Description

In what may be known as the trial of the 19th Century, Lizzie Borden was tried for the double murder of her father and stepmother. Newspapers from across the Country covered this sensational crime. A famous ditty of dubious veracity said:

Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks,
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

In truth, the Bordens only received 29 whacks, not the 81 suggested by this famous poem. But the defense would have to rely on more than a mathematical error if it hoped to save Lizzie from a guilty verdict. The story of this trial, rooted in the last decade of the 1800’s, involves an understanding of trial techniques and constitutional protections that exist even to this day. By the end, you will have to grapple, as the attorneys did then, with implicit sex biases, limitations of circumstantial cases, and more. In the end, was justice done?

This program is being designed in conjunction with attorney Joel Oster, Comedian of Law and True Crime Podcaster.