Today is
March
5 and on this date in history, 1770, we witness the
Boston
Massacre. The large British garrison in Boston lead to increasing
tensions with the civilian population, and after an altercation between a squad
of soldiers and what charitably could be described as a rioting crowd, the
soldiers fired. The ultimate result was five civilian
deaths.
The commander and the
soldiers were indicted for murder and set for trial. The colonial government
was determined to give the soldiers a fair trial, but no lawyers in Boston would
take their case. The colonial authorities looked outside Boston and asked
John Adams. Although he was a leading patriot, and a candidate
for office at the time, Adams agreed that the soldiers needed representation
and took their cases.Three other eminent lawyers eventually joined the
defense.
The commander was tried
first and acquitted because the jury was not convinced that he gave the order to
fire. The soldiers were tried next and all but two were acquitted. The two
were convicted of murder.
Then Adams
showed his brilliance and knowledge of the law. He had the two convicted
soldiers plead Benefit of Clergy. This was an old medieval
defense in the common law. If a defendant could read, that defendant was
considered to be a clergyman and only subject to church courts. By the 18th
Century, Benefit of Clergy was watered down to a great extent. The course of
legal history transformed it into a mechanism by which first-time offenders
could receive a more lenient sentence by having the conviction reduced to a
lesser crime. Both soldiers could read from the Bible. Their murder
convictions were reduced to manslaughter. They were branded on the thumbs and
released.
In 1575 a statute of
Elizabeth I had radically changed the effect of the benefit of clergy. Before
the statute a defendant had to plead the benefit before a trial to have his case
transferred to an ecclesiastical court. Under the new Statute the benefit of
clergy was pleaded after conviction but before sentencing. Benefit did not
nullify the conviction, but changed the sentence for first-time offenders from
probable hanging to branding and up to a year's
incarceration.
The Boston Massacre
soldiers were branded but not jailed! Good lawyering on Adam's
part!
Adams later noted this
passage about his representation in his diary:
"I. . .devoted myself to
endless labour and Anxiety if not to infamy and death, and that for nothing,
except, what indeed was and ought to be all in all, sense of duty. In the
Evening I expressed to Mrs. Adams all my Apprehensions: That excellent Lady, who
has always encouraged me, burst into a flood of Tears, but said she was very
sensible of all the Danger to her and to our Children as well as to me, but she
thought I had done as I ought, she was very willing to share in all that was to
come and place her trust in Providence."
