Boston massacre trial summary

Sampson Salter Blowers, a Loyalist, served as attorney only for Rex v. Wemms, et al. He was later exiled and became the Chief Justice of Nova Scotia. Good God! Is it possible? I will not believe it I refused all engagement, until advised and urged to undertake it, by an Adams, a Hancock, a Molineux, a Cushing, a Henshaw, a Pemberton, a Warren, a Cooper, and a Phillips I dare affirm, that you, and this whole people will one day REJOICE, that I became an advocate for the aforesaid "criminals," charged with the murder of our fellow citizens.

British Captain Thomas Preston came to trial on October 24, He had been held in jail for seven months since the Massacre. His attorneys needed to prove that he had not issued the command to fire. The prosecution had to prove that he did, and was therefore responsible for the five deaths. And a Medieval relic, the Benefit of Clergy, was used by two soldiers found guilty of manslaughter to escape the death penalty.

The British soldiers were tried before the Superior Court of Judicature, the highest court in Massachusetts. As English subjects, they had a right to a fair trial by jury and competent defense counsel. Loyalists wanted the soldiers pardoned, but were prosecuting in the King's name. Patriots wanted the soldiers found guilty, but also wanted to show Boston as fair.

Chief Justice Benjamin Lynde, Jr. Justice Edmund Trowbridge, a meticulous and learned judge, he was responsible for suggesting the use of the Benefit of Clergy during the trials. He became a reluctant Patriot during the Revolution. Justice John Cushing, another political moderate, he retired the following year after serving twenty-four years on the bench.

Justice Peter Oliver, a fierce and outspoken loyalist, he became chief justice after Lynde, only to be impeached by the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He was exiled with other Loyalists in Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Hutchinson was chief justice of the Superior Court, but declined to preside at the trials.

Benjamin Lynde, Jr. Lynde tried to resign his position twice before the trials began. He and the remaining three justices of the court presided at the trials in full bottomed wigs and scarlet robes for the capital crime of murder. The crowd strained forward in the Queen Street courtroom on October 17, Murmurs and rumblings of anger filled the air. Captain Thomas Preston, a British grenadier, shifted his feet nervously and felt the sweat rising to his brow.

If the jury found him, and his men, guilty of murder as the indictment suggested, he could only expect death as a penalty. That is what these Bostonians wanted!

The only hope for Preston and his men lay with this short, stocky country lawyer—a colonial American after all—John Adams, and his too young assistant Josiah Quincy. But the passions of the people remained strong. They reminded the good citizens that the British soldiers were not welcomed, and that mobs had as much right to carry clubs as the soldiers had to carry loaded muskets!

But now the jury was set and the true drama was beginning. Only a fair trial would show the world that Massachusetts, and by association all Americans, deserved their liberty by an appeal to justice and not by the rule of a mob. Captain Preston had his doubts that a fair trial was possible.

Yet there was something about his lawyer that gave him hope.