SARGEANT, Leonard

The Trial, Confessions, and Conviction of Jesse and Stephen Boorn, for the Murder of Russell Colvin, and the Return of the Man Supposed to Have Been Murdered

Manchester, VT: Journal Book and Job Office, 1873. First Edition. Octavo (23cm.); publisher's tan wrappers printed within double rule, early 20th-century paper spine reinforcement; 48pp. Light dust-soil and spotting to wrappers, short closed tear to fore-edge of rear wrapper not approaching text, else Very Good and sound.

First full account of the first American example of wrongful conviction, authored nearly fifty years after the fact by the defendants' junior trial counsel Leonard Sargeant (1793-1880). Russell Colvin, brother-in-law of the Boorn brothers, disappeared from Manchester in 1812 and was presumed dead and possibly even murdered, though a body was never found. Seven years after his disappearance, Amos Boorn, the brothers' uncle, claimed to have been visited by Colvin's ghost, who informed him that he had been murdered and buried in a cellar hole on the Boorn family potato farm. A search was made of the cellar hole and several articles of clothing, though no body, was uncovered and identified as having belonged to Colvin's. Shortly thereafter a dog unearthed a few bones, mistakenly identified as human by a local doctor, leading to Jesse Boorn's arrest under suspicion of murder. While in prison, Boorn shared a cell with forger Silas Merrill, who falsely claimed that Jesse had confessed to the murder, a piece of "evidence" he provided in exchange for his own freedom. Jesse, facing a death sentence, would eventually confess to the murder in the hopes of saving his father from suspicion and lessening his own sentence. His brother Stephen, recently moved to New York, shortly thereafter agreed to return to Vermont in order to clear his name, only to find himself under arrest and committing the same mistake as Jesse by admitting to the murder in the hopes of avoiding a death sentence. Jesse would recant his confession, having discovered that it did not lessen his sentence, and though the bones unearthed were eventually discovered to be that of an animal smaller than a human, the two brothers were sentenced to hang. By a fortuitous accident, a New Jersey native Tabor Chadwick heard of the case and recognized the name of Russell Colvin as that of an acquaintance and he immediately penned a letter to the Manchester authorities, describing Colvin's physical attributes. Though the descriptions matched, neither brothers' sentence was lifted while Colvin refused to return to Vermont until finally tricked into doing so under false pretences. It was not until Colvin finally arrived in Manchester that the Boorn brothers were finally exonerated. At the time the local authorities considered the case to have been something of a bizarre fluke and no judiciary reforms were made, though today the trial is considered a landmark case in the history of American criminal justice. McDADE 113.

Price: $200.00

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