Memorable Trials, Part Two Trivia Quiz

Answer: two

John Adams defended the British soldiers and won "not guilty" verdicts for the captain and for six of his eight underlings that were charged. The other two were convicted of manslaughter but they were able to avoid prison by claiming the benefit of clergy.

This is a custom dating back to the Compromise of Avranches in 1172, under which Henry II agreed that secular courts would not exercise jurisdiction over clergy, in exchange for Henry's being absolved of guilt in the 1170 murder of Thomas Beckett. By 1351 this right of the clergy had evolved to where it could be claimed by anybody who demonstrated he could read from the Bible. Thus, when the two convicted soldiers demonstrated they could read, they were punished by branding on their thumbs, rather than imprisonment.

Answer: Virginia

Although Harper's Ferry is in present-day West Virginia, in 1859 it was still part of Virginia. West Virginia did not come into being as a separate state until 1863.

In contemplating an execution two and a half months after the crime, one marvels at the contrast to today, when executions normally take over a decade to carry out after the conviction. The famous line from the movie "Back to the Future 2" comes to mind, with Doc telling Marty, "The justice system works swiftly in the future, now that they've abolished all lawyers!".

Answer: Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony's trial reads like something out of a Kafka novel. She was not allowed to testify on her own behalf, and at the time of sentencing the judge repeatedly told her to sit down and be quiet when she tried to offer her statement. She protested that the Constitution gave her the right to vote, and that the jury, being all men, was not a jury of her peers as required by the Constitution.

The judge ultimately fined Anthony $100, a fine she never paid.

Answer: Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday were charged with murder, but the Judge who heard the Preliminary Hearing found insufficient evidence to bring them to trial.

After a month-long Preliminary Hearing, Judge Wells W. Spicer ruled that "I cannot resist the conclusion that the defendants were fully justified in committing these homicides. There being no sufficient cause" to believe the defendants guilty of murder, "I order them to be released." The aftermath was that Morgan Earp was shot and killed and Virgil Earp was shot and disabled, while Wyatt Earp lived on for forty-seven more years.

Answer: Idaho, miners

Governor Frank Steunenberg had taken a brutally repressive stance against mine workers, and ended up being assassinated. After a hard-fought trial, Haywood was found not guilty.

Answer: United States Supreme Court

Shipp's case is the first to ever be tried before the U.S. Supreme Court. What happened was that the U.S. Supreme Court had issued a stay of execution in the case of Ed Johnson, a Black man falsely accused and convicted of raping a White woman. Sheriff Shipp removed all but one of the deputies guarding the prisoner, in effect allowing the townspeople to storm the jail, remove the prisoner, and lynch him.

The Supreme Court was outraged at this, rightly feeling that it constituted a blatant contempt of court for undermining the court's stay of execution. Shipp was tried, convicted, and served his 90-day sentence in a Washington, D.C., jail, after which he returned to a hero's welcome in Tennessee.

Answer: Kidnapped from prison and lynched.

Frank was found guilty and his appeal was denied. However, the governor of Georgia, a courageous man named John M. Slaton, reviewed the record and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. A mob then overpowered the guards at the prison farm where Frank was being held, took Frank out, and lynched him.

Many years later his innocence was finally established when the chief prosecution witness against him admitted on his deathbed that he had lied.

Answer: Defendants plead guilty and were sentenced to prison.

Darrow delivered an impassioned twelve-hour plea to the judge, an oration which Professor Douglas Linder has called "the most eloquent attack on the death penalty ever delivered in an American courtroom". The judge deliberated for two weeks and then decided on life in prison rather than execution.

Loeb died in a 1936 prison fight, while Leopold was released in 1958 and lived out his life in Puerto Rico, where he taught school and did church work.

Answer: Rosenberg

After the execution of the Rosenbergs, their two sons spent decades trying to prove their parents' innocence. Information which came out following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s has established that Julius was in fact a spy, but that Ethel was innocent and was convicted on perjured testimony.

After the admission of guilt by 91-year-old Morton Sobell in 2008, the Rosenbergs' two sons finally accepted that their father had in fact been a spy.

Answer: Patty Hearst

The Patty Hearst case really called into question the notion of free will on which the criminal justice system is based. Hearst was kidnapped kicking and screaming from her California apartment by a group calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army, and was caught on videotape a few months later participating in a bank robbery with members of the group.

She was put on trial for the robbery, and her attorney, F. Lee Bailey, presented a brainwashing defense. Nevertheless, she was convicted and sent to prison. Those who contend that the justice system unfairly favors rich defendants should consider this case, in that the best defense money could buy failed miserably.