Virginia historians should look at Phil Shwartz's TWICE CONDEMNED (I
think it may have been recently reprinted by Lawbook Exchange, but I am
not sure).  Phil looked at hundred of Va. cases.  I do not agree with
all of his analysis, but it is a very fine book which has a lot of
intermation;  Phil found lots of cases of slaves acquitted of serious
crimes.   If nothing else, there was an incentive on the part of the
"system" to give slvaes fair trials because executing a slave meant
destroying valuable property.

Paul Finkelman

James Hershman wrote:
> Anne Pemberton wrote:
>
>> Yes, but I also find many situations where slaves were killed without
>> trial for even lesser sins than poisoning the master. There were no
>> consequences for the murder of the slave. May I suggest reading at
>> least the first ten chapters of Frederick Douglass' Autobiography at
>> http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/ ....
>>
>>                                         Anne
>>
> Paul Finkelman is far more of a legal historian of slavery than I am and
> he mentions that slave trials were all over the board. Indeed, the whole
> matter has been a subject of a great interest in slavery studies in the
> '70s - '90s. Defining in law the peculiar status of slaves--were they
> property or were they people when it came to the criminal law ?--became
> a big problem for antebellum southern jurist like Thomas Ruffin of the
> NC Supreme Court. Genovese in __Roll Jordan, Roll__has a good chapter on
> the matter. A remarkable study of a slave trial is Milton McLauren's
> _Celia_. Celia was a Missouri slave woman in the 1850s  whose master, a
> Virginian who had moved to Missouri, had raped and abused her. One
> night, unable to stand him any more, she killed him and chopped his body
> into pieces and burned them in the fireplace. Celia was arrested and
> tried in court. The best lawyer in the county defended her and, given
> the limitations on her testimony, gave her an excellent defense and
> appealed her case to the state's highest court. But of course she was
> hanged.
>
> Jim Hershman
>
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--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East 4th Place
Tulsa, Oklahoma  74104-2499

918-631-3706 (office)
918-631-2194 (fax)

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