Celia, a Slave Read online

  The prosecution followed Coffee Waynescot with William Powell, the neighbor who had led the search for the missing Newsom. In a brief statement Powell matter-of-factly related the manner in which Newsom’s bones had been located, not once referring to his interrogation of Celia. Jameson put Powell through a rigorous cross-examination, much as he had done with Jefferson Jones, stressing similar themes. He asked Powell if he knew whether Newsom had slept in his bed on the night of the murder, and Powell replied that he had not examined the bed. He obtained from Powell testimony that Celia had originally denied knowing anything of Newsom’s disappearance, that she had confessed only after she was threatened with the loss of her children and hanging. Under Jameson’s questioning, Powell admitted that Celia said Newsom habitually forced her to have sexual intercourse and that she had asked other members of the family to make him stop the practice. He also testified that Celia said she had not intended to kill Newsom, only to hurt him in order to make him stop his sexual demands. Jameson also obtained from Powell an admission that Celia maintained that even as she struck Newsom she acted from desperation, with no intent to kill. Powell’s testimony, combined with that of the state’s other principal male witness, Jefferson Jones, was crucial to Jameson’s planned defense.

  The state called as its last witnesses two doctors. Both testified that the bones produced by the prosecution were, indeed, those of an adult human. The defense did not bother to cross-examine either witness. After the state introduced into evidence Celia’s signed confession, obtained at the scene of the crime on the day after the murder for the coroner’s jury, it rested its case.19

  The defense began its case by calling to the stand Dr. James M. Martin, a prominent Fulton physician and a man of enough standing in the community to have led an 1853 effort to obtain a railroad for the county. That a man of his prominence would testify for the defense—and nothing in the record suggests that he was a hostile witness—indicates that many of Fulton and Callaway County’s citizens were sympathetic to Celia. In Martin’s case, that sympathy evidently resulted from the belief that even slaves possessed certain elemental human rights, which owners were bound to respect, rather than from any opposition to slavery. In fact, in 1860 Martin owned five slaves, including two women, forty and twenty years of age, and thus was probably a slaveowner at the time of the trial. It is clear that the defense hoped to use Martin to challenge the state’s physical evidence in the case, and to create doubt among the jurors that Celia alone and unaided could have carried out the crime of which she stood accused. This seemed a logical and promising line of defense, since Jameson was aware that in the weeks following Celia’s arrest some members of the community, as well as the Newsom family, had continued to suspect that Celia was not alone responsible for her master’s death.20

  To accomplish these objectives Jameson put a series of questions to his first witness. Could the body of an adult human be destroyed in a common fireplace within the space of six hours? Although Jameson assigned the briefest possible time span to the destruction of Newsom’s body (Celia may have had as much as eight hours in which to dispose of the corpse), he had pinpointed the issue most responsible for doubts that Celia alone had murdered Newsom and disposed of his body. The burning of a human body in a cabin fireplace must have been a difficult, malodorous affair, requiring constant refueling and constant effort to keep the corpse in the flames. How, the question implied, could this have been accomplished in so short a time by a single woman, only nineteen years of age, who was both sick and pregnant?

  The question brought an objection from the prosecution, which Judge Hall sustained. Despite the sustained objection, Jameson refused to abandon this promising line of defense. “What would be the time required for a common wood fire to destroy an adult body?” he asked, rephrasing his question in an effort to avoid again being overruled by the judge. Another objection from the prosecution followed, again sustained. Once more Jameson rephrased his question, trying to meet the prosecutor’s objections. “What, in your opinion as a ‘scientific physician,’” he asked Martin, “would be the time required to destroy an adult human body?” A third objection from the prosecution, also sustained, caused Jameson finally to abandon his effort to counter the state’s physical evidence. However, he objected to each of Judge Hall’s sustaining opinions and requested that his exceptions be noted, a request the judge denied. This series of objections to the arguments of the defense, all sustained by Judge Hall, strongly imply that the judge was determined to have a brief, procedurally correct trial in which the state would prevail. Counsel for the defense, however, was not cooperating.21

  Thomas Shoatman then took the stand for the defense. A Fulton resident, he had accompanied Colonel Jefferson Jones when Celia had been questioned in July about the possible involvement of other slaves in the murder. That Shoatman, unlike Jones, who had been the state’s lead witness, was called to testify for the defense without any indication that he was a hostile witness once again suggests that some of Callaway County’s residents sympathized with the defendant. Jameson attempted to use Shoatman’s testimony to establish that Celia feared for her life at the time she killed Newsom. This was a critical point for the defense, for throughout the slaveholding states the law gave a slave the right to use force to repel physical attacks that threatened his or her life. The legal principle that a slave could, in extreme circumstance, resort to the use of deadly force to protect her life was also one that had been upheld in a number of southern state court decisions.22

  Shoatman testified that Celia said when she first struck Newsom, he fell and then “threw his hand up to catch her.” The prosecution objected to the testimony. Again Judge Hall sustained the objection, and the clerk struck from the record the phrase “to catch her.” Jameson then reworded his question to the witness as the result of the objection and asked specifically if Celia had said why she struck Newsom the second, and fatal, blow. Shoatman replied that “the reason she gave for striking him the second blow was that he threw up his hands toward her to catch her.” Once more the prosecution objected, and Judge Hall sustained the objection. The reference to the threatening nature of Newsom’s gesture was stricken from the record. While it is evident from the record that the jury was ordered to disregard this portion of Shoatman’s testimony, Jameson had succeeded in presenting to the jury evidence that Celia had acted in self-defense. This accomplished, he queried Shoatman about the reasons Celia gave for first striking Newsom. Shoatman replied she did so without intent to kill Newsom, “only to hurt him, to keep him from having sexual intercourse with her.” Again, the prosecution objected to Shoatman’s testimony, and the judge ordered that the phrase “to keep him from having sexual intercourse with her” be stricken.23

  With Shoatman’s testimony, Jameson reinforced the themes introduced in his cross-examination of Jones and Powell. Although the judge ordered the jury to disregard Shoatman’s testimony that Celia first struck Newsom to prevent him from raping her, Jameson had made sure the jury heard it. Shoatman’s testimony also allowed Jameson to implant the idea of self-defense in the minds of the jurors, despite the state’s successful objections. He had lived up to his reputation as a skillful jury advocate, presenting the basics of his defense to the jury despite the objections of the prosecution and a presiding judge whose consistent rulings to sustain the state’s objections revealed, if not his hostility toward the defendant, at least a desire for a perfunctory defense and a short trial. Jameson also presented the jurors with testimony that Celia had struck the fatal blow in an effort to defend her life. Furthermore, Jameson’s willingness to pursue a line of questioning after the state’s first sustained objection indicates that his performance was far from perfunctory. The defense was providing Celia the best of their collective abilities in the face of the ill-concealed hostility of the trial judge. Assured that the jury had at least heard the defense’s major arguments, Jameson here rested his case. Whatever his motives, his performance revealed that, in this case at
least, Jameson believed even a slave accused of her master’s murder deserved the best possible defense. Having presented his arguments to the jury, he next attempted to reconcile the essentially moral nature of the case for the defense with the technical constraints of the law. The manner in which he did so suggests that Jameson believed not only that his client deserved the best possible legal defense but that she was morally innocent.

  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.” It also requested that she be found not guilty if the evidence showed “that she did not intend to kill him at the time it was done.” These two requested instructions were, in effect, a bid to reduce the charge against Celia to second degree murder and thus spare her life. Though not crucial to the defense, they, too, drew objections from the state, which Judge Hall sustained.1

  The remaining six requested instructions contained the heart of the defense’s case. Each of the six attempted to establish that Celia had the legal right to use force to repel her master’s sexual advances. The defense’s decision to make this, rather than self-defense, the basis for its case was dictated by Judge Hall’s rulings on testimony given during the trial. By sustaining the prosecution’s objections to defense questions about Newsom’s possible threats against Celia’s life, Judge Hall had removed all grounds for a plea of self-defense. The defense had been unable to obtain direct testimony from Celia about a perceived threat upon her life, for under Missouri law, as was the case in most southern states, a slave could not testify against a white person, even one deceased. Judge Hall’s refusal to allow any reference to supposed threats on Celia’s life, which were all ultimately based on statements made by Celia, was thus technically correct, though it was a severe blow to the defense, for self-defense was the sole legal argument extended by southern courts to slaves accused of capital crimes.2

  The remaining instructions requested by the defense represented a bold and imaginative response to its inability to plead Celia innocent on grounds of self-defense. Three of the instructions requested specifically called for Celia to be acquitted if the jury found that she had acted to protect herself from an “imminent danger of forced sexual intercourse.” One of the three anticipated the jury’s possible negative reaction to Celia’s having a sexual relationship with both George and Newsom. The defense wanted the jury instructed that prior sexual conduct on Celia’s part did not confer upon her master an absolute right to sexual relations with her. “Although the jury may believe from the evidence,” the requested instruction read, “that Newsom and another had had sexual intercourse with Celia prior to the time of the said alleged killing, yet if they further believe from the testimony, that the said Newsom at the time of said killing, attempted to compel her against her will to have sexual intercourse with him, they will not find her guilty of murder in the first degree.…”

  Having presented its argument that, regardless of her past sexual activities, Celia should be acquitted if the jury found from the evidence that she had killed Newsom in an effort to prevent him from having sex with her, the defense proceeded to build its case that Missouri law allowed such a defense. At this point the defense’s arguments began to threaten the very foundations of the institution of slavery. Celia, the defense insisted, even though a slave, was entitled by law to use deadly force to protect her honor. Section 29 of the second article of the Missouri statutes of 1845, the legal code in effect at the time of the trial, made it a crime “to take any woman unlawfully against her will and by force, menace or duress, compel her to be defiled.” Those convicted of such an act were to be sentenced to three to five years in prison. The defense’s requested instructions argued that “the use of a master’s authority to compel a slave to be by him defiled is using force, menace and duress, within the meaning of the 29th section of the 2nd article of the Missouri Statutes for 1845.” Finally, the defense requested that the jury be instructed that “the words ‘any woman’ in the first clause of the 29th section of the second article of the laws of Missouri for 1845, concerning crimes and punishments, embrace slave women, as well as free white women.”3 The contention that the term “any woman” included slave women was crucial for the defense, for, according to Missouri law, even first degree murder was justifiable if committed in resisting a person attempting to commit a felony upon the resisting individual.4

  The defense’s contention that Newsom’s death was justifiable homicide, that even a slave woman could resist unwanted sexual advances with deadly force, and that the sexual demands of even a master could be legitimately resisted by his human property was as bold as it was brilliant. It certainly was not the jury instructions that would have been expected from competent defense counsel selected to provide a merely adequate defense. With its claim that Celia had the legal right to protect her honor, defense counsel raised a multitude of legal questions about ownership of the reproductive capabilities of a female slave. If, for example, a slave could resist her master’s advances, had she also the right to refuse a male partner her ma
ster selected for her? The issue of who controlled sexual access to female slaves held tremendous economic, as well as social, significance, for the reproductive capabilities of female slaves were clearly viewed by slaveholders as an economic asset over which they had control.5 This innovative and daring strategy indicated that counsel for the defense was determined to employ every conceivable legal argument and device to see Celia acquitted.

  The prosecution objected to each of the defense’s requested instructions employing the justifiable homicide argument, forcing Judge William Hall to choose between the instructions proposed by the defense and those proposed by the state. The prosecution’s requested instructions which, like its case, simply ignored motive, claimed instead that “the defendant had no right to kill [Newsom] because he came to her cabin and was talking to her about having intercourse with her or any thing else.” In yet another of the prosecution’s suggested instructions, the contention was put more forcefully: “If Newsom was in the habit of having intercourse with the defendant who was his slave and went to her cabin on the night he was killed to have intercourse with her or for any other purpose,” Celia had no right to take his life and should be convicted. Finally, the prosecution requested that the jury be instructed that “there is no evidence before the jury that [Celia] was acting in self defense.” The jury was to consider neither the defendant’s motives nor her intentions. If the jury determined that the evidence and testimony presented proved that Celia, for any reason, had killed Newsom as charged, it was to return a verdict of guilty.6 Thus the instructions requested by the prosecution, were, in effect, a recognition of a master’s right to demand sexual favors of his slaves.