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Jon Smyth
Detective Sergeant
Username: Jon
Post Number: 63
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 03, 2003 - 5:04 pm: |       |
Mr James Fitzjames Stephen began his charge to the jury......
".....(he had)..never known a case which presented so many remarkable and singular features"
An East London newpaper said that, " never, perhaps, in the annals of crime have there been such efforts put forth to save a man's life as there has been in this case of the convict Lipski"
"A number of questions have been raised in this study. Was Lipski properly convicted? I believe that he was not. The judge's charge was grossly unfair in stressing the 'lust' theory and effectively took the case out of the hands of the jury. An appeal court today would, I think, quash the conviction. Moreover, Lipski's defence counsel, perhaps through drunkenness in one case and inexperience in criminal matters coupled with unpreparedness in the other, did not adequately present Lipski's defence. If the trial had been properly conducted, the jury might well have found reasonable doubt about his guilt"........" the final question is whether Lipski was, in fact, guilty. I will not claim that Lipski was innocent, but there is at least a reasonable doubt about the truth of the confession and about his guilt"
Martin L. Friedland. Ph.D., F.R.S.C.
Professor of Law
University of Toronto, CAN.
(Author)
The trials of Israel Lipski
Macmillan
ISBN: 0 333 35795 7
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Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 110
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 04, 2003 - 6:52 am: | |
Doies this mean you find Friedland's doubts about Lipski's conviction persuasive, Jon? I felt they were a classic example of a crime writer trying to make his study publishable and marketable with a cry of "miscarriage of justice" on the slenderest of evidence. (Compare Robert Graves's deeply dishonest or self-deceiving "They Hanged my Saintly Billy", pretending that Palmer of Rugely was innocent.)
All the best,
Martin F |
Jon Smyth
Detective Sergeant
Username: Jon
Post Number: 66
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 04, 2003 - 2:38 pm: | |
Oh, good grief no.
I was simply trying to wet the appetite of those who might be interested in the subject.
But, having said that, do you think the authors experience in law count for anything?
(More tactfully put: Do you think the author is expressing his concern based on his experience, or making a subtle sales pitch, or is he allowing a publisher to influence his expressed opinion?)
Friedland did not suggest Lipski was innocent, but only that there may have been a 'reasonable doubt', if he had received a fair trial.
Maybe you would call that 'skirting the issue', maybe, maybe not.
I have not finished the book yet, until then I would reserve my opinion on the authors opinion & Lipski's guilt.
Best Regards, Jon
P.S. I was not aware Friedland was a crime writer, though he has wrote several books on law and the justice system. |
Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 113
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 05, 2003 - 8:14 am: | |
Well, I'd call "The Trials of Israel Lipski" crime writing rather than legal academica or politico-social history, despite the issues it raises in both fields (especially the second). I would normally call Graves a poet and novelist who also wrote essays and literary criticism. "They Hanged my Saintly Billy" is his only venture into crime writing.
All the best,
Martin F |
Gary Alan Weatherhead
Inspector
Username: Garyw
Post Number: 185
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 05, 2003 - 9:01 am: | |
Hello Jon and Martin
There is a big difference between getting a fair trial and the question of ones guilt. When we talk about 'reasonable doubt' we are normally talking about quilt or innocence formed in the judge or the juries mind. Perhaps it would be best to say that there was a serious question of whether Lipski got a fair trial. The issue of guilt is a seperate matter. This can be an indication that the legal system has failed and this happens far more often than we would all like to believe.
This reminds me of the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. There was worldwide question about whether they received a fair trial. This prompted people to believe that because they did not get a fair trial they were innocent. Sacco and Vanzetti were almost certainly guilty, but the Judge had a bias that was outragous and was best expressed by a comment he made after the trial. He stated "Did you see what I did to those anarchist bastards".
My point is that an unfair trial can all too often be interpreted as a case of wrongful conviction of the innocent. Whereas in reality it is often the case that a party who must be presumed innocent was not given justice in court.
All The Best
Gary |
Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 115
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 05, 2003 - 4:21 pm: | |
Vanzetti, you think, was guilty?
And you think the limited circumstantial case against Sacco outweighs the Mafia confessions, culminating in Vinnie Teresa's?
All the best,
Martin F} |
Gary Alan Weatherhead
Inspector
Username: Garyw
Post Number: 205
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2003 - 3:36 pm: | |
Hi Martin
Please let me have your source. I wasn't aware of any Mafia confessions. I know that they were able to link Sacco to the robbery through ballistics. I would like to know of any recent revelations.
All The Best
Gary |
Jon Smyth
Detective Sergeant
Username: Jon
Post Number: 72
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 06, 2003 - 10:23 pm: | |
Well Martin, (Hello), having finished the book (The trials of Israel Lipski) I feel better equiped to answer your initial questions.
"Does this mean you find Friedland's doubts about Lipski's conviction persuasive, Jon?"
Well, to be fair I find it was not only Friedland by himself, but he was for the most part echoing many of the sentiments of the day, plus adding a few of his own.
Since the morning of the murder, June 28, 1887 until Aug 20, 1887, I think the points raised criticizing the inadequate defence, dubious witness testimony and conflicting medical opinions were duly noted and certainly reflected the opinions of many.
What I found disconcerting was that neither story was acceptable as presented. The case for the prosecution was not without its faults in much the same way as the case for the defence. Neither story adequately fit the evidence as presented.
On Aug 20th, The Lancet summed it up in the most respectable and simplistic fashion.....
"...(The Lancet) analyzed the evidence and concluded that 'after careful and anxious inquiry, and after balancing the evidence, we unhesitatingly avow that Lipski's guilt has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt'..."
You then asked....
"I felt they were a classic example of a crime writer trying to make his study publishable and marketable with a cry of "miscarriage of justice" on the slenderest of evidence."
I did not get that impression. Friedland did place some emphasis on some issues that may not have occured to the general reader. The general reader being a layperson, I assume.
However, for the most part he was re-itterating contemporary opinion, albiet, some of that opinion was coming from 'outlaw' press agencies, and not welcome by the Home Office.
The next day, Aug 21st, Israel Lipski confessed and that changed everything.
Friedland then asks leading questions as to the legitimacy of the actual confession. Was it coaxed out of him?
I must admit, a confession coming from a man who had made the case (in his defence) that he had, appears strangely out of place.
That a man starting out his own business in his room, dashing out to buy 'tools' for his new employees on their first morning, then admits (confesses?) to stopping by in the room below to rob & murder a young woman, then try to kill himself while his employees are waiting upstairs?
One thing appears certain, and I echo Friedland here, that, "not all the facts of what occured that morning have come to light".
Yes, I totally agree.
The Lipski affair, in 1887, was labelled "The Whitechapel Mystery", it remains so labelled.
However, now it is now overshadowed by the events of a more gruesome kind.
Regards, Jon
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Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 120
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 7:15 am: | |
Hi Gary!
I answered this last night, but must have failed to press the submit button. Apologies.
I don't remember my original source. (Most of what I've read on Sacco & Vanzetti has been from library books, and I didn't keep notes). When I remembered the two points I made, as a quick check to ensure that this wasn't my aged memory playing tricks on me, I referred to Carl Sifakis's invaluable Encyclopedia of american Crime, which confirmed the Mafia/professional crime confession point, so I took it - (you confirm rightly) - that my memory was also okay on thinking there was some genuine evidence against Sacco.
Hi Jon!
I don't own the book, and so am quite dependent on my memory which doesn't recall all the details, and so I can only say that my impression on reading it ten or more years ago was as I stated.
All the best,
Martin F |
Gary Alan Weatherhead
Inspector
Username: Garyw
Post Number: 216
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 10:32 am: | |
Hi Martin
In the book MURDERS, SPIES, LOVERS, AND LIES; (Which is actually a very good book despite the title) by Marc Mappen. He makes the following observations about the ballistic evidence:
-The cartridges found on Sacco's person when he was arrested matched those found at the crime scene.
-These cartridges at the crime scene were made from the same machine as the ones at the site of the crime scene.
-The bullets owned by both Sacco and Vanzetti
were of the same obsolete type found at the scene.
-One of the bullets and one of the shells fired at the crime scene appears to have come from Sacco's gun.
I would say that Sacco and at the very least Vanzetti's gun were at the crime scene.
Recall that at the moment he was about to be executed Sacco shouted out "long live anarchy'. He sounded very much like a man who was willing to do whatever was needed, including giving his own life, to strenghten the 'anarchy' movement.
The purpose of the holdup was to fund this movement.
All The Best
Gary
I would start a thread on this case but I think I may be the only one interested. |
Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 123
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 5:51 pm: | |
Hi Gary!
The purpose of the robbery was ONLY to fund the anarchist movement IF Sacco and/or Vanzetti were the robbers, and no non-anarchists accompanied them. Even when we have such a "politically motivated" "liberation" of funds, as in the Houndsditch Murders or some of the lunatic acts of Patti Hearst's kidnappers, we are, surely, in the former case looking at a bunch of burglars who (like Steinie Morrison) just happened to be reds because that was the normal political stance of people of their race, class, country and time; or, in the latter case, we're looking at people so self deceived with paranoid delusions of grandeur that their notion that they are funding anything can hardly be taken seriously. By all accounts, Sacco and Vanzetti were very sane and mature. Do you think Joe Hill's final shout, "Don't mourn! Organize!" means that he really committed murder? Or that (to go to the other side of the fence) Laval's "Vive la France!" meant that he was admitting to treason?
I don't like cartridges "apparently" fired from Vanzetti's gun. If a sufficiently undeformed shell case can be examined in a comparison microscope, then it may be said quite definitely it was or it wasn't. If the firing has deformed the metal remains beyond that point, "apparently" is a judgement wide open to being infuenced by bias, and within quite recent living memory we, in England, have ample evidence that bias comes in at once when supposed or real acts of terror are under consideration - hence all our disgraceful miscarriages of justice over the 1970s PIRA bombings, and our refusal to pay a blind bit of notice when an actual bomb squad acknowledged having perpetrated the atrocity for which several innocent kids (and one very dodgy one) were languishing in undeserved prison.
If nobody else is interested - shame on them! Bunch of ruddy sensationalists who are only interested in thinking about women being chopped up, and couldn't care less about politically influenced miscarriages of justice and/or the illicit up-stirring of popular "anti-imperialist" world opinion in the interests of revolutionary sedition!
(Exeunt in a rush all those who have normally thought me polite and reasonable!]
All the best,
Martin F |
Gary Alan Weatherhead
Inspector
Username: Garyw
Post Number: 223
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 7:01 pm: | |
Hi to the new Martin
No There were a large group of anarchists working together and there were a number of men seen at the crime scene. Human beings being what they are I question whether they were all seeking to liberate funds just for the sake of their noble political cause.
Sacco's shout at the moment he was about to die could mean a couple of things. It could mean he was happy to die for his cause and he was aware that martyrdom awaited. Or it could just be his way of saying screw-you. Much as the new Martin might express himself at such a moment
I'm not especially thrilled about 80 year old ballistic evidence even if the weoponry has since been retested. My concern is that the jurors were unduly influenced by the evidence which most of them probably misunderstood anyway.
The whole subject of the anarchist cause in America and the intricacies of the Sacco-Vanzetti case, as well as the political uproar it caused, interests me to the point where I will take the advice of the new Martin And start a thread titled SACCO AND VANZETTI; Martyrs or Murderers.
I'll argue with myself if I have to.
All The Best
Gary |
Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido
Post Number: 129
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 08, 2003 - 6:45 am: | |
Perhaps it should be labelled "Sacco, Vanzetti and Anarchist crimes", as we shall undoubtedly want to make comparisons with the Tottenham outrage as a similar wages snatch by two anarchists.
All the best,
Martin F |
Gary Alan Weatherhead
Inspector
Username: Garyw
Post Number: 226
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2003 - 7:52 pm: | |
Hi Martin
Makes sense to me.
All The Best
Gary |
Stephen P. Ryder
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 2991
Registered: 10-1997
| | Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 12:19 pm: | |
Just got the following via email in case anyone is interested:
I've just returned from the UK and thought that I'd let you know that Israel Lipski's home (at 16 Batty Street) and murder site is for sale.
Was thinking that I'd buy it myself but London housing prices are astronomical. The property, with several bedrooms, would make an excellent Ripper related bed and breakfast and tour origination site as well as a Ripperologist museum. The house is one of several period dwellings that remain intact on Batty Street.
The Realtor is Keaton's Estate Agents in Bow. You can look at the site and the building (that is going for a mere 650,000 Pounds) at www.keatons.com. I was interested and made inquiries. My grandparents lived in the Council Estates before their demise approximately 45 years ago and my granddad lived on Berner Street as young child at the time of Stride's murder.
Stephen P. Ryder, Editor
Casebook: Jack the Ripper |
Michael Raney
Detective Sergeant
Username: Mikey559
Post Number: 126
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, February 26, 2004 - 3:48 pm: | |
Wow,
It would be wonderful to own something like that. How much is that in U.S. dollars, does anyone know? Not that I could afford it, but I would be interested in knowing.
Mikey |
Richard Brian Nunweek
Chief Inspector
Username: Richardn
Post Number: 718
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2004 - 3:51 pm: | |
Hi Stephen,
That would be owning history, there is only one small problem, my eyes kept seeing two many noughts, i agree London house prices are astronomical.
Richard. |
Jim DiPalma
Detective Sergeant
Username: Jimd
Post Number: 72
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 1:00 pm: | |
Hi Mikey,
Exchange rates fluctuate, but in recent weeks the British pound has been around $1.80 US. So, the asking price is about $1.17M US.
Maybe if we took up a collection....
Jim |
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