by Paul S. Gillies, Esq. RUMINATIONS The Trials of Jesse and Stephen Boorn1
They had quarreled most in the after- noon, up there in the field next to Mr. John- son’s, picking up stones, in 1812. The work- ers included Jesse and Stephen Boorn, Russell Colvin, and a few others. They had been moving stones for several days, pull- ing the rocks out of the ground, where they boiled up each spring, carrying them to the fence line. That day they quarreled, there were words and then there was a fight. And something happened.2 Russell disappeared. At first this was no surprise, as he had a habit of disappearing from time to time. As Leonard Sargeant de- scribed him, Russell Colvin was a “man of weak intellect, and was at times insane, and would sometimes absent himself for days at a time without giving any account of himself, and once he was gone eight or nine months, though it is said that he corresponded with his family during the time.”3
Only after his
wife Sally was with child did the subject boil over into the community, after Stephen said she was free to swear her child to its father (not Russell), which the law would not let her do as long as she was a married woman. The law was at the start of this whole business. Implication: Russell was no longer alive, and Stephen knew it, and had something to do with it. The Boorns had motives. Before Russell’s disappearance, Stephen asked an attorney if his father had to support Colvin’s young ones, if Russell could not provide for them, and the lawyer agreed. Stephen asked if that was not hard, and stated, “if there was no one else to put a stop to [the fathering of more children by Colvin] he would, and he said it with an oath.” People started to whisper their darkest fears. “Russell Colvin is dead.” Amos Boorn, uncle to Jesse and Stephen and a man of unimpeachable char- acter, had a dream in which Russell’s ghost appeared and said he had been murdered, showing Amos an old cellar hole, where his body was buried. Later, that is where search- ers found a jackknife and a button, said to belong to Colvin. Then there was the incident with the lit- tle dog baying at a tree stump, and the dis- covery of bones, a thumbnail (or toenail), and Colvin’s decayed hat, found close to the stone field. The doctors agreed tenta- tively they were human bones, but one had a doubt. They arranged for an exhumation of a leg recently amputated, and compar- ing the bones decided those found under the stump were not human. Stephen was seen wearing Russell’s shoes. Rumor and
8
the statements of the Boorn brothers fired a community passion for justice. The crime of murder must be punished.
People believed the worst. Finally, after
seven years, in 1819 a grand jury was sum- moned, Jesse was arrested and Stephen brought back from New York, where he had moved in recent years. There was a grand jury, an indictment, and during the period between that and the trial, Jesse confessed, orally, and then Stephen, in writing. These confessions proved impossible to ignore. Then followed the selection of a jury, a trial, conviction and death sentences, a commu- tation of Jesse’s sentence to life imprison- ment by the legislature, and then the amaz- ing return of Russell Colvin, a month away from the scheduled hanging of Stephen Boorn.4
“They say I murdered you,” said Stephen to Russell at the door of the jail, and Russell answered, “You never hurt me. Jesse struck me with a briar once, but it did not hurt me.”5
The Boorns were released. Russell re- turned to New Jersey, to the farm where he had been found. Eventually, the Boorns moved west, to Ohio. The story of this inci- dent became legend, and the stain on Ver- mont seemed indelible.
The Greatest Embarrassment The Colvin murder case against the Boorn
brothers is notorious in Vermont judicial his- tory. No case cast more blame on the judicia- ry for a conviction based entirely on circum- stantial evidence, with confessions made under duress and coercion, and no body, other than a thumb or toenail (not proven to belong to Colvin), in a time before DNA testing or scientific forensics were avail- able. If this is the way they do it in Vermont, many believed, shame on them. Those Ver- monters let public hysteria and dreams and ghosts rule their system of justice. It was America’s first wrongful murder conviction case.6
There had been murder
convictions prior to 1819 in Vermont, but none, before or since, that shocked the con- science the way the trial of the Boorns did, and none that have subjected the Vermont Supreme Court to such criticism.7 The first newspaper reports mistaken- ly stated that the convictions were based “upon the dreams of their neighbor.”8
The
dream of Amos Boorn was part of the sto- ry, but it never entered the courtroom, at least not explicitly, although one modern commentary has advanced the idea that the
THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • SUMMER 2012
prosecution’s decision to call Amos Boorn was strategic. “Everyone had heard about the dream. Knowing this, the prosecutor put the uncle on the stand at trial, not to testi- fy about the dream, but because his pres- ence on the stand would cause the jurors to think about the dream and remember that a close blood relative had, in effect, accused the defendants of the crime.”9
But for most
critics, it was the confessions that made the case, not dreams. The confessions were hard to overlook.
The Woodstock Observer’s correspondent was confused by the whole business: “It is impossible to reconcile the singular and contradictory circumstances which this affair has developed.” Reviewing Judge Chase’s notes from the trial, which were printed in the House Journal for the 1819 session of the legislature, meeting in Montpelier dur- ing the trial, in support of the act commut- ing Jesse’s sentence to life imprisonment, the reporter concluded that “there could remain no doubt that Stephen and Jesse Boorn were the murderers of Russell Col- vin.”10 The Vermont Journal reported, “The tri- al is, indeed, a curiosity, and exhibits an in- stance of convicted innocence escaping the punishment of guilt, unparalleled in this country.”11
It was impossible not to wonder
how a system of justice could convict, and nearly execute, men for a crime that wasn’t a crime.
The Trial The proceedings took place at Manches-
ter’s first courtroom, located where build- ings now called Equinox Junior are found.12 The trial took five days, from November 27 to 31, 1819.13
The Supreme Court, which
consisted at that time of three members— Chief Judge Dudley Chase, Joel Doolittle, and William Brayton—was required by law to try all capital cases.14
Richard Skinner, for-
merly a judge of the high court in 1817 and 1818, and who had been elected chief judge in 1819, but had turned down the office, ap- peared for the defense along with Leonard Sargeant, his young colleague.15
The pros-
ecutor was Calvin Sheldon, state’s attorney. The State called Amos Boorn among its witnesses, who told about the knife and button taken from the cellar hole, the nails and bones found in the old tree stump, but said nothing about his dream (which had led to the discovery of the knife and button).16 Silas Merrill, Jesse’s cellmate, testified
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