Lizzie Borden Trial Essay

On a sweltering 1892 August day in Fall River, Massachusetts, Andrew and Abby Borden were violently murdered in their home on Second Street. The subsequent police investigation and trial of Lizzie Borden gained national attention and rightfully so considering a female murder defendant on trial was and is to this day an extremely rare proceeding. The Lizzie Borden Trial held in 1893 attracted attention from nearly the entire United States with newspapers in New York City, Providence, and Boston publishing articles at a frenzied pace. The trial was the most sensational murder trial of the nineteenth century (excluding the Lincoln assassination) and despite an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence Lizzie was acquitted by a jury of twelve

Judges make rulings on what evidence may or may not be admitted over the course of a trial and technology impacts the way police collect and process evidence, this is true today as well as during the 1892 trial of Lizzie Borden. The rudimentary practice of evidence collection and processing by police was a critical factor in the acquittal of Lizzie Borden. Fingerprinting had not been introduced into the court system and the absence of an eyewitness left the prosecution with little to work with, this left the prosecution only circumstantial evidence but most if not all of it pointed at the defendant. The Borden home was absent of any signs of forced entry and the traditional signs of a struggle couldn’t be located during the police examination but several gruesome facts indicated Lizzie Borden may have been innocent. Medical evidence as to the method used in the killings pointed toward a “tall man” being the culprit, specifically the nineteen wounds inflicted on Abby Borden were said to have been from a dull edge of an axe. A Portuguese man visited the residence earlier on the day of the murders to collect wages from Andrew Borden but was turned away, this man was the initial suspect of police

Bridgette was feeling ill that fateful day in August, after she performed her morning chores she retired to her bedroom so she could rest a key piece of evidence surfaced as a result. The first of the two slayings took place on the second floor, a fact which the defense used to hammer away at the State’s case. Several theories exist on the exact role Bridgette Sullivan played during the trial but none were proven and her testimony which turned out to be indifferent toward Lizzie was accepted as truthful by the twelve person all male