Celia, a Slave by Melton A. McLaurin

Author:Melton A. McLaurin
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-8203-4159-0
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2011-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

THE VERDICT

WITH jury presentations completed Celia’s trial entered the stage most crucial to the defense, the determination of jury instructions. Missouri law enabled both the prosecution and defense to request that the judge deliver specific instructions to the jury. It also provided that either side could object to the proposed jury instructions of the other. The judge was at liberty to accept requested instructions either in whole or in part, or he could himself instruct the jury without regard to the requests of either the prosecution or the defense. Thus, the jury’s final instructions represented a combination of the instructions requested by the prosecution and the defense, the requested instructions the judge chose to deliver, and instructions not requested which the judge himself decided to issue. Since the instructions delivered had the potential to direct the jury’s verdict, it was essential that the defense propose instructions that would provide the jury with a rationale for finding Celia innocent. It was equally essential that the defense develop instructions that Judge Hall would find acceptable and present to the jury.

Because of their significance, jury instructions were carefully drafted. The effectiveness of a set of instructions rested upon a thorough knowledge and understanding of both Missouri’s legal statutes and precedent setting court rulings. Jury instructions also afforded attorneys some creativity, an ability to develop original legal concepts and advance arguments never employed in prior cases. Since Jameson admittedly lacked enthusiasm for legal research and was not renowned for his legal creativity, Kouns and the law school graduate Boulware most likely contributed to the strategy of the defense at this stage of the trial.

No matter who developed the strategy, the set of instructions offered by the defense represented a combination of the mundane and the audacious. Among the more predictable of the thirteen separate instructions requested was a statement about presumption of innocence, which drew an objection from the state sustained by Judge Hall. Another three, all eventually given by the judge, requested that the jury return a verdict of not guilty unless it found from the evidence presented that Celia had willfully killed her master, and unless the jury arrived at this conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus, the instructions the defense requested, like Jameson’s cross-examinations of the state’s witnesses, placed little emphasis upon disputing whether Celia had, indeed, killed Robert Newsom. The state’s overwhelming evidence that she had done so dictated such a strategy by the defense, which never denied that Celia had been responsible for Newsom’s death, but focused instead on Celia’s motives.

The remainder of the nine instructions requested by the defense dealt with motive. All were designed to provide the jury reasons for acquitting Celia even though the prosecution’s evidence proved conclusively that she had struck Newsom a fatal blow. In what was a weak legal argument, the defense requested that Celia be found not guilty of murder in the first degree, the crime with which she was charged, if the jury found that Celia had killed Newsom “without deliberation and premeditation, and in the heat of passion.

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