Prof. Fields good afternoon. We are going to talk about jean harris. We are going to talk about this case in a couple of different sections. First, we will talk about the case itself. As we talk about this case, i want you to keep two things in the back of your mind. We will come back at the end of class to talk about these. The first is, i want you to think about how this case is both similar and different from the Lizzie Borden murder trials from 1893. About 100 years earlier. The second is a question of, why do you want know who is a board is, and raise your hand if you heard about the jean harris murder trial before this class. You had all heard of Lizzie Borden, right . I want to talk about why some cases remain more famous than others. Especially because everybody talks about cases as if they are this case of the century, the trial of the century. We will begin with opening statements. The reason we are doing that is that most of america really got to know our alleged perpetrator and our victim in the opening statements. Today, Luke Nicholas will be presenting. As is traditional, luke representing the prosecution will go first. Ready, luke . Come on up. I will step away. Luke i would like to begin just by thinking my esteemed colleague jalisia, onto a heavier note now. Role as a prosecutor of the state is not to defend the moral character of the doctor. It is not to object evidence to uphold a faulty case. It is not to paint a false picture. My duty to the people of the state of new york is to uphold the very foundation of our society. Justice. I must do this in a fair and equitable way. I must provide evidence, expert witness, and the testimony of dear friends and family. I must make known the truth of what happened on the night of march 10, 1980. This is a solemn undertaking. I take no joy in the facts of this case. Wish it were that we were not here finding ourselves in such a terrible situation. But as many, many years of Human History have shown us, jealousy, hatred, and revenge, all too often distort and disfigure mankind. The goodness of mankind. It seems as though the british 1697william congreve, in wrote the archetype of ms. Famous maxim, now heaven has no rage like love helld hatred, nor furried like a woman scorned. Scorned, a powerful word, meaning belittled, or demeaned, to the point of fury. I have seen, to my deep dissatisfaction, that ms. Harris was a woman scorned. Consumed with jealousy, with hatred, that led her to murder her lover of 14 years. As you will see by the testimony of her sons and her colleagues, ms. Harris was a tightly bound woman, a commanding woman, a woman easily offended by irreverent actions. She was the headmistress of the allgirls school in mcqueen, virginia. The stress of such an occupation was augmented by the constant challenge to her authority is headmistress. Authority as headmistress. By the Family Lawyers contesting expulsions, and reprimands handed down from her office to disobedient students. She was embattled in her positions as many in such positions are. Thats a woman who believes if all miscreants would follow her way, they would be reformed and find joy in a near stoic discipline. As i am sure all of us have seen before, she fell in love with a man who could be perceived as her exact opposite. Maybe she saw an opportunity to reform him, a conquest to prove her own pedagogical power. A mighty triumph, it would have been, to take the doctor away from his whores, as she would call them, and reform him. Make him see the light of a good, strong woman like herself. I daresay, she dreamt. But this was not to be. He was set in his ways. He was set in his ways. As abhorrent as they may be to us. As the two grew close, as oftentimes couples like this do, like two worlds colliding, opposites attracting. Different values, friends, attitudes, and agendas. They remained together for 14 years. Their affairs, i do mean the sexual endeavors of the doctor outside his relations of jean relations with jean harris were known to her. Known to ms. Harris. She never thought any of these floozies a threat, until the young, smart, beautiful when try iforce came intoy the picture. Ms. Harris would tell police after fleeing the scene of a murder, not only did she in fact shot the doctor, but that he slept with every woman he could. And i had had it. Jean harris was of a sober mind as she got in her car in the late hours on the evening of march 10th, 1980. She had with her a. 32 caliber pistol. Her coat, and a scornful intention to kill her lover. Jealousy had become fury. After lynn the rival in this love triangle had cut up thousands of dollars worth of her clothing and encouraged the doctor to stay away from jean. Miss harris had a plan. She drove from virginia to new york that night. Walked into the dark garage of the doctors house. And up the spiral staircase that led to his bedroom. She drew the gun. She yelled at him after seeing the womans negligee scattered across the bedroom. She then squeezed her trembling finger on the cold steel trigger of the. 32 caliber handgun five times. Killing the man who had scorned her. Possibly wishing that the woman had not left early that night, or else she too, likely would have been murdered. Jean harris picked up her coat and gun, and she exited the house the way that she had come in. She got into her car and began driving back to virginia. After evading the police by making a drastic uturn, she was pulled over. She admitted to the crime. Now, here today, she sits in the courtroom. She is not pleading in sanity or any instability of mind. Insanity or any instability of mind. She has confessed to the murder in a spite of a jealous rage. This love triangle ended abruptly at the discharge of that. 32 caliber pistol. One shot pierced through the palm of the doctors hand and into his chest as he raised his hands to shield himself. We are left beyond a reasonable doubt, and the evidence will show that jean harris consciously, voluntarily, and intentionally fired five shots, the five shots that murdered the doctor on the night of march 10, 1980. Ill leave in the hands of the jury truth. May you by the grace of god bring justice to the family and friends of dr. Tarnower. Thank you. [applause] honor, opposing counsel, members of the jury. Paint a walmart high stature and independent such as miss harris as independent and with an uncontrollable temper. A womany to accuse such as driven with jealousy and raid 20 she discovered her lover of 14 years, who asked for her hand in marriage, only to take it away because had had wondering eyes. Ladies and gentlemen, the prosecution is looking for the easy way out. But unlike the prosecution, you know just because something is easy doesnt mean it is correct. The tale of the old woman with riddled with rage and seeking their lover from someone younger and beautiful is not only cliche, it is simply not the case when it comes to ms. Harris. At the height of her life, ms. Harris felt she was at her lowest as her reputation as a discipline headmistress of a academy was under fire. Her integrity was broken where she could not walk a way for mr. Because she loved him so much she could not accept what he had done to her. The prosecution believed they provide the motive and means for ms. Harris to do such a horrific crime. Ladies and gentlemen, the only motive that she had was the motive to end her life. The prosecution will try to tell you that on the night of march 10th, 1980, ms. Harris sent to the home to shoot his four times in the chest. With a. 32 caliber pistol. They will fail to tell you about minutes before driving to his home, ms. Harris left behind a suicide note. And drove a final goodbye before she said goodbye. They will fill to tell you about the bruises found on miss harriss arms. And the struggle over the gun when mr. Tarnower tried to pull the gun away. The same struggle as the bullet the palm ever his to cover the gun. They will show you a letter written by ms. Harris and will say it shows undeniable proof of the intent to kill lover. It will fail to tell you that this letter is only representative of ms. Harriss state of mind at the time she found out mr. Tarnowers affair. They will fail to tell you the ,etters written by mr. Tarnower letters prescribed as prescriptions of the number of sedated, painkillers, sleeping pills and amphetamines as ms. Harris used as a way to deal with her depression. Finally they will fail to tell you how officers overheard ms. Harris admitted that he did commit this crime. The same officers who physically mishandled the evidence because they were unequipped and lacked the knowledge to follow the proper procedures of the crime scene. The prosecution has the burden of proof to prove to you that ms. Harris had one, the motive thethe means, too, with intent and knowingly, and three, beyond a reasonable doubt that ms. Harris committed this crime. At the conclusion of this trial the prosecution will fail. Members of the jury, jean harris loves mr. Tarnower despite everything. She did not want to kill the man who she remembers warning her with roses and dances. This is the man who she was with for 14 years. The night of march 10 was not driven by malice or hate, but was an unfortunate result of a woman struggling with her Mental Health. And i employ you to return with the burden and the verdict of not guilty. [laughter] [applause] well done, both of you. You dont need me for the rest of the class. Very well done. Since we are all here and i get paid to do this, i will keep talking at you. This is a case where geography matters. We know how much i like maps. Geography matters here, because it reveals social status. And issues of distant irrelevant. Dont worry, there will be more maps. Heres the big picture. Denver, over here. Detroit, right here. Cleveland is right here. This is lake erie. Washington, d. C. Is down here. Philadelphia is about here. And new york city is here. Hermann tarnower live just outside of new york city near the connecticut border. Lets talk about the back story. They did a great job of telling you some of it. Here is a little bit more. We will start with jean harris story before she met her husband. She was born in 1923 to a wealthy family. She grew up in the suburbs of cleveland, in a particularly wealthy suburb known as Shaker Heights. I got this information from a combination of sources. I read a whole bunch of articles about the trial, and i read a biography by about jean harris by a woman named shauna alexandra. To be clearly candid, this biography is not unbiased. The opening sentence basically alexander says jean harris could have been her. So, not unbiased at all. In that biography, which was based on just tons of letters and interviews while she was in prison, alexander argues that harris problem with her Mental Health and her problems with men begin as a child. It is the 1920s, her father is a very successful businessman, in addition to living in Shaker Heights, they vacation so we have Shaker Heights over here by cleveland. Heres detroit. This line is the canadian border. The Family Vacations on the canadian side of lake erie. They had a summer home. The kids stayed there all summer and the husbands would work or in a week and come out for the weekend. Allegedly, miss harriss father was a cold and distant guy. Jean harris was smart. She did well in high school. She went off to Smith College and graduated phi beta kappa. She did everything a wealthy young woman of that era was supposed to do. Once she got her degree, she got married. She got married to a guy named knew fromis who she her summers on the canadian coast. James harris said the bill of who shoe should marry. Who she should marry. He was a nice guy, but he was not terribly ambitious. He came from a good family, but when he graduated from college, he got a job with a company who made carburetors. He was not moving up in the company as quickly as anyone would buy, and the Harris Family was not making as much money as either the two had grown up with. Jean harriss life starts to deviate from what might have been expected from a woman in the 1940s and 1950s at this point. She moved to grosse pointe, michigan outside of detroit. This is all in the general area. It is another wealthy suburb. They had two sons, and they send thean wanted to boys to private school but they did not have enough money. She did something different. She got her masters in education and began teaching at a private girls school. This gave the family more income and it changed the dynamics between james and jean quite a bit. She later would say she married james to irritate her father. That he was not what her father would have wanted. End, the harriss divorced in about 1964. Inn took a new job philadelphia. Which is now to the east. She was the headmistress of a girls middle school. One of the advantages of that is, the sons who were with her could go to the school where she was headmistress. So they had access to what she saw as a better education. Hermann comes hermann tarnower comes from a different background. His parents are immigrants. He was born in 1910. He lived the american dream. He went to college and medical school during world war ii. He enlisted in served in the u. S. Medical corps after world war ii. Just outside of new york. Heres manhattan down here. Up here,to an area which is called purchased, new york. He started a Medical Clinic and specialized in cardiology. The Medical Clinic became quite successful. Multiple different members joined, he was one of the lead doctors most of the time. By all accounts, he was very successful, not only as a doctor, but socially. He started social climbing because he is making more money, hanging out with wealthy people. He really enjoyed to travel, and he traveled on his own and he traveled as a guest of some of his patients. He enjoyed the idea of saying they were traveling with their private doctor. He liked hunting and he went on safaris. He enjoyed golf and tennis at the country club that would admit him. He was jewish, so not all of the local country clubs would admit him. Those that did, he participated in. He was a bit of a ladies man. He never married but he had lots and lots of different girlfriends. He seemed well on his way to being a perfectly happy wealthy player, until he meets jean harris in 1966. Harris and hermann meet, it is a set up. They have these mutual friends who live in new york city. As luck would have it both had gone off to visit the soviet union separately, relatively recently. The friends that they would get along because they enjoyed travel, they were witty, all of those things, and so, they had a party, they set the two of them up, and it worked. They began dating. And, after a year or 18 months or so, they got engaged. Here is where the stories diverge a little bit. Some reports are that tarnower was not serious about the engagement. Other reports are that he was completely serious about the engagement, but she, with her sons who were not yet 18, she was worried about remarrying while they were underage. She felt she did not want to introduce that element of a stepfather into their life, even though she had been dating tarnower. Wereoys knew him, they traveling together and spent weekends together. Jean harris insisted that she was pretty much ready to call the engagement off when hermann tarnower called it off. Regardless of who called it off, the engagement ends. Jean returns the very expensive Engagement Ring. He says keep it, she says i cant keep it. He says to keep it, dont keep it, back and forth, eventually she keeps the wedding ring. All along, jean has issues with money, but she doesnt want to be seen as taking his money. He is pretty wealthy and she is less so. The engagement is off, but the relationship is not. This is again, where perspectives change. Everything about this story depends on whose perspective youre listening to and whose perspective you believe. And how credible these witnesses are. It is made more complicated, because he died before he could write his memoirs. Jean did not. Jean admits that tarnower was a bit of a ladies man. She does not think he was necessarily dating folks while they were engaged, but after the engagement, he started his playing ways and dating other women again. She had written him a letter of which she kept a copy of which she basically said i can live with this, because i know that i am special. He takes it as fair game to do what he wants to do and they continue their relationship. They continue to travel together. She hosts parties for him, she offers him decorating advice. In a lot of ways, she asked as a like a longterm relationship, a longterm girlfriend. Kind of like a wife, except she does not live with him permanently. She then moved even closer to where he was. He is on the border of connecticut and new york, and she gets a job as a headmistress in another girl school in connecticut by the house about 45 minutes from his house. Or just perfect, she can pop over for parties, maybe she spends the night, maybe she goes back home, but she is super close. A couple years after that, she decides to want the change. She ends up working for a corporation in manhattan. East coast dates are super small. She drives down to manhattan every day. She is perfectly happy. Now, in the background of all this, and they made mention of this, in about 1970, early in their 14 year relationship, jean harris complains to dr. Tarnower that she is having problems with exhaustion and she is just so tired. And if there is anything he can do to help. So he does. He prescribes drugs. He starts with a prescription methamphetamine. Then, not surprisingly, after time on the methamphetamine she cannot sleep, so he adds the sleeping pills. Andiple reports speculate jean harris said that she was probably depressed and that the drugs were covering for the depression. And they were not helping anything. Its important to remember that she spends basically 10 years on methamphetamine. This is going to come back to us. In 1977, things are going to change. Because harris moves again. She gets a different job. And this time, it is in washington, d. C. She is headmistress of an elite girls boarding school. This changes the dynamic. She spread her way physically. It is the longer 45 minutes, i can pop over. Now, she is 275 miles. In 1980, that is about a five hour drive. You have to go through philadelphia, new york city, or washington, d. C. All to get to him. So tarnower has a lot more freedom. Jean is not there. This relationship was ongoing with the other woman for a while. They spent a lot more time together now because jean is not there. They spend more time at the house, and she works at the Medical Clinic. She gets a seat she is some sort of medical assistant. She is seeing him every day and every night and attending parties with him. He is outside of washington, d. C. And its beginning to get into her head. Then Something Else also happens that changes the dynamic. Dietwer publishes this book. This was a huge diet book. It was one of the book to be crazy big. Collectingas a book problem. Every once in a while somebody says i will get rid of all my books. In giant boxes and whoever goes to visit the next goes through the giant box and takes out all the books they want. My mom had a copy of the scarsdale diet in her box. It, i should have taken it, but i did not think it was important. I should have showed you the book. You can buy it on ebay or amazon for supercheap if you want your own copy. It is a lowcarb, low calorie diet. It prides itself on the cover, it says you can lose up to 20 pounds in 14 days. That is the lowcalorie part of it. The book itself, which is like this thick, was based on tarnowers twopage handout used to give to cardiac patients, which set eat less red meat, avoid sugar, dont during alcohol, then he expanded it to get into this book. The book is a huge hit, makes a ton of money. It published in late 1978. It finishes 1979 number two on the nonfiction bestseller list. Estimated gross income of 11 million by spring of 1980. To put this in perspective, he was probably getting between 10 or 20 of the proceeds, so that or 2. 1 million that he is making off of this book. Not only that, he is now gone from being a local doctor that everybody likes to locally famous to dr. Oz famous. He is on television, and people know who he is, he is a demand. They invited to parties, they give him awards. Jean is feeling out of it, because shes in washington, d. C. , is alienated even further. In 1981sked jean harris who wrote this book, she will say she was a coauthor. They asked the guy who is the coauthor, a guy named sam sinclair baker, and he says no. She offered some suggestions she gets mentioned in the acknowledgments. But jean thinks that she contributed more. But it adds to the tension in a in the relationship. It adds so much tension, that she is thinking about things like money. Because he is making a lot of it. He is getting these awards, he accolades. These she is donna washington, d. C. And she cant get a job. She was to go to new york to get acknowledgment. He does something that irritates her even more, he writes her a check. Remember the battle over the diamond Engagement Ring . You keep it, no, i dont want it, well, they do that with the check, too. I dont want your money, heres the money. Take the money. Have to have it for tax purposes. Do the money. Harris reports that she felt like he was trying to buy her. He was trying to buy her for four grand. So she is both offended that he is trying to buy her, and offended that he is trying to buy her for four grand. She thinks she is worth more. Shes irritated that there is a check at all. Remember, this is a woman who has been on methamphetamines for 10 years, which doesnt help anything at all. She sees this as a time where the relationship is changing. She is still worried about the other woman and how the doctor feels is complicated. He doesnt get the chance to write his book and tell his story. Pullingeems like he is away a little bit. There are lots of accounts of jean harris driving up from washington, d. C. To see him, there are not a lot of accounts of him going down to see her. He was also a very generous man. Jean harris has these two sons. Their parents got divorced when they were 16 or 13 or Something Like that. Early teens. In ourr is so present life that when the older son gets married, tarnower pays for a big chunk of the wedding, pays for them or personal dinner, goes to the rehearsal dinner and gives a toast at the rehearsal dinner, and is acting like these young mens father. So he clearly cares about jean and her kids a great deal. But jeans isolated. She is down at madeira. This is more recent. Its outside of washington dc washington, d. C. In virginia. Is 350 acres and a lot of it is wooded. By all accounts, it feels fairly isolated. I have never been on the campus, but i have driven past. Its like driving past this giant college campus. Its big. Despite being in the middle of urban area, it feels isolated. It probably felt even more isolated for jean harris. Because she is a grownup. Shes in her 50s, and she ease she is living on campus with a bunch of high school girls. There were only two or three of the resident faculty members and she is the bar. Its not like she can hang out with the other resident faculty members and have the same relationship. She about you its them and pay for those things. She is physically isolated. She is socially isolated. She is emotionally isolated from hy. She writes tons of letters none of which is a good idea. The concerns about the relationship seem to be eating at her. They show up more and more in her letters to him. Of all sortsynne of things. They would each stay at his house and leave stuff. It was like they were marking their territory with this guy. I will leave this makeup in the bathroom. I will leave my toothbrush. Jean harris never admitted to stuff until lynnes she claims that she messed with her stuff all the time. Ne smashed her clothing. Then the other disgusting thing she said was that she took human feces and rubbed it in to hurt dress that jean had left there. She claimed that lynn stalked her by phone and would make threats. At the same time jean had called the clinic were both lynne and hy worked. She would basically talked trash. We dont know lynnes story because she did not testify at the trial and she didnt give interviews. She remains very private and state out of the public eye to this day. The job is not going terribly well. It is 1980. The world is changing. Lets think about what we know about what the expectation for girls are prior to 1980. Harris is what we expect of young ladies of wealth and privilege. They are supposed to do well in school. They are supposed to go to a lovely girl school. Theyre supposed to get their degree in the theyre supposed to get married and then theyre supposed to have children. That was the expectation of madeira girls but things have changed. Who remembers that what happens in 1972 . What law changed education as we know it forever . Title ix comes along. What did title ix do . You can no longer discriminate against girls and women in educational settings. What does that mean . It means that jean harris had to go to Smith College because it was a woman school and one of the best schools open to her. Her students can go to yale and go to stanford. They can go to princeton. They can go to the university of virginia, they can go all to all of these places that were not open to jean harris. The expectations are changing as well. The expectations are no longer that you simply go to college, get married, have kids, and relive the 1950s. Youre supposed to have a career. Socially, things are changing as well. The 1980s are we have had recreational drugs for a while. As soon as somebody figured out i can smoke this or take this, they were probably doing it. In the early 1980s, drugs were pretty rampant on the east coast ira was no exception. Remember, it is the 1980s in northern virginia. Marijuana is not legal in any way shape or form and its not legal for kids under the age of 18. Madeira is facing financial challenges. Girls schools were not as popular. They were expensive. Jean harris is under pressure from her board of trustees because they want her to be raising more money. She is trying to balance keeping her girls safe from drugs. Remember, shes on prescription methamphetamines. I should add that those prescriptions were not all in her name. Why werent the prescriptions in her name . Does anyone know what the deal is with prescriptions and doctors and families . Our doctors allowed to prescribe to families . No, they are not supposed to prescribe to family. She is not actually married to him, but they know that this relationship or in some many other peoples names. Things were a little more flexible. Ands got girls using pot drugs. Shes got the stress of the finances. The board of trustees is after her. And then she has a bad weekend followed by the worst monday ever. Over the weekend it becomes clear that in one particular dorm theres a lot of hot. Pot. Is a particular problem, this is one of those things where you will say, what did you expect . There were no adults living in the storm. The head of house was a 12th grader. Turns out the 12th grader was getting the pot and was not selling it, just distributing it. So sharing it with her friends all the way down to eighth and ninth graders. Half of the Student Judiciary Council lived in this house and was also smoking pot. Jean harris finds out and flips out. She is not amused by any of this. She shouldnt be because she is the head mistress. This is her job, they are breaking the law. Some of these kids are seniors. Its march, they are waiting for college acceptances. Somehow it appears that half of the campus is involved in it. The faculty gets called in and multiple girls get expelled. If you are a wealthy parent and it is march and your princess is going to go to princeton, how how are you going to feel when your princess has just been expelled for smoking pot . Youre not going to be happy, are you . If youre not a happy parent, what are you going to do . Youre going to sue. Youre going to make phone calls. Youre going to be angry. Youre going to be loud. And thats precisely what happened over the weekend. Theres lots of angry phone calls. There were lots of threatening. All of monday were people yelling at jean harris. Theres one other problem. On thursday or friday before the weekend, jean harris ran out of her own drugs, so she is coming off the methamphetamines. 10 years. She is taking a weekend off. Not the weekend you want to stop taking methamphetamines. Not that you want to start taking methamphetamines. I want to be clear about that. It is ugly. That leads us to monday. It is not a good monday. Everybody yells at her all day. She has written letters all weekend. Very literary woman. She liked to write letters. She wrote letters on monday. She writes a letter to her sister explaining that she is going to kill herself and that she is so worthless as a human being that she should not be buried she should be cremated. And her ashes dumped. Its actually kind of tragic. She tells different people that she is frustrated. Shes not sure if she can take it. One of her teachers feel so badly that she gathers daisies on the property and leaves it in the front of her car for support. Her staff assumes she is going to quit because things are going badly. And she does quit. She just takes a different route to that quitting. She packs up her stuff, not a lot of clothes, just the 32 caliber pistol that she takes. She decides to drive from d. C. To new york to kill herself. Heris very clear and all of testimony that she intends to kill herself. At the trial she says i wanted to go to his house and kill myself by the pond where the daffodils bloom in the spring because it is home. She wanted to go home to die. That was a fivehour drive which doesnt help if you are the prosecution talking about murder. Lets talk about the gun for a second. Where did she get the gun . Conflictinge information in the different newspaper articles at the time. But it appears that she had the handgun for a couple of years. As Shaun Alexander claims, she first tried to buy a handgun earlier. She originally bought it because she was contemplating suicide is longest 12 to 15 years ago. The firstplace she tried to buy it would not sell it to her because they thought she was suicidal. We have no evidence of this. Its just jean harris a story. Jean harris claimed she bought another gun. They would not sell it to her for whatever reason. Sean alexander said it was the suspicion of weber was selling the gun. She might be suicidal. She seems to had bought a handgun which she used to shoot hy. And that she intended to shoot herself several years before this. So she had it for a while. So you have to give her credit for focus. She drives those five hours, she gets up to the house. Well, shecribed called him to say she was coming. Its a fivehour drive. She will not surprise him. He says, dont come, i am having a party and lynne will be here. She goes anyway. He runs into traffic she does not get there until 10 00 or 11 00. She gets in the house, and she decides that she wants to say goodbye to hy. She wants to see him one more time. She goes up to his bedroom, and thats where she finds lynnes monterey. The vast in. In she feels agitated and upset. She might do some yelling. Hy wakes up and says yes, i am tired and going back to sleep. Shut up. That was not the proper answer. She sits down on the edge of his bed according to her, and she is ready to shoot herself, he grabbed the gun, she gets shot through the hand and that bullet seems to have entered his chest. There is a lot of conflicting evidence about the gunshot. Whether there were three, four, or five. And where the bullets end up. And up in his body. Even during trial the medical experts disagree on some things. It is a little fuzzy about this. The one thing is clear. She didnt just shoot hy once. She didnt shoot herself at all. She said they struggle over the gun. Hergoes in to clean up hands. She feels terrible and worthless so she starts leaning up the bedroom. There is nobody here to say this is not true. But there are other people in the house. He is a rich guy. He had staff that lived there. The staff live in a different section of the house but they hear the gunshots because lynn e sits down. She says there is a struggle over the gun. There seems to be evidence that she is bruised. She testifies that he hits her in ways that she he had never hit her before. There is no evidence either way that he had hit her prior to this or if he was struggling to pull a gun away but the gun discharges repeatedly into his chest. She recognizes that hy is not in good shape. She later testifies that she only remembers two shots. One through the hand and a second one later. There are at least four, there could be five discharges but there are definitely four holes in hy. And there could be more than that because there is the through and through. She leaves. She says she will go get help. Still not entirely sure why she did not go phone for help or get the livein help. But she has driven five hours and had a horrible weekend. She has just shot her boyfriend of 14 years repeatedly and coming down off the methamphetamines. I guess i can understand that she is not making the best decisions. Wait. She has not made a single good decision all day, so why start now . She heads out to get help. In the meantime, the help who lives there has heard the gunshots and called the police. Police are on their way. Somewhere, the Police Arrive and pull in. The stories differ. There seems to be whether or not they chased her or she says she turned around and followed the police in. Regardless, she says she shot him. She says it to a Police Officer who goes in and discovers that he has been shot. Hy dies. Which is why we have a murder trial. Shaun alexander has an interesting. That i have no idea if its true, but it makes it more dramatic if it is. He would not have died if they got him out of the house sooner. Nobody realizes that one of the bullets had stayed lodged in his body. He did in fact die. The murder trial begins. It is exciting. It is dramatic. When i tell people i am talking about this case, if they are my age or older, they remember this case. Nobody younger seems to remember. But everybody older than me no matter where they were in the country, they remember it. When i told the dean i was doing this class, the first thing she said is i grew up in scarsdale. I totally know the area. And she started talking about the trial. She said i was not there during the actual trial. It was really disappointing. Everybody remembers this case. Because the tabloids covered it. The regular press covered it. This is a headline from the pacific stars stripes, the pacific is on the other side of the country. They are paying attention. New york times covers it on an almost daily basis, the tabloids have it, new York Magazine has it and it has got everything. To give you an idea of how much coverage there was, i did a search from april 1, 1979 to april 1, 1982 and i found 1000 results for jean harris in the news section. They cover all sorts of things. Particularly, interestingly, what jean harris wore to the trial every day. Somebody felt it was necessary to report on what she wore. Why . Because it is part of the whole tabloid thing of all of this. This case has everything. It was like begging to be a madefortv movie. Dont worry. A madefortv movie is coming. It has sex, it has unmarried sex , which is even more exciting, drugs, it has betrayal it has , the other woman, it has got money, it has got wealth, privilege, it has got celebrity. The scarsdale diet doctor is dead. Nobody knows his name but everybody snows the scarsdale diet doctor. This is dramatic. So everybody wants to talk about it. The trial itself, did not go the way it probably shouldve. Whether it is from a legal perspective, or from really anything. This is a quote from a woman who is a mystery writer here in colorado. There is a website about women who kill and they asked her to summarize the case and talk about it, and i think her summarization is pretty spot on. She writes, so jean harris was in a seriously embattled position at work. She was addicted to prescription meds and her boyfriend was dumping her for a twinkie he had on the side. If she just outlined all of that for the jury that the humiliation, the stress, the drugs and followed it by saying very simply, then i lost it and shot him, she wouldve been a free woman in a couple of years. That wasnt the strategy they took in the case at all. Instead, they make some rather odd trial choices. I want us to think about the risks and the rewards of each one. The first one, was the accident offense. That this was a tragic accident. Ok. Let us all put on our reasonable hats and ask ourselves, what the risk of the tragic accident defense might be. Anybody got something . Why is this a problem . Four shots. Prof. Fields one more time. Four shots. Prof. Fields why is that a problem for the tragic accident thing . One looks like an accident, four looks like intent. Prof. Fields yes, my finger slipped and pulled the trigger one time. And then again, and again, and again. That was a little hard to say. Like i accidentally stabbed you seven times. I fell once in the six times i had a hard time getting up. Accident defense, the risk is it is hard to believe. The reward, wouldve been she is pretty much off the hook. She is not going to do jail time. We will talk about the different degrees of murder and manslaughter that could have been options. This is a weird component as well. This trial lasts for 14 weeks. It goes on and on. Imagine being one of the, there were 12 jury members and four alternates. 16 people who were stuck in this trial situation. Forever. And jean harris testified for eight days. Ok. If you are the jury, think about what you might be looking for from jean harris. If you want to acquit her or convict her. What are the characteristics you are paying attention to . Yes . Consistency. Prof. Fields consistency. Tell me about the consistency. What kind of things would you be looking for as a juror . To see if her story is staying the same. Pertaining to the various minute details is what i would be looking for. Prof. Fields that is good. Consistency of the story. What else might you be looking for, if you are in the jury and you have a murder, and alleged murderer in front of you, what are they looking for . Does she look like she would do it . Prof. Fields yeah the appearance which is may be part of the reason they talk about her clothing. Part of the reason, is because she is perceived as a wealthy woman. She is not particularly wealthy but there is a wealthy tinge. And she wears nice clothes. So she looks privileged. Does it look like she could do it . Remember Lizzie Borden . The ladies defense . Ladies dont use axes to kill people. Ladies poison. It is the same kind of argument. Ladies dont shoot lovers. If they are heartbroken, they shoot themselves. Ladies commit suicide, ladies dont commit murder. And you are looking, and the jury is probably looking to see if this is true. Does she look like she could do it . That is a pretty good question that i suspect the jury asked themselves a lot. What they got, was eight days of a little bit crazy. She was, it is about a year, the trial starts in november 1980 and runs for the 14 weeks. It is spring of 1981 when she testifies. And she, it is interesting. The reports are different, different people have different reactions. She appears to have charmed some people. They found her witty. They found her obeying. They found her very sophisticated. They found her to be a lady. On the other hand, she also had to deal with the fact that she had written this letter, the scarsdale letter. It was like this 10 page, 7 to 10 page handwritten letter to hy that she had mailed and got there and killed him so her lawyers picked it up at the post office. It is 7 to 10 pages of crazy. It is clear that she is way on edge. She talks about her stress of the job, she talked of how much she loved hy. She talked about their life together. And she goes off on lynne tryforos. Calls her a whore and a slut. She lays out all the things she thinks lynne has done to wrong her. She has to answer questions about this letter. And she doesnt do a particularly well. Now again if the jury had believed her, great. But since they did not and she gets convicted, this looks like a mistake in retrospect. She had a bunch of psychiatrists who talked to her. One of the defenses she mightve used was something called extreme emotional defense. The idea she acted in that passion of the moment. The heat of the moment. Her lawyer chose not to put on any psychiatric defense. Sean alexander in her biography in a couple of other articles said the time to have put on the psychiatrist wouldve been right after jean harris testified which wouldve said look, she is a perfectly lovely woman who got pushed beyond what she could handle. But he did not do it, her lead attorney sat down and said it was over. To this day, there are questions about why that was the choice of what he said. He said later, that he did not think it was necessary. He thought they had won the physical evidence issued, the bullets in the body proves it was an accident. Clearly the jury did not think so. I dont either quite frankly. He thought that jean harriss presence was enough. Now jeans lawyer, always admired jean harris. In fact when he gave his first press conference, he said she is very much a lady. That was his theme, that she was a lady and ladies dont shoot their lovers. They shoot themselves. And it did not work. The jury deliberated for eight days. That is a fair chunk of time. During those eight days, they kept going back to the judge asking for clarifications of instructions. They kept saying that we think this is a problem. We dont understand this. We would like to know more about intent. We would like to know more about this. And they took their job seriously. And then they unanimously convicted her of murder in the seconddegree. That was the worst possible outcome. We will talk about why it could not be murder one in just a second. The judge sentenced her to 15 years which was the minimum required sentenced to life for her crimes. The judge himself had not forgotten that jean was a lady because he said in the sentencing hearing, that sentencing is never an easy job for any judge, particularly in this case, because it is a woman. I guess he wouldve felt better if i dont know if she had been a man and shot the doctor. That somehow that wouldve worked. Lets talk about these different options. One of the mistakes during the trial, was not giving the jury the option of manslaughter one. The way criminal trials work as you know, is prosecution is going to go for the top thing they can. They are going to ask for the highest level of offense. And then usually, you have all of the what they call lesser secondary included offenses within that level. If murder one is the highest form of murder in new york, you can ask for murder two, manslaughter one, manslaughter two and criminally negligent homicide. Murder one is really not on the table because the elements of murder one, are that you have to have everything that is involved in murder 2 plus circumstances of the identity of the victim, usually that identity of the victim needs to be law enforcement, a judge, some sort of special person in society. Diet doctors, cardiologists dont count. That the commission of the murder, that happened during a felony for example, or the nature of the killing was so egregious, that it rose to the level of murder one. Murder one is not really an option and the prosecution did not try for it. They went for murder 2 which is the intent to cause death and you do in fact cause death. It gives you mandatory jail time. This is what she gets convicted of. So the prosecution was fine with all the lesser included in tenses. The defense, jean harriss lawyer, said to the judge, i dont want the jury to even consider manslaughter one. Take it off the table. This is a roll the dice hoping to get double sevens. This is tough. He is saying to the jury, you are either going to send my client to jail for a lot of time, 15 years to life. Or we are not going to send her at all. Its as close to an acquittal as we can get if we get manslaughter two or criminal negligence. Manslaughter two, sometimes called Involuntary Manslaughter is the reckless cause of someones death. There is no mandatory jail time. Although you can get up to 15 years. Criminally negligent homicide is failing to perceive a substantial or unjustifiable risk. Criminally adjustable sorry, criminally negligent homicide would be like if she was sitting on the bed and playing with a gun and it went off. That would be filed under a more negligent homicide. Involuntary manslaughter, recklessly causing the death. Manslaughter 2, voluntary manslaughter, actually seems like a pretty good option. This is causing death in the heat of passion. That you are under that extreme emotional disturbance. That you are super freaked out. Ok. Hearing what you have heard, we will do a verdict with shove with a show of hands. First of all, raise your hand if you wouldve convicted for murder 2. I am seeing one, two hands. Three hands. Ok. Raise your hand if you wouldve convicted for manslaughter 2. Involuntary manslaughter. Ok, i have four, five, six. A little more manslaughter 2. Ok, criminally negligent homicide. Anybody willing to convict on that . You can only vote for one. Raise your hand if you wouldve chosen manslaughter one. Manslaughter one wins. But it was not an option. It was not on the table. It was a huge gamble by her lawyer, and he lost. And when he loses, the stories just go on. The post media trial is insane. In 1981 and 1982, there are two different biographies that come out, very much a lady by sean alexander, diana, mrs. Harris, i started that one it was a slower read so i did not finish it. The madefortv movie came out within weeks of the verdict. They took the trial transcripts and they wrote it as the trial was going along and then they started filming before the trial even ended. In 2005 there was a remake of the madefortv movie, which is now available. Jean harris herself wrote some books. She wrote one in prison called stranger in two worlds about her life in prison. And her life before and she talks about the trial. She had filed a lawsuit about that trial. Sorry, about that book because in the 1980s, people who were in prison for crimes, could not profit off their crimes via book. Anything you got for writing your book had to go into a fund, for the victims who filed lawsuits against you. It was called the son of sam law. Somebody in here wrote about the son of sam in one of their papers. He was a serial killer and he tried to write a book and new york did not want him to make profit off of it. Proceeds from this were going into a trust for the victims family, victims family said we dont want the money, jean harris said i dont want the money either. I actually want it to go to this program i am working on, while jean harris was in prison she started working with pregnant women in prison, to help them become better mothers and she had convinced her prison to start basically this child center so that if your mother gave birth to you while she was in jail you could live in the center for the first year of your life and she could see you every day. The idea of it was to promote motherdaughter bonding and she wanted the money to support that. She lost her lawsuit but eventually the law went all the way to the u. S. Supreme court and in 1991 the Supreme Court ruled the son of sam law was overruled and all of the proceeds sitting in the trust went to her center for kids. She later wrote another book about her life in prison and she called it, they always called us ladies, stories from prison. And so everybody profits off of this, but jean harris sits in jail for a long time. She is not thrilled with being in jail so what do you do when you are not happy with being in jail . You appeal. That is what she did. First appeal comes right away. She asked to have the verdict dismissed and that was denied. They rejected the claim, her claim that the pretrial publicity had made it impossible for her to get a fair trial, in part because she and her lawyers never asked for a change of venue. They said that the prosecutor was not unfair in crossexamining her. Basically her appeals lawyer said they were mean to her, she was like no. Harris said the prosecutor was particularly mean because he called her a liar when harris herself had denounced many other witnesses as liars and they said basically any errors that occurred during the trial were harmless. Then in 1982, she got upheld but she had argued that the court should have used the different standard, that did not work. But 1992, she tries again at the federal level. She says the court was, that her trial was incompetent. Sorry, her lawyer at her trial was incompetent. That he shouldve overruled her and used the manslaughter 1 and that he should have told her not to testify. The court said that it was a tactical decision and it was no violation of her sixth amendment right of counsel. So jean harris is in jail. She tries, she does some good work. There were interviews when she died with women in the prison that she had worked with who had very nice things to say