William Seward, William Freeman, and the Insanity Defense

 I ran across this case while reading Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, an excellent read (review forthcoming). Darrow's middle name was Seward, named after the brilliant abolitionist, U.S. Senator and governor of New York. Seward was an “agitator,” known for his defense of immigrants and fugitive blacks and for his pioneering use of the insanity defense. In 1846, he showed moral—even physical—courage when he defied the local mobs and agreed to represent William Freeman. Amirus Darrow, Clarence's father, was an inveterate reader and was no doubt familiar with the case and probably even had a copy of Seward's biography which had appeared in 1853.

William Freeman, a black man, deranged from repeated beatings in prison, on March 12, 1846, in a crazed nighttime frenzy (under a full moon), murdered four members of the Van Nest family after they had retired for the night.  Freeman had been recently released from prison where he had been routinely flogged and tortured. He was captured almost immediately and almost killed on the spot by a mob. 

Seward had previously defended a man named Henry Wyatt who had stabbed and killed a prison guard.  At Wyatt's request, Seward visited Wyatt in prison and saw how he had been tortured and abused.  There was evidence the man was not sane. His defense of Wyatt was so eloquent that the jury became deadlocked and Wyatt was sent back to prison to await a second trial. (He was found guilty and sentenced to hang.  That second trial overlapped with that of Freeman's first.)

A common suspicion was that Freeman was trying to use the example of Wyatt to get himself off. Hall, in the short biography of Freeman, writes that Freeman, who had been placed as a servant in several houses, suffered from unusual peculiarities, in fact, he was discharged for "an uncontrollable disposition for play with other colored boys, which rendered his services valueless." Much of his playfulness and "wildness" was attributed to his Native American heritage, for he was half Native American. "These characteristics, then of little moment, have since become the subjects of medical examination, in view of the probable effects of his subsequent imprisonment, as in his veins coursed the blood of a race that has never been restrained without difficulty—never incarcerated without mental disaster."

He was imprisoned for larceny, stealing a horse, that Hall admits he never committed. He escaped prison, was recaptured, and then tried again for the larceny and escape, and sentenced to five years at hard labor in state prison. 

But as it soon became reasonably certain that Freeman was at another place all the night when the larceny was committed, and as Jack was soon thereafter convicted for a similar offence, the public mind at once exonerated Freeman from the felony for which he had been convicted. He was doubtless innocent of the offence. The conviction of Freeman, therefore, appears to have been unjust, and to have had a powerful influence upon his mind when in prison. (Hall)

 While in prison he was flogged and once hit so hard on the head with a board so hard the board split.  Freeman's hearing was destroyed by the blow. He was released in 1845 having served his five years.

Unable to find gainful employment of any kind, and having been denied the possibility of suit against those who had falsely accused him, Freeman, for some unknown reason entered the home of the wealthy Van Nest family and murdered all of them. (Arpey quotes a local newspaper as having reported that someone in the Van Nest family had testified against Freeman in the larceny trial that sent Freeman to prison, but another paper refuted that charge.) He was captured about forty miles away and only just escaped lynching. Community feeling was running very high against him.  The funeral sermon for the family was so incendiary, a screed in favor of capital punishment, that it was reprinted and sold widely.

 On June 1, 1846, Freeman was arraigned, at which time Seward entered an insanity plea. New York law at the time forbade bring insane persons to trial. Seward argued that Freeman's sanity should be determined by a jury. The judge granted his request, but denied him the right to challenge jurors. That meant, in Seward's words, "many of the jurors entered the panel with settled opinions that the prisoner was not only guilt of the homicide, but sane."

Seward lost the sanity hearing as well as the trial itself. On appeal, however the state supreme court, issued a stay of execution, and ordered a new trial holding that the judge had conducted the sanity hearing incorrectly. The judge declined to retry the case as Freeman was in very poor health.

Freeman died in August, 1847.  He was 23. An autopsy (included in the Hall book) revealed considerable brain damage.

Sources:

Arpey, A. W. (2003). The William Freeman murder trial: Insanity, politics, and race. Syracuse University Press.  Arpey examines the racial and cultural background of the community and the impact of the trial. His book also has an excellent contemporary record of the trial.

Freeman, W., & Hall, B. F. (1848). The trial of William Freeman: For the murder of John G. Van nest, including the evidence and the arguments of counsel, with the decision of the Supreme Court granting a new trial, and an account of the death of the prisoner, and of the post-mortem examination of his body by Amariah Brigham, M. D., and others. https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=zk8oAAAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA15 (available as a free ebook online)  This work has a virtual transcript of the trial. It's fascinating.

Stahr, W. (2013). Seward: Lincoln's indispensable man. Simon & Schuster.