Steven Lubet
Autore di Modern Trial Advocacy: Analysis and Practice
Sull'Autore
Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He is the author of numerous books on trial advocacy, legal and judicial ethics, and legal history.
Fonte dell'immagine: NU Photo
Opere di Steven Lubet
The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War against Slavery (2015) 13 copie
The Importance of Being Honest: How Lying, Secrecy, and Hypocrisy Collide with Truth in Law (2008) 11 copie
Nothing But the Truth: Why Trial Lawyers Don't, Can't, and Shouldn't Have to Tell the Whole Truth (2001) 6 copie
Beyond reproach : ethical restrictions on the extrajudicial activities of state and federal judges / Steven Lubet. (1984) 2 copie
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Sesso
- male
- Attività lavorative
- Law School Professor
- Organizzazioni
- Northwestern University Law School
Utenti
Recensioni
Interesting and insightful biography of John E. Cook, the person John Brown trusted most with the details of his plans to raid the Harper's Ferry armory in 1859.
The book's conversational style, coupled with the author's thorough and in-depth scholarship in both the historical era and the law, make Northwestern University law professor Steven Lubet's "Death in Tombstone" completely convincing, enjoyable and interesting. This story of the handling, use, and abuse in law enforcement and in court of gun laws in pre-statehood Arizona in 1880 is especially fascinating to read now, in a time when such laws are undergoing complete revision in the US.
1 
NatalieSW | 1 altra recensione | Jan 1, 2015 |
NatalieSW | 1 altra recensione | Jan 1, 2015 | 
Forty-three essays by a professor of legal ethics, discussing famous situations (Bill Clinton's lying deposition) as well as people and events you've never heard of. Gracefully written and thoughtful.
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Statistiche
- Opere
- 17
- Utenti
- 279
- Popolarità
- #83,281
- Voto
- 4.1
- Recensioni
- 5
- ISBN
- 50
Author Steven Lubet does an excellent job of explaining the background; the Earps have had their ups and downs in the public eye, varying from being in the process of getting sainthood to being Republican-supported company goons trying to shut down peaceful Democratic ranchers (the author of that one seemed to be a unaware of how the terms “Republican” and “Democrat” differed from their current usage in 1881). The reality seems that the Earps were reasonably dedicated lawmen for the time and place, but were not averse to making some money on the side. The particular goal in this quest was for one of the Earps, probably Wyatt, to get elected as the Cochise County Sherriff; at the time of TGATOKC, that position was held by John “Johnny” Behan. In most of Arizona Territory, County Sherriff was a modest government position; however, one duty of the job was collecting property taxes, and the Sherriff got 10% of the take to supplement his otherwise low-end-public-servant salary. Again, for most of the territory that wasn’t much, Arizona land not being of particular value; in Cochise County, the Tombstone silver mines had an assessed value of somewhere between $300 and $400K, meaning the County Sherriff would get $30-$40K a year in 1881 dollars – which would be between $600K-$900K now. Thus the financial interest was considerable. The different officers of the law didn’t get along all that well; Behan knew the Earps were after his job, and to add insult Wyatt had taken up with Behan’s ex-girlfriend, Sarah Marcus.
The “Cowboys” are often described as “The Clanton Gang” in other Earp biographies but none of the Clantons actually had any sort of “leadership” role. Lubet notes that “cowboy” was a derogatory term at the time, perhaps with a meaning similar to “gangbanger” today – young men who were not particular enthused about the strictures of society and who would steal, drink, molest, take drugs and generally raise hell if the opportunity presented itself (men who actually worked with cattle for a living were called “stockmen” or “drovers”). Behan needed “Cowboy” votes, so tended to be less than enthusiastic about law enforcement; in one particularly egregious case, holdup men killed a popular Wells Fargo stage driver; “cowboy” Luther King was arrested, admitted he had taken part in the holdup, but escaped from the county jail when he found his cell door and the jail door unlocked, all the deputies absent, and a horse conveniently waiting behind the building. More of this particular holdup later.
That makes it a little surprising when the Earps relaxed a little when Behan claimed he had “disarmed” the Clantons and McLaurys when he found them at the OK Corral. On hearing this, the Earps pocketed their side arms (none of the Earps wore a holster) and Virgil Earp gave Doc Holliday his shotgun, since Holliday was the only one with a long coat that could conceal it – explaining later that he didn’t want to alarm Tombstone citizens with an easily visible weapon. The Clantons and McLaurys were not disarmed, somebody drew a gun, and 30 seconds later Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury were dead. One question that I’ve never heard any of the Earp biographers – pro- or con- answer – is what Behan thought he was doing. He was, after all, the County Sherriff; the event took place within Tombstone, where Virgil Earp was Police Chief and should have been responsible for events inside city limits. Behan’s action fits with his supposed “Cowboy” favoritism.
At first, public opinion supported the Earps; but that changed when Will McLaury, Frank and Tom’s brother and a lawyer, arrived in town from Texas. McLaury was vengeful, to put it mildly – in surviving letters he proposes organizing a lynch mob – and assisted the prosecution at the hearing. (As it happened, probably hurting his own case). Things were dicey for a while – most of the initial testimony concerned who fired first. Many of the witnesses against the Earps – including Behan – used suspiciously identical language, claiming they saw someone on the Earp side with a “nickel plated pistol” fire first – but couldn’t say who it was using that pistol. As it happened, Doc Holliday was well known in Tombstone for having a nickel plated pistol – he’d used it in a bar fight some months earlier (Holliday fired several shots at a bartender from less than three feet – another bartender returned fire from the same distance. When it was all over the first bartender and a bystander were slightly wounded, throwing some doubt on Holliday’s reputation as a crack shot – although not on his reputation for initiating violence). The repeated description of the “nickel plated pistol” sounds like the witnesses had been coached to identify Holliday – only to discover during the hearing that Holliday was initially armed with a shotgun. My own theory is that Behan may have seen Virgil Earp carrying the shotgun at first, but didn’t see it transferred to Holliday; and that he spent the gunfight hiding behind a wall – entirely prudent under the circumstances, but not in a position to see who was using what weapon. Then, when he came up after the shooting was over he may have seen the shotgun lying on the ground – with no indication of who had used it - and Holliday with the infamous nickel-plated pistol in his hand. Behan and the other witnesses stuck to the “nickel plated pistol” story even when it was pointed out during the hearing that Holliday had a shotgun (and clearly used it to kill Tom McLaury), and various Earp critics have come up with armwaving explanations – for example, that Holliday kept the shotgun under his coat until he ran out of pistol ammunition, or that he used the shotgun with one hand and the pistol with the other. Lubet correctly dismisses these ideas. What we need, I suppose, is CSI Tombstone.
The hearing continued under Judge Wells Spicer – I learned the interesting fact that Spicer had been the defense attorney for John D. Lee, meaning that he was involved in two of the most controversial murder cases in the frontier West. Spicer didn’t seem to display any favoritism on the bench, sustaining various objections from both sides (although he did admonish Virgil Earp for displaying poor judgment in letting things get out of hand – which is probably correct, in hindsight). Three events turned things for the defense:
First was the prosecution trying for the maximum – a first degree murder conviction against the Earps and Holliday. Lubet speculates that this was due to Will McLaury’s insistence; the prosecution probably could have won a manslaughter case against Holliday, or perhaps against all four. The second was using Ike Clanton as a witness. Clanton rambled and generally seemed to be more interested in self-glorification than making a prosecution case. Among other things, he accused the Earps and Holliday of pulling off the stage robbery mentioned above. Although a lot of frontier lawmen “went both ways” – one of Behan’s deputies was implicated in a different stage robbery – the Earps and Holliday had a lot to lose and no incentive to get involved in anything like that and the accusation seems to have backfired. Finally, since this was a preliminary hearing and not a trial, Arizona law allowed “interested parties” to make “statements” that were not subject to cross-examination – Wyatt Earp did exactly that, and it was quite effective. Spicer dismissed the case.
Lubet, like everybody else, has his own theory about what happened, which hinges on the fact that Wyatt Earp had his revolver in his coat pocket. Although in his introduction he cautions that Old West gunfights of the “slap leather” street-showdown variety are almost entirely mythical – the OK Corral being the only recorded case where something remotely like the traditional movie showdown happened – he seems to fall for the myth himself, deciding that since Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury had their pistols in conventional holsters, Wyatt Earp couldn’t possibly have outdrawn them using a pistol from a coat pocket; therefore Earp must have already had his pistol in his hand when the fight started; therefore Earp shot first (Lubet excuses this breach of “the code of the West” as Earp protecting his brothers and friend). Other Earp critics have picked up on this general idea; some claiming that Wyatt’s pistol was actually in his waistband and he had a slit in his pocket allowing him to draw it that way. The catch is that nobody in the Old West practiced “fast draw” techniques, correctly realizing that this would be a real good way to shoot yourself in the foot and that the skill would never be needed. In fact, Lubet had previously mentioned that a major concern with carrying a holstered pistol was the chance it would fall out – and thus Western holsters had securing straps or were even the full-coverage cavalry style.
Interestingly, an exception to the general lack of “fast draw” skill might have been Wyatt Earp – not to shoot, but to pistol whip. In other Earp biographies, it’s explained that when Earp needed to deal with a potential or actual troublemaker – in Dodge City or Tombstone – his preferred technique was to whack his target over the head with his revolver and drag the now stunned victim off to jail. Keeping a pistol in a coat pocket is a perfect way to pull this off, and Earp seems to have been pretty good at it from the number of times it gets mentioned. I thus see no particular reason to believe that Wyatt Earp – as he testified – couldn’t have extracted a pistol from his coat pocket and shot simultaneously with Billy Clanton and just before Frank McLaury.
A decent addition to OK Corral lore, even if Lubet has some minor problems with firearm theory.… (altro)