury deliberated for only one hour and found William Freeman guilty.
By the day of the sentencing Bill’s mental condition had worsened. He either did not understand or did not care that he was going to be hanged. When the Judge asked him if he understood he was going to be sentenced to die, he simply responded, “I don’t know.”
One reason the legal system in the United States and England has been so successful in protecting existing institutions and power relations is that the participants actually believe the fictitious stories embedded in the legal culture. Judges in particular accept the myth of equal justice for all people. The Honorable Bowen Whiting was no exception. He was preparing to send William Freeman to his death. To make that act palatable and legitimate, both to himself and to the public, in what was considered the most important criminal trial in America in the first half of the nineteenth century, Judge Whiting needed to choose the right myths to express in the sentencing. He needed to talk of equal justice and to praise the law as the protector of all citizens, and he did so.
“Let it not be said that the administration of justice is partial or prejudiced by reason of his color, his social degradation, or his monstrous crimes. Slow and tedious as these proceedings have been, the Court are certain that in the minds of all reflecting men, a confidence will arise in the power of the laws to protect the rights of our fellow citizens, and that the result will reflect honor upon the institutions and law of the country.
There is one particularly revealing section in the judge’s sentencing speech. He says that the most important lesson to be drawn from the case is the recognition of “a duty upon society to see to the moral cultivation of the colored youth, now being educated for good or evil in the midst of us.” Judge Whiting was warning the public that if they did not educate young blacks to respect law and white institutions, then the same kind of violence expressed by Freeman would be visited upon the entire society. In a warped way, the judge recognized the black rage that filled the African American community.
Having set out the facts of the case as he interpreted them, having praised the fairness and justice of the law, and having warned the public about colored youth, Judge Whiting then pronounced sentence:
The Judgment of the law is, that the prisoner at the bar, William Freeman, be taken from this place to the place from whence he came, there to remain until Friday, the eighteenth day of September next, and that on that day, between the hours of one and four in the afternoon, he be taken from thence to the place of execution appointed by law, and there BE HUNG BY THE NECK UNTIL HE SHALL BE DEAD.
Bill’s hanging was delayed after William Seward obtained a stay of execution in order to appeal. During that time Frances Seward went to visit Bill. She described her visit in a letter to her sister: “I was affected to tears by his helpless condition—I pray God that he may be insensible to the inhumanity of his relentless keepers—He stood upon the cold stone floor with bare feet, a cot bedstead with nothing but the sacking underneath, and a small filthy blanket to cover him.”6
Four months after the trial, oral argument on the appeal was heard by the three judges constituting the New York Supreme Court. In the Bill of Exceptions filed by the defense attorneys, twenty-seven errors of law were alleged. The court, well aware that this case was being watched by the public and the country’s entire legal community, wrote a thoughtful and well-reasoned opinion.7 The decision, written by Judge Beardsley, found four errors of law, reversed the conviction, and ordered a new trial.
The first error the court found was made at the preliminary hearing. The judge incorrectly instructed the jury that if the prisoner knew the difference between right and wrong he was sane. The correct rule of law was that the defendant had to know the difference between right and wrong at the time he committed the crime. The difference is important, as a person can generally know what is right and wrong but can act under an insane delusion, as Bill did.
The second error also took place at the preliminary hearing. The jury found that Bill was “sufficiently sane, in mind and memory, to distinguish between right and wrong.” The court considered this verdict to be argumentative and evasive, like saying someone is a little bit pregnant.
The third error of law was at the trial. One of the jurors, a man named Taylor, had a general and fairly strong opinion that Bill was guilty. Today, if lawyers object to a juror, the trial judge rules on the objection. In Bill’s trial the procedure was to have two neutral lawyers called “triors” rule on objections to jurors. The judge, however, was to give the triors the law that controlled their decision. In Bill’s case, the judge incorrectly told the triors that a juror could not be found prejudiced on the grounds that he had already formed a hypothetical opinion of guilt. The appeal court stated that the judge should have allowed the triors to weigh the strength of the juror’s opinion of guilt and then determine whether he could be impartial.
The final legal mistake the trial judge made in his haste to ensure Bill’s conviction was to restrict the testimony of the defense doctors. The judge had ruled that they could not testify to the results of the examinations they performed after the preliminary hearing. The judge reasoned that the verdict at the preliminary hearing had already found Bill sane. But that was not correct. The preliminary verdict was only to determine if Bill was competent to stand trial; it did not determine the issue at trial, which was whether or not he was sane when he committed the murders. Therefore, if the doctors felt their examinations after the preliminary hearing were relevant to their expert opinions as to Bill’s sanity at the time of the crime, their testimony should have been allowed. Based on all of the above errors, the conviction was reversed.
Meanwhile, Bill lay in manacles on the stone floor of his cell, his mind shattered, his spirit listless. The circuit judge visited the cell and verbally examined Bill, concluding that the prisoner was mentally unfit to be tried again. Approximately eighteen months after he was arrested, still chained in that same stone-walled cell, twenty-three-year-old William Freeman died of complications from a cold, his lungs failing him.
William Henry Seward went on to a distinguished career as secretary of state for Abraham Lincoln, becoming known as the man who persuaded the government to purchase Alaska. William Freeman’s case was considered so important that the U.S. Congress passed an Act in 1848 entering the report of the proceedings into the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of New York.
Seward had brought the reality of racism into the courtroom. For the next 110 years African Americans struggled to win their