TTC Video - On Trial for Murder: America’s Most Famous Murder Trials

On Trial for Murder: America’s Most Famous Murder Trials takes you inside courtrooms and uncovers the stories of 10 well-known trials in recent history. For this riveting foray into criminal law, your guide is Professor Douglas O. Linder, the Elmer Powell Peer Professor of Law at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law and creator of the Famous Trials website.

Professor Linder walks you through the story of 10 notorious murders across the country, including the vengeance-driven killing of an architect at Madison Square Garden; the political assassination of a former governor in Idaho; the mysterious case of Dr. Sam Shepherd (an inspiration for Hollywood’s The Fugitive); and the possible framing of Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman accused of murdering a factory employee in Georgia.

Step into the Criminal Justice System

As you will see, murder trials are bigger than their verdicts. They are windows into prevailing values, prejudices, and the often-messy way justice unfolds. For each case, you’ll explore flint-eyed arguments from prosecutors, creative arguments of defense, the role of mass media in swaying outcomes, and the challenge biases pose for delivering due process.

However, these cases offer more than mere excitement. Studying the legal system through the lens of infamous trials allows you to:

• Unravel High-Stakes Legal Battles: Learn how cases like “The West Memphis Three” raise troubling questions about confirmation bias, hysteria, and the influence of public opinion inside the courtroom.
• Dissect Societal Impacts: The acquittal of Emmett Till’s murderers reflects an ugly chapter in American history—and has troubling implications for the nature of justice today.
• Consider the Role of the Media: Examine how international sensationalism and cultural misunderstandings shaped cases such as the Amanda Knox trial in Italy—and influenced her fight for vindication.
• Explore Our Own Biases: How do we come to know the truth? Are we persuaded by logic or passion? Is impartiality even possible?

Dive into Cases Ripped from the Headlines

The course opens with a case about power, betrayal, and social decay in the upper echelons of New York society at the turn of the 20th century. When millionaire Harry Thaw murders a world-famous architect accused of defiling his starlet wife years earlier, the trial at first appears to be a straightforward prosecution of homicide. Instead, Thaw’s attorney offers a then-novel defense by reason of temporary insanity—turning the trial into a potboiler about immorality and madness.

The 10 lectures of this course offer a sense of the drama and intrigue of the court trials discussed, such as:

• The Haywood Trial: A political assassination in Idaho kicked off a case involving a miner’s union, a Pinkerton investigator, a bribery scandal, and a landmark case in American legal and labor history.
• The Sacco and Vanzetti Anarchists: Set against the backdrop of the Red Scare, the robbery-homicide trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti inspired violent demonstrations by immigrant groups and activists.
• The Massie Affair: An alleged (and unsolved) assault in Hawaii kicked off a blood-soaked tragedy pitting white elites against the non-white population—and the final courtroom appearance of Clarence Darrow, “America’s most famous defense attorney.”
• The “Killings of the Flower Moon”: Delve into the fear and dread of these murders in Oklahoma’s Osage country, where a fortune in oil money meant no one was safe—and no one would talk.

One theme common to each trial highlighted in this course is a sense of mystery. In every court case, a jury reached a verdict; but in many of the cases, we still cannot say for certain who did what. The lack of definitive evidence, shaky eyewitness accounts, and back-room threats of violence obscured the truth. So, the mysteries continue to live on.

With the benefit of new evidence and the clarity of hindsight, On Trial for Murder: America’s Most Famous Murder Trials surveys these sensational—sometimes lurid—trials with a combination of brilliant storytelling and in-depth analysis, offering important lessons for us today.