Case for Lizzie Borden’s Innocence

Many of us are more than a little surprised when we learn that Lizzie Borden, the most famous axe murderess in history, was tried by a jury for the murders of her father and stepmother and declared “not guilty.” Lizzie’s legal innocence was celebrated at the time as a just verdict, at least by the public (not so much by legal scholars). But the view of her as wrongfully accused soon became lost as the famous children’s jump rope rhyme “Lizzie Borden Took An Axe” worked its way into the soil of American culture and sprouted the verdant mythology that today encases Lizzie within a permanent presumption of guilt.

An editorial that appeared in The New York Sun near the end of the trial perhaps summed it up best: “A chain of circumstantial evidence is strong only if it is strong in every necessary link. A single weak point, and it breaks and is useless.  The chain tested at new Bedford during the past twelve days was proved frail indeed, not merely at once place, but in almost every link… Surprise at the weakness of the case against Miss Borden grew steadily to amazement that upon such slender evidence the life of a man or woman could have been deliberately  attempted by means of a judicial procedure.” 

The nature of a circumstantial case, in which most of the “evidence” turns out to be open to interpretation one way or the other, means that not all the reasons to believe Lizzie innocent are easy to put in a bullet-point list. Nor is it easy to bullet-point the empty void that sits where direct evidence should be. Nevertheless, here is a list of reasons why so many of Lizzie’s supporters in 1893 could comfortably say they believed her to be innocent, and why plenty of people today can feel comfortable saying the same.

Major Reasons

1. Lack of Blood Evidence — Andrew and Abby Borden were savagely hacked with a hatchet, spraying enough blood around their bodies that even the prosecution’s own experts testified that the murderer would necessarily have been marked with at least some blood. But Lizzie appeared before a dozen witnesses only minutes after the murders, and they all agreed that Lizzie’s dress, her face, her hands, and her hair were spotless. There was no sign of blood or dampness from recent cleaning, and even after repeated searches, there was no blood found anywhere on her clothing or in her room or on any of her belongings.
2. Lack of a Murder Weapon — Despite several exhaustive searches of the house and grounds conducted by numerous police officers, all the way to digging up privies and taking apart chimneys, the police never found a weapon they could solidly identify as the hatchet that killed the Bordens. (They did introduce a “possible” weapon in the Handleless Hatchet, but few today believe that dull and rusted blade was the actual weapon.) Lizzie never left the Borden property during the killings or afterward; the police kept a constant watch on it within minutes of murders, so there was no way she could dispose of a bloodied hatchet. For many, this means an intruder most likely did the killing and carried the weapon away.
3. Thirteen Minutes — There was a very short window of approximately 13 minutes between the time Andrew Borden was last seen alive by the maid, Bridget Sullivan, and the time Lizzie “discovered” his body and raised the alarm. It seems highly improbable that Lizzie could have successfully butchered her father, then cleaned herself of whatever blood would have inevitably landed on her, as well as make all other evidence of the crime disappear in such a short amount of time.
4. Barn Alibi Corroboration — Lizzie told police officers that she had been up in the barn loft at the time Andrew was killed, and had returned to the house at 11:10 a.m., the time she discovered his body. The police considered this alibi to be a lie and the district attorney declared her story “absurd.” However, the defense called to the stand an ice cream peddler by the name of Hyman Lubinsky, who effectively corroborated Lizzie’s story when he told the jury he had been driving his team by the Borden house at about 11:10 a.m. and saw a woman in a dark-colored dress walking from the barn to the Borden’s side screen door.

Strong Reasons that Support Innocence

5. Lack of Motive — Despite the prosecution’s best efforts to paint Lizzie as a walking cauldron of hatred for her stepmother, there is no evidence that Lizzie felt anything toward her stepmother other than the mild resentment a stepchild might typically harbor toward a stepparent. Yes, she inherited a great deal of money from her father, but there is also no evidence that she was desperate for that money or in danger of losing eventual access to it. Not even the prosecution suggested money as a motive.
6. Police Bias/Rush to Judgment — Within only an hour of officers arriving at the Borden house to begin investigating the murders, they had already found Lizzie too lacking in emotion for their taste and were openly declaring their mistrust of her (“I don’t like that girl,” said Officer Harrington to the police marshal.) Deputy Marshal Fleet would also later brag to a newspaper reporter that he’d made his “impression” of Lizzie’s guilt during that first afternoon. Add this shockingly immediate police bias against her to the public clamor for an arrest, and it becomes clear that a rush to judgment against Lizzie impaired a truly objective investigation and stopped police from developing leads to other possible suspects.

Other Compelling Reasons

7. Murky Opportunity — While much is made from the side of guilt about Lizzie’s supposed “unhindered” opportunity, on closer examination one finds that, beyond an unhooked screen door that would have given a determined intruder access, it would have been difficult for Lizzie to premeditate the murders in the particular way they happened. Lizzie had no foreknowledge that Abby would be up in the guest room until just minutes before she went up, and there is no evidence she had a secret hatchet at the ready. Plus, unlike an intruder who could have walked off into the safe unknown, Lizzie had nowhere to go and had to face an army of suspicious police officers, which was certainly a hindrance to opportunity.  
8. Upstanding Character — Lizzie was known to have “unimpeached character.” She was a regular churchgoer and Sunday school teacher as well as a volunteer for numerous charities. She was described by her friends as generous, reliable, and scrupulously honest. Even after being publicly shunned for the rest of her life, she continued to handle the unwanted attention and judgment directed her way with quiet grace and dignity.
9. No History of Violence – There was nothing in Lizzie’s past to suggest a bent toward solving issues with violence, nor of any kind of explosive temper. Rather than being subject to fits of emotion, Lizzie was known for her quiet stoicism and remarkable ability to keep her emotions in check, even while under great duress. Indications of a woman ready and able to resort to grisly murder were conspicuously absent both before and after the crimes.
10. Prosecutorial Issues — Hosea Knowlton was a well-respected lawyer, and his work on the Borden case was widely praised; however, in reading the transcripts of the trial, one can find numerous examples of the district attorney leaning hard into exaggerated, over-the-top conjecture without supporting evidence. (That could have been one reason why Justin Dewey, one of the judges who presided over Lizzie’s trial, gave instructions to the jury that continually warned them to question whether the prosecution’s claims had been “proven as fact.”) Knowlton also resorted to legal chicanery by compelling Lizzie to allow him to grill her under oath without a lawyer, violating her rights to the point that the judges ruled her inquest testimony inadmissible.

What About Sexism?

What is not on this list is what many observers of the case use to explain why Lizzie was determined to be innocent her trial; namely, that the all-male jury could not imagine that a woman could possibly commit such brutal murders. Sexism, as well as racism and classicism, are often said to be the context in which it was all but impossible for an 1893 jury to find her guilty. While certainly these “-isms” impacted the investigation and prosecution of Lizzie Borden, to toss such easy blame on them is a distraction from the genuine evidentiary issues that led to her acquittal.

Furthermore, it seems clear that the ways Lizzie may have been helped by stereotypes about her gender or class were offset by the ways in which she was harmed by them. The jury might have had doubts about a woman being able to ruthlessly swing a hatchet into her own father’s head, but the police had no doubt that a woman who failed to faint and weep (as they believed a woman should) could do it and did do it. The fact that Lizzie was menstruating at the time of the killings was brought up several times at trial along with the implication that her “monthly illness” surely caused her an instability of mind at the time, thus lending weight to considering her guilty.

Ultimately, as many modern mock trials have shown (including one presiding over by the first woman U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor), Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the charges against her not because she was a woman, but because the necessary evidence to prove guilt simply wasn’t there.

For a more personal look at how one might delve into the Borden murder case and arrive at the conclusion that Lizzie was most likely innocent, see Did She or Didn’t She?