Self-Evident Truths by Richard D. Brown

Author:Richard D. Brown [Brown, Richard D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2016-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

Faithful Narrative of Elizabeth Wilson (Hudson, N.Y., 1786). This poignant story was reprinted as a pamphlet at least three times, with newspaper versions published in nine states from South Carolina to Vermont. Courtesy, American Antiquarian Society.

A few days earlier, anticipating jurors’ doubts, Swift had defended Connecticut’s law on “murdering Bastard Children.” Addressing the Norwich grand jury, he instructed them that although the 1699 statute prescribed a verdict of murder for concealment “whether it [the child] was born alive or not,” Connecticut courts now followed “a milder construction,” requiring “some kind of presumptive evidence that the Child was born alive.” Concealment alone could not be “deemed sufficient to convict the mother.” Everyone should understand that “this mild, humane, and benevolent construction of the Statute has removed all grounds of complaint.” As to sexual morality, Swift defended Connecticut’s old laws, which “wisely prohibited, and punished under severe penalties, all criminal connection from the highest to the lowest stages of familiarity:—from adultery, to lascivious carriage and behavior.” The grand jury approved Swift’s sentiments, calling unanimously for their publication.72

But one of Clarissa’s attorneys complained. Convinced that her sentence was wrong, he hoped to overturn this miscarriage of justice and told his penniless client that he would help draft a clemency petition to the legislature. This experienced Norwich attorney, who had defended the mustee Samuel Freeman and later Prudence Crandall against Connecticut’s Black Law, was Calvin Goddard, a forty-year-old Massachusetts native and Dartmouth College graduate. In the 1790s he had often represented Norwich in the Connecticut House of Representatives, rising to Speaker in 1800. Then, following two terms in the U.S. Congress as a Federalist, in 1807 he was again elected Speaker.73 Goddard believed that his client could win relief and that her case could provide leverage to reform Connecticut law.

The four-page petition he drafted for Ockry sought a pardon, new trial, commutation of the death sentence to a lighter punishment, or complete reprieve. Goddard’s arguments were based on more thorough conversation with Ockry than had been possible before trial. She now explained how pious citizens had pressured her into confessing “facts” that were not accurate. It was true that the infant boy was born alive, but “it was very feeble and died [after] a few moments.” She never tried to “stifle, smother & suffocate” the child. Nor had she concealed her pregnancy, as three women and two men would attest. The jury, she said, had not had all the facts. After she signed “Clarissa Ockry,” Goddard brought her petition to his old colleagues in the Connecticut Assembly.74

Would both houses vote to reduce her penalty? Representatives endorsed Swift’s argument that “severe penalties” should follow sexual misconduct; moreover, the convict had been tried fairly and convicted. Still, Ockry’s defender, Goddard, was no radical but a respected Federalist, and his role in the state assembly magnified his voice. So on June 8, two days before her scheduled hanging, poor, mixed-race Clarissa—ironically linked by her name to the novelist Samuel Richardson’s virtuous rape victim—won commutation. A divided legislature concluded that six months in jail was sufficient punishment.

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