A history of early female judges.

Illustration of suffragist and lawyer Catharine Waugh
McCulloch, elected as a justice of the 
peace in Illinois in 1907 
(Long Valley [ID] Advocate, 16 May 1907)

As the Law and Literature blog notes, Elizabeth D. Katz, professor of law at the University of Florida, discusses the history of often forgotten early female judges in  "'May It Please Her Honor': The United States' First Women Judges, 1870–1930" in the Washington University Law Review. Some even obtained positions before passage of the 19th Amendment that granted US female citizens the right to vote.

Erle Stanley Gardner and the wrongly convicted Native American.

Erle Stanley Gardner

In the December 2020 Smithsonian Magazine, Jack El-Hai discusses author Erle Stanley Gardner's taking up the case in the 1950s of Silas John Edwards, a member of the White Apache tribe who was convicted of killing his wife. It was consistent with the lawyer Gardner's concern with injustice (such as his Court of Last Resort).

Denise Mina on Scottish legal cases.

"The Trial of Madeleine Smith in the Scotch Court of Session."
1857. NYPL

Mystery novelist Denise Mina is hosting a series on BBC Radio 3 focusing on famous legal cases in Scottish history. The latest episode is on Madeleine Smith, accused of poisoning a former suitor and placed on trial in 1857.

Japan's contributions to the mystery genre.

The Early Cases of Akechi Kogoro
by Edogawa Rampo
(pseud. of Taro Hirai), 2014

In the Japan Times, Mark Schreiber discusses the contributions of Japanese writers to the mystery genre, including Edogawa Rampo, Seishi Yokomizo (covered in Clues 32.2, 2014), and Seicho Matsumoto, and some fascinating precursors such as Honcho Oin Hiji (Parallel Cases from under the Cherry Tree, 1689) that describes the cases of prominent judge Itakura Shigemune.

Upcoming book on historical murder cases.

McFarland's imprint Exposit Books provides a sneak peek at its upcoming book The Trunk That Dripped Blood: Five Sensational Murder Cases of the Early 20th Century by Mark Grossman. Some of the cases involve Emma LeDoux (1906), priest Hans Schmidt (1913), and dentist Arthur Warren Waite (1916).

Raskin on the polygraph, 1975.

Mackenzie-Lewis polygraph,
1919–26.
Wellcome Images, London.

In March 1975, psychologist and professor David C. Raskin delivered the Vancouver Institute lecture "Lie Detection and the Judicial System." Raskin, key in the development of the computerized polygraph test, discusses the theories behind lie detection, tracing its historical development (including the 1920s Frye case) and describing the procedure then in use for polygraph tests.

The art of courtroom illustration.

Lloyd M. Bucher, captain of the USS Pueblo, testifies at the
court of naval inquiry regarding the capture of the Pueblo.
Illustration by Arnold Mesches. 1969.

A new exhibition "Drawing Justice: The Art of Courtroom Illustration" has opened at the Library of Congress, showcasing illustrations from court cases spanning 1964 to the present. Individuals portrayed include Sydney Biddle Barrows, Lloyd M. Bucher, Daniel Ellsberg, John Gotti, John Hinckley, Mick Jagger, Bernie Madoff, Charles Manson, Manuel Noriega, James Earl Ray, Eliot Richardson, Jack Ruby, and Sirhan Sirhan. (thanks to the Law & Humanities blog)

Brown's "Leaves of an Hour" exhibition.

Richard Kiley in "The Holy
Ground—The Killing, Pt 1," Judd
for the Defense (dir. Leo Penn,
writ. William Kelley, 1969)

Brown University Library's "Leaves of an Hour" online exhibition includes the following items of mystery-related interest: 

• The Terrible Hay-Stack Murder: Life and Trial of the Rev. Ephraim K. Avery (1878)

• Title page from Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (1930)

• Mention of author, screenwriter, and Brown alum William P. Kelley (Judd for the Defense; Oscar winner for Witness. Clip from Kelley's acceptance speech at the 1986 Oscars; he's the white-haired fellow.)

• Mention of the library's collection of spy fiction by Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt
  

• Discussion of the library's H. P. Lovecraft collections

• Gay and lesbian literature collections that include Joseph Hansen's The Man Everybody Was Afraid of (1978)

Leopold and Loeb exhibition.

Northwestern University's online exhibition "The Murder That Wouldn't Die: Leopold & Loeb in Artifact, Fact, and Fiction" examines the 1924 murder of young Bobby Franks through items such as ransom notes, confessions and psychological evaluations of Leopold and Loeb, court transcripts, trial photos, and fictional versions of the case such as Meyer Levin's Compulsion and Alfred Hitchcock's Rope.

Nathan Leopold (top) and
Richard Loeb in 1924.

The life and times of Clarence Darrow.

Clarence Darrow, c. 1922
Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs Div

On the radio program University of the Air, lawyer-professor Dean A. Strang (author of Worse Than the Devil: Anarchists, Clarence Darrow, and Justice in a Time of Terror) discusses the career of Clarence Darrow (1857–1938), who was defense counsel for Leopold and Loeb in 1924.

Police vehicles through history.

New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (back seat, right) takes a spin
in a New York World's Fair police car, ca. 1939–40. NYPL.

Tokyo's Police Museum has just opened a "history of police vehicles" exhibition, but those not in Japan can view modes of transportation for law enforcement in other places:

• Baltimore City Police Motors Unit
• Police vehicles, Carbondale (IL) Police Department
• Massachusetts State Police horseback patrols, 1920s–1930s 
• Metropolitan policewomen on motorcycles, London, 1920
• Metropolitan Police car and motorcycle, London, ca. 1935
• Vehicles gallery, National Border Patrol Museum
• Ohio State Highway patrol vehicles
• Police car retrospective
• Restoration of a 1972 Plymouth Fury patrol car, Pennsylvania State Police
• Portland Police Mounted Patrol, Portland (OR) Police Museum 
• Historic fleet, San Diego Police Museum
• Vintage police cars, Seattle Metropolitan Police Museum 
• Patrol wagon-ambulance, Trenton (NJ) Police Museum, ca. 1910
• Police jeeps, US Air Force police, 1950s

California and woman jurors, 1917.

Reporter Winifred Black.
Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs Div.

Although Los Angeles had an all-female jury in 1911, San Francisco Examiner reporter Winifred Black celebrated California's decision to impanel women for juries in July 1917. (Link to article)

More on woman jurors:
• "Women on Juries: How the Experiment Failed in Washington," Sacramento Daily Union 5 Sept. 1896: 6 ("The lawyers . . . said that the trouble was the lack of the logical faculty in the female mind.")

• Cynthia Harrison, rev of The U.S. Women Jury Movements and Strategic Adaptation: A More Just Verdict, by Holly J. McCammon.

Winifred Black, The Washington Times 31 Jul 1917: 16

NMU commemorates Anatomy of a Murder.

Via various items posted online, the Northern Michigan University archives are commemorating Anatomy of a Murder by attorney, writer, fisherman, and Michigan Supreme Court justice John D. Voelker (1903–91). Voelker successfully defended Army lieutenant Coleman Peterson, who was accused of killing tavern owner Mike Chenoweth in 1952. Voelker then turned the case into fiction; the book was published by St. Martin's Press in January 1958 under Voelker's pseudonym, Robert Traver. It became a well-regarded film in 1959 with Jimmy Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, and George C. Scott. In 2013 ABA Journal selected Anatomy of a Murder as one of 25 greatest law novels.

NMU online materials:
• Read transcripts from the Peterson trial
• See photos of principals such as Voelker and Peterson
• Listen to interview with juror Max Muelle

The art of the steal.

"Confidence Man: I seen him first, Joe.
His Pal: Let's toss for him."
Life 12 Aug. 1915. NYPL

Jean Brauscher and Barack Orbach provide a fascinating discussion of the confidence man in "Scamming: The Misunderstood Confidence Man" (Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, 27, 2015), including the shady nineteenth-century activities of Samuel Thompson, the man who gave rise to the term. (Thanks to Law & Humanities blog)

French exhibition on a forensic pioneer.

Class studying the Bertillon identification method, ca. 1910–15
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Div.

At the Musée de Vire in Normandy, France, until November is the exhibition "Alphonse Bertillon et L'Identification de Personnes 1880-1914" (Alphonse Bertillon and the Identification of Persons 1880-1914). The accomplishments of Bertillon (1853-1914) pertaining to the investigation of crime include devising a physical description system, inventing the mug shot, and developing an approach to crime scene photography, but his role in the Dreyfus case marred his career. Some items from the exhibition can be viewed on the museum's blog. (Thanks to the International Crime Fiction Group based at Queen's University Belfast)

What records do you want to see?

Autobiography of John Paton
Davies Jr, U Penn P

The public can comment on the National Archives' plans for declassifying government documents before the April 10 forum of the National Declassification Center. The Master Backlog Index deals extensively with records pertaining to the armed services; the following are just a few of the files listed in the 280-page index:

• Translations of intercepted enemy radio traffic and miscellaneous World War II documentation, Navy, 1940–46 

• Loyalty security files relating to China expert and Medal of Freedom recipient John Paton Davies Jr., State Dept, 1942–56

• War diaries, Naval History and Heritage Command, 1946–53

• Individual defector case files, State Dept, 1949–63

• Files of Salk vaccine, State Dept, 1955–59 

• Criminal investigative records related to the seizure of the USS Pueblo and its aftermath, Navy

• Classified material related to United States of America
  v. John D. Erlichman et al, Justice Dept, 1974

A Wisconsin legal pioneer.

Juvenile bio of
Lavinia Goodell,
U of Wisconsin P

The radio program University of the Air discusses the case of Rhoda Lavinia Goodell, the first female lawyer in Wisconsin, and the new play based on her struggles to practice law that is on stage in Madison this month, Janesville on March 29, Wausau on April 11, and Superior on May 17.

"We know of no woman who has done so much to make woman respected as a legal practitioner"
—"A Female Lawyer's Career" [obit. for Lavinia Goodell], Woman's Journal, repr. The [Huntington, NY] Long-Islander, 15 Apr 1880: 3

Further light on Midnight Express.

Brad Davis, NYPL

Just added to Harvard's Houghton Library collections are memorabilia and letters from Billy Hayes, coauthor of Midnight Express. Alan Parker's 1978 film earned Oscars for Oliver Stone (for screenplay) and Giorgio Moroder (for score). The late Brad Davis played Hayes, a convicted drug smuggler who escaped from a Turkish prison. Some Hayes letters appear in The Midnight Express Letters: From a Turkish Prison 1970–1975.

The singing safety policeman?

Barbershop quartet competition, NY World's Fair, 1939-40. NYPL

On the blog of NYPR Archives and Preservation, Andy Lancet, director of archives for New York Public Radio, recalls the role of WNYC in New York law enforcement, including the "singing safety policeman" of The Police Safety Program (1949–50).

Listen to some police safety songs below from the program.

The Court of Last Resort: "The George Zaccho Case" (1957).

Erle Stanley Gardner

The Court of Last Resort TV series (1957–58) was inspired by a project of Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner, in which experts examined cases where the defendant appeared to have been wrongfully convicted. This episode involves a Greek immigrant accused of poisoning his wife. Gardner weighs in toward the end.