How Would You Decide?

10 Famous Trials That Changed History

A drawing of two people with hair curlers and statue of liberty.

and listen to the companion podcast miniseries In Dispute via the links below.

Expanded Table of Contents

Chapter 1

The Trial of Jesus

Piecing together the most influential trial in history from five differing accounts, written with obvious biblical perspectives well after the 30 C.E. trial happened, we walk back in time to hear the trial testimony. Apart from the mystical, religious significance of the event, here’s how a modern-day trial lawyer applies an unvarnished view of the legal procedures employed by High Priest Joseph Caiaphas and Roman Governor Pontius Pilate in their conviction of Jesus for blasphemy. Would his trial turn out differently today based on modern legal precedent and criminal procedure?

Chapter 2

The Salem Witch Trials

You can’t really call them trials with this kind of procedure, but has criminal law advanced much further? Consider that the Miranda warning case has been overruled by the courts in just about every aspect except by name. See how the evidence admitted in 1692 varies from today’s criminal proceedings, notably excepting the name of the charge: witchcraft. Here’s how the process (used) to work:

The individual “afflicted” by witchcraft made a complaint to the Magistrate about a suspected witch. That complaint would sometimes be made through a third person;
The Magistrate issued a warrant for the arrest of the accused witch;.
The accused witch was taken into custody and examined by two or more Magistrates. If after listening to testimony the Magistrate believed the accused witch is probably guilty, then the accused was sent to jail for possible reexamination and to await trial;.
The case was next presented to the Grand Jury, and the jurors examined the witch. The examinations were automatically entered into evidence;.
If the accused witch was indicted by the Grand Jury (which was virtually guaranteed), then the Court of Oyer and Terminer tried the accused witch. A jury, instructed by the “Judges,” decided the accused witch’s guilt (again, virtually guaranteed);.
The Court sentenced the convicted witch or wizard. In each case in Salem, the sentence was hanging, set on a particular date; and,.
The Sheriff and his deputies carried out the hanging.

Go back in time with me and listen to the judges question the witches. Did they admit the right kind of evidence needed to convict the witches? Did you know a minister was hung as a wizard?

Chapter 3

Rex v. Wemms, et al., the Boston Massacre Trial of Captain Thomas Preston and seven other British redcoats

For the paltry sum of eighteen guineas, about twenty dollars now, future-president-to-be John Adams, then a 34-year-old lawyer in Boston, took on the unpopular defense of these almost surely-to-be-hung soldiers. In 1770, while the United States was seeking its freedom from England, this case marked our first trial on an international stage. Founded on his precise questioning of some forty witnesses and with his eloquent argument mixing law, logic and politics, Adams argued the soldiers were not guilty based on self-defense.

Lawyer Adams obtained an acquittal of six of the eight soldiers arguing: “A judgment of death against those soldiers would have been as foul a stain upon this country as the executions of the Quakers or witches . . . As the evidence was, the verdict of the jury was exactly right.” Only the two soldiers who fired into the crowd were found guilty. Would our country have gained the respect of the Europe of colonial times had Adams not convinced the jury to disregard their passions and decide based on the facts? Did this unpopular defense ruin Adams’ law practice as many predicted? How would the American Civil Liberties Union have handled this case?

Chapter 4

The Tipping Point for the Civil War and its Aftermath—The Dred Scott Decision

In 1856, a slave sued to gain his freedom, but in what has been called one of the worst historical decisions of the United States Supreme Court, the Court itself ruled Scott was not a citizen, and denied him access to the court system. John Brown’s actions came on the heels of this decision, taking matters into his own hands.

The Trial of John Brown

The 1859 trial of abolitionist John Brown in Virginia should have been no more than a blip in the history books, but Brown turned out to be larger than life. Partly due to his own flawed zealousness and the efforts of several luminaries around him, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, John Brown’s sentence of death for treason, inciting rebellion, and murder became a lightning rod that galvanized the North into action against the South and started us on the march toward the war between brothers. The courtroom trial started out as a comical farce attended by 600 curious and boisterous court-watchers, but ended with sullen observers wondering if they were doing the right thing.

Slavery ended in large part to events started by Brown’s actions, but his death also fostered some unintended consequences. Watching the execution was a young Virginia Military Institute cadet, John Wilkes Booth, who later became infamous in his own right. You may have studied Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in school, but have you heard Brown’s oratorical response to the court’s verdict of death against him? Brown’s closing remarks have been called “one of the most memorable courtroom speeches” and “one of the two greatest American speeches.” After Brown spoke in the pre-Civil War courtroom in Virginia, only one spectator clapped when the judge sentenced Brown to death, and that citizen was quickly silenced.

Plessy v. Ferguson

Not until 1896 did our Supreme Court right the injustice done to Dred Scott, which the Court overturned in this famous case.
How do Supreme Court decisions shape historical events? In Civil War times, the high court corrected a horrendous, racially motivated decision. Are there lessons to draw from these cases today?

Chapter 5

The O.K. Corral Shootout Trial of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday

Lawmen tamed the Old West with bravery and guns, but did you know Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holliday were later tried in court for killing the Clanton gang? You may have seen the movies, but you haven’t seen the true trial of these larger-than-life men facing the gallows after the shootout. Their lawyers had a few tricks up their sleeve that saved Wyatt from cross-examination and positioned their case with a favorable court for a decision, saving them from the hangman’s noose.

You’ll get the chance to decide whether the lawmen were saved by their lawyers or really the town’s business-minded judge. What other forces were in play? Did a young female witness sway the judge’s mind?

Chapter 6

The Black Sox Trial

Nine players of the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series and caused a cheating scandal that forever changed the game of baseball, but why? Even though these Boys of Summer didn’t take the stand in their defense, they were found not guilty by a jury. Not to be dissuaded, however, the Commissioner of baseball got his revenge and struck the names of the “Eight Men Out” from baseball’s roster of players forever.

You may think you know the facts and the outcome, but what about the courtroom intrigue of these famous players? How did the prosecution’s objections defeat the ballplayer’s attempts to introduce evidence? Were their confessions extracted fairly? Was Shoeless Joe Jackson in on the fix? How did Club manager Charles “The Old Roman” Comiskey’s greed factor into mix?

Say it ain’t so.

Chapter 7

State v. Scopes (“The Monkey Trial”)

You couldn’t ask for a better test case or lineup of players. On the side of science, we have the legendary, 70-year-old trial lawyer Clarence Darrow for the defense seeking to uphold the theory of evolution. On the side of religion, there’s the famous orator, Congressman William Jennings Bryan who prosecuted biology teacher John Scopes’ violation of the anti-evolution statute in Tennessee. Evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin was absent from the proceedings, but his writings were squarely in the middle.

Did we descend from apes? Could we teach our children Darwin’s theory of evolution, or were public schools required to teach the Adam and Eve version of events? After an almost comical trial where he put Bryan on the stand outside the courthouse in 1925, Darrow asked the jury for a surprising verdict of guilty of his own client so Scopes could appeal the loss to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Bryan may have technically won the case, but in reality, he lost when the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the verdict, dismissed the case, and virtually all states refused to enact similar laws that prevented teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. Here’s what can go wrong when you try to set up test cases in court.

Did Darrow lose the battle to win the war? Did Bryan not see the forest for the trees? Can you now spot a test case that lawyers engineer for a particular result and do lawyers still use these tactics?

Chapter 8

The Lindy Chamberlain Trial

Late in August 1980, a mother’s cry rose from a quiet, inky-black, dark night at a campsite near Australia’s famous Uluru/Ayer’s Rock virtually in the middle of the continent: “My God, my God, the dingo’s got my baby!” Mother Lindy Chamberlain was tried in court while the nation found itself arguing in the newspapers over her role in her ten-week-old baby Azaria’s death. Convicted to almost universal applause across the continent, Lindy was sentenced to life in prison. Her co-defendant husband Michael Chamberlain’s sentence was suspended.

Some six years later during search around the base of Uluru/Ayer’s Rock during an unrelated investigation of a hiker’s death, the police found baby Azaria’s matinee jacket, stained with her blood, and mixed with dingo saliva. With that evidence, Lindy was released from jail and awarded $1.3 million Australian dollars for wrongful imprisonment. Was that enough money? How could the investigation and the science go so wrong? Should public opinion affect the outcome of a trial?

Chapter 9

The McMartin Preschool Trial

The pendulum of child abuse concern had swung far to one side and in 1987, four teachers from the McMartin preschool faculty found themselves in the sights of Parent Judy Johnson. She was a woman later recognized as a paranoid schizophrenic, but who initially appeared as a concerned mother claiming child abuse of her two-and-a-half-year-old son at the preschool, later asserting highly inflamed allegations that the teachers performed satanic rituals with the kids.

Despite no medical signs of abuse and her son’s inability to identify the alleged abuser, Manhattan Beach, California police fueled the fire with an apparently unfounded letter sent to other parents, which started a “snowball of suspicion rolling.” Seven years and more than fifteen million dollars later, the State of California prosecutors still had no convictions. They had succeeded, however, in emotionally damaging hundreds of children and ruining the reputations of four preschool teachers in the process and demolishing the school looking for tunnels.

How did the so-called expert psychologists and doctors present questionable findings based on unsubstantiated interviews? Did the media fan the fire with headlines without questioning the prosecutors? Did anyone win?

Chapter 10

The O.J. Murder Trial

America’s fascination with a fallen football-star-turned-sometime-sports-TV-celebrity transformed into a riveting international obsession that highlighted the cracks and ugly underbelly of our judicial system. We’ll look at the:

chase;
trial and the dream team;
children;
civil case; and,
the acquittal—can we trust the system?

Apart from the farce of the 1995 trial (was it really that long ago?), the TV rating system itself readjusted after 133 days of televised courtroom testimony. That event turned viewers into Simpson trial fanatics and was dubbed the “Super Bowl of murder trials.” Some 95 million viewers tuned in to watch a painfully slow police chase of O.J.’s white Ford Bronco crawl across county lines in Southern California. More than 91% of those watching television were watching the Simpson trial the day the jury returned its verdict. Called “a great trash novel come to life,” the televised trial held sway over those who would never even pick up a gossip rag like the National Enquirer.

It was a daily topic of discussion in the bars, around the watercooler when offices were full, and a de rigueur topic to discuss at almost all social events. Did O.J. really kill Nicole and Ron? Did the bloody glove fit? Were O.J.’s highly-paid “dream team” of lawyers the real reason he was acquitted? Does justice depend on money?

Listen to the Companion Podcast Miniseries In Dispute on the Legal Talk Network

For Individual Episodes:

Jacket Flap

Pull up a chair and have a seat at the counsel table. You’re going to sit right next to the lawyers in the throes of litigation while they fight off objections from opposing counsel, walk up to the sidebar at the bench to hear what the judges say privately and deal with anxious defendants as they stare down death sentences, long jail terms, big fines, constitutional questions, and large verdicts.

You’ll have an intimate look through the eyes and ears of a double Board-certified civil trial advocate who’s been in and around the trenches we’re about to visit for his nearly forty-year legal career. Author J. Craig Williams has tried innumerable cases, starting his career as a Certified Practicing Law Clerk while in law school. As a law student at the University of Iowa College of Law, he practiced in Iowa’s Linn County Public Defender’s Office, where he tried and won a week-long jury trial, 15 trials before a judge and earned a published opinion in his client’s favor from the Iowa Supreme Court.

As a newly-minted lawyer in California, he switched sides and volunteered for the District Attorney’s Office in the state’s largest county, San Bernardino, and prosecuted numerous criminal cases to favorable verdicts. As a civil lawyer who’s practiced for more than twenty years, he now regularly tries cases for corporate defendants in complex business litigation cases and criminal matters for white-collar defendants, continuing his winning streak. He has been recognized as one of the top 100 lawyers in Southern California, was named a Fellow in the Litigation Counsel of America in June 2015, an invitation-only award given to the top one-half of one percent of North American lawyers, judges and law professors, and he taught Trial Advocacy at his alma mater, the University of Iowa College of Law, where he graduated with distinction in just more than two years.

Craig is best known for creating a new copyright law that requires websites to pay artists for their streaming music. His seminal appellate case before the Ninth Circuit, Fonovisa v. Cherry Auction 76 F.3d 259 (1996), established for the first time the law of contributory copyright infringement. His case was cited as the precedent to shut down Napster, the first streaming music platform caught ripping off songs and distributing them across the Internet for free. He’s still waiting for his honorary Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards for ensuring those artists are paid for the audio and video that streams their performances.

Get ready for a journey through the eyes, ears, and voice of a skilled trial and appellate lawyer and go back in time to look at a series of famous cases that turned out quite differently than most courtroom watchers predicted while the case wound its way through the court.

If you’re looking for more How Would You Decide?, then be sure to download the expanded electronic version of the book. This electronic version contains nearly 400 endnotes of hyperlinks and citations, giving you complete access to the entire trial transcripts. Be wary of the hyperlinks, though, many expire as time passes.

Electronic Version, Book websites and Bonus Materials

This website gives you the chance to vote chapter-by-chapter how you would have decided the outcome of the trials and help pick the Trial of the Century. Visit the website to see how other readers voted!

At the time of the first edition’s publication, How Would You Decide? will be published in three versions. First it will be published as both a hardbound book and an electronic version, which will be available online through Amazon, Kindle, and Barnes & Noble, as well as all other major booksellers. These links as well as a sample chapter from the book are available on 10FamousTrials.com.
This book has also been adapted by Nathan Todhunter into a chapter-by-chapter podcast series to be broadcast on the Legal Talk Network over the course of the year following the publication of book’s first edition. In that adapted and abridged podcast series, the author narrates the adaptation and approximately 100 voice actors play the live-action parts of the judges, lawyers, and witnesses from testimony quoted in the book.

Finally, the author anticipates recording an audio version of the book after its publication. Stay tuned! When available, the link will be posted to 10FamousTrials.com

You can see all the available versions on the book’s website.

In the electronic version, you’ll get an expanded version of How Would You Decide?. The book’s uncut electronic version includes links to author’s selections from the opening statements, trial testimony and closing arguments. There are nearly 400 endnotes, which contain hyperlinks and citations to the complete, unedited version of the trial transcripts in their original form, allowing you full access for expanded research and to the entire context of the quoted material.

On the book’s website www.10FamousTrials.com, you can also find the links to the author’s occasional blog, May It Please The Court, press materials and contact information.

Get the author's other books

How to Get Sued: An Instructional Guide

This is the author’s first hardcover book, which consists of short, humorous vignettes about the foolish things that people do to get in trouble with the law. The author offers advice how to avoid similar situations and how the law can affect you. The book makes a great present for anyone involved with the law and is sure to generate a good laugh.

On this book’s website, you can find a sample chapter, bonus materials including a free bonus chapter (So You’ve Been Sued?) information about the author J. Craig Williams, press materials and contact information.

Visit the website to get the book.

The Sled

The author and his wife, Christine Bartley Williams, wrote this paperback children’s book for their first batch of grandchildren, Naomi Jo and Kingston. Their grandchildren star as the characters in the book, who along with several of the family’s animals try to save Christmas. They must prevent Santa, his elves, and reindeer from being frozen by the Frost King.

The book was illustrated by Amelia Bernstein, a former Disney artist. It too is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all major booksellers, and links to purchase it are available on its website. Stay tuned for the audio version of this book, featuring the voices of Craig and Chris' grandchildren.