Law 6226

Notes, Murder of Helen Jewett

 

  1. As a historical study:

 

Once again, the book is a study of a single case, put into a larger context. It is, in that sense, a synchronic history plus, where the plus is the larger context. It is also a study of a period of transition (and of the effect that transition had on the people of the time) in that respect, because it considers change, it is diachronic.

 

In subject matter, it falls somewhere in between the Boyer and Nissenbaum book and the Kutler book. Like Boyer and Nissenbaum, it focuses on society and uses tensions and shifts in society to explain the outcome of the murder trial (and the murder itself). However, it does more with the trial than Boyer and Nissenbaum do with the witch trials, so to the extent it has a strong legal component, it has more in common with Kutler (though here, of course, the emphasis is on a trial court, rather than on the doctrinal disagreements at an appellate court, which was Kutler’s focus).

 

Cohen is trying to show the interaction of law and the society in which it functioned, in order to explain the acquittal of the defendant in that case. To do so, she emphasizes both the new young men of New York in the period, and their power, as well as the new young women of New York (young women of Jewett’s type) and attitudes towards them. The outcome of the trial is, then, not just a referendum on Robinson, it is also a reaction to Jewett (and then, reaction to the outcome is also a referendum on both, though one which shifts somewhat in its focus).

 

Here, it is important to recall that some of the reaction to the trial is the material that she uses throughout her book. That is to say, the pamphlets about the trial, etc, are part of the story in two senses. They are both evidence for her to use to find out what happened during the trial and the murder, and they are evidence of popular opinion about the case during the trial and after the trial.

 

  1. As a history of law:

 

    1. Women in law. Here, Cohen provides us with a complicated picture of women and law in early 19th century New York. On one hand, women have few legal rights and little legal protection (which may be part of the reason Jewett has become a prostitute, it is clearly one of the few occupations available to her). At the same time, notice how often Jewett uses the law while she is in New York. She is not, in that sense, an outcast or outlaw (in the sense of being outside the law), she is an active consumer, so to speak, of the police department and the protections of the law. She is also, to be sure, sometimes subject to law, but here again, the law does not really do more than check her briefly, it hardly stops her career.

 

    1. Extralegal justice (that is, actions outside the legal system that have the effect of trying to enforce norms or punish behavior)

 

                                                               i.      Note the evidence of the riots and mob attacks on brothels. This is something that happened, not often but consistently, in this period and the period before it. Observe in the book who is doing the mobbing in this case, and what their motives seem to be. Consider also the reactions of the police and the women in the brothel.

                                                             ii.      Consider the other, more individual acts that might also be read as enforcement of a sort of rough justice – the personal attacks to revenge slights or wrongs; the way women in the brothels make decisions about where they will work that reflect, at some level, a sense of how justly they are treated; the discussion of whether or not Jewett was “cast out” when her immoral behavior was discovered (that is, in her girlhood before she moved to New York) also suggests a type of private judgment that could be seen as seeking justice through private, rather than formal legal means.

                                                            iii.      Note the connection between that sort of private conduct and crimes. Why is Robinson’s murder of Jewett not simply an example of a private legal decision? Is it not extralegal justice because the motive seems to us unjust? Would the killing of Helen Jewett seem like a legitimate form of extralegal justice if, for example, Robinson killed Jewett because she had forced him to embezzle to support her?

1.      There are two questions here to think about: When, if ever, is extralegal justice legitimate, and when does it become crime?

2.      Is Robinson “lawless” or “amoral” because his society was lawless and amoral, or because in a society that favored some forms of extralegal justice, he still went too far?

 

C.     Relation between extralegal justice and formal justice.

 

                                                               i.      Here, it seems clear that the jury acquitted Robinson because it ignored the law. Cohen’s study is a little less clear about why that happened (she sometimes suggests failures on the part of the attorneys trying the case, other times she focuses on the jury and its members sympathy with Robinson, sometimes she appears to accuse the judge).

                                                             ii.      In effect, this is a story of how popular ideas of what was just overcame the “rule of law.” In effect, the jury decided that Jewett could die without her murderer being punished, which is inconsistent with the laws of murder.

1.      Why did the jury do so? Cohen has some theories, which seem, at various points in the story, to be inconsistent with one another. It is possible to read this book and try to decide what seemed most significant, and that is something you should do in thinking about the book.

2.      What does it mean for the legal system that it permitted this? Is it a sign of the legal system’s failure, or its success?

a.       As a failure, the problem is obvious – there is a law defining murder, and that law was apparently ignored in this case.

b.      As a success, the situation is perhaps less obvious, but no less consistent with our understanding of the purpose of law: is law to get a truth? If so, it seems to have failed here. Is law merely to promote peaceful resolution of things, and maintain some order? If so, here law seems to have worked. Jewett was not revenged, to be sure, but no one seems to have cared much about that. What people cared about was dealing with the case in a formal fashion and sort of getting closure (to use a modern term) on the murder. And that happened. There were no riots afterwards. Statistics do not demonstrate lots of murders followed this decision. Things in New York stayed pretty much the way they had been, and from that standpoint, the case worked as a way of resolving the heightened interest in the case and making it go away.

c.       In a sense, this raises two questions:

                                                                                                                                       i.      First, how much is the formal legal system influenced by popular ideas of justice (either as extralegal justice, ie, riots, mob violence, lynching, etc; or when popular views of what is just are brought into the legal system by juries)

                                                                                                                                     ii.      How much should the legal system be influenced by those things? This is, ultimately, a question about what the purpose of a legal system is.