Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:44:50.343Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Witnessing for the Defense: The Adversarial Court and Narratives of Criminal Behavior in Nineteenth-Century Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Louise McReynolds
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

“Witnessing for the Defense” takes readers into the adversarial courtroom in postreform Russia. A fundamentally new type of public arena, the courtroom allowed representatives of the state (prosecutors) to debate with professionals (defense attorneys and expert witnesses), each side making a case about criminal behavior and justice for society (jurors and the readers who followed reports on trial) to judge. Analyzing how the defense changed over time for the same type of crime, the murder of a lover by the woman whom he had jilted, Louise McReynolds shows how the courtroom provided a place for the discussion of newly emerging concepts and theories from the social sciences. Psychiatry is especially important because it was raising questions of individual personality and personal responsibility that had the potential to undermine the status quo. Thus this article shifts the focus on the legal reforms of 1864 from politics to culture.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 69 , Issue 3 , Fall 2010 , pp. 620 - 644
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

I thank the Fulbright-Hays Committee, the International Research and Exchanges Board, and the Kennan Institute for funding the research for this project. The Institute for Advanced Studies provided me with the time and appropriate atmosphere to begin reflecting upon the materials. I am especially grateful to Valerie Kivelson and the Michigan Russian History Reading Group for stimulating discussion of an earlier draft of this paper. Lynn Mally, Joan Neuberger, Donald Raleigh, and the anonymous readers for this journal also provided valuable criticism that helped me to restructure my argument.

1 “Kachka, Delo”, Russkie sudebnye oratory v izvestnykh prolsessakh (Moscow, 1898), 3: 390.Google Scholar

2 For example, Alexander Polunov, Russia in the Nineteenth Century: Autocracy, Reform, and Social Change, 1814–1914, ed. Thomas C. Owen and Larissa G. Zakharova, trans. Marshall S. Shatz (Armonk, N.Y, 2005), reiterated that “her trial, a reflection of society's lack of trust in the government, represented a major defeat for the authorities in their struggle against the revolutionaries,” 123. See also Evtuhov, Catherine, Goldfrank, David, Hughes, Lindsey, and Stites, Richard, A History of Russia: Peoples, Legends, Events, Forces (Boston, 2004), 447, 500;Google Scholar and Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. and Steinberg, Mark D., A History of Russia,7th ed. (New York, 2005), 356.Google Scholar Most recently, Richard Pipes has devoted an entire issue of Russian History to “The Trial of Vera Zasulich,” calling it “the most important judiciary event in the history of Imperial Russia.” Russian History/Histoire Russe 37, no. 1 (2010): 2.

3 Kucherov, Samuel, Courts, Lawyers, and Trials under the Last Three Tsars (New York, 1953), 222.Google Scholar

4 The Kachka trial had such popular resonance that a movie was made of it in 1916, with Plevako as the central figure. “A zashchishchal ee Plevako,” produced and directed by A. Taldykin.

5 Beer, Daniel, Renovating Russia: The Human Sciences and the Fate of Liberal Modernity, 1880-1930 (Ithaca, 2008), 29.Google Scholar See also Vucinich, Alexander, Social Thought in Tsarist Rus-sia: The Qxieslfora General Science of Society, 1861-1917 (Chicago, 1976).Google Scholar

6 See especially Wortman, Richard, The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness (Chicago, 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Viktor Fuks, one of the most articulate among the conservative jurists in the postreform era, observed astutely that the government had misunderstood the nature of politics when, following Zasulich s acquittal, it removed specifically political and press crimes from the purview of juries, “as though the institution had a political character only when it was breaking political laws, rather than in and of itself!” See Fuks, Viktor, Sicd i politsiia (Moscow, 1889), 123.Google Scholar

8 Wiener, Martin J., “Judges v. Jurors: Courtroom Tensions in Murder Trials and the Law of Criminal Responsibility in Nineteenth-Century England”, Law and History Review 17, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 467.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 My point is not to contradict the historiography but to expand the use of the legal system as a site of analysis. See Wortman, Richard, “Russian Monarchy and the Rule of Law: New Considerations of the Court Reform of 1864,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 6, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 145–70;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Burbank, Jane, Russian Peasants Go to Court: Legal Culture in the Countryside, 1905–191 7 (Bloomington, 2004).Google Scholar

10 This distinction dates back to the prereform era and is explicit in the 1845 criminal code. Girish N. Bhat, “Trial by Jury in the Reign of Alexander II: A Study in the Legal Culture of Late Imperial Russia, 1864–1881” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1995), 198.

11 Article 682 of the criminal code, the Ustav ugolovnogo sudoproizvodstva, stated that a case must come to trial even if the accused has confessed.

12 According to article 713 of the criminal code, jurors swore to decide on the basis of the evidence, “according to the truth and the conviction of my conscience.” They further recognized in their oath that “I must answer before the law and before God on Judgment Day.” When A. F. Koni, the presiding judge at the Zasulich trial, famously reminded jurors that they were “restrained by nothing but conscience,” it became widely interpreted that he had tacitly recommended acquittal.

13 French jurors, for example, also took an oath to judge “suivant votre conscience et voire intime conviction,” according to article 342 of their criminal code.

14 Quoted in Bobrishchev-Pushkin, A. M., Empiricheshie zakony deiatel 'nosti russkago sudaprisiazhnykh (Moscow, 1896), 1.Google Scholar

15 Wiener, 'Judges v. Jurors,” 481.

16 Although I have selected female killers, this essay is not about gender, which has already been well studied. Ruth Harris, for example, has argued that “[the women ”s melodramatic mode of presentation] often produced acquittal, but at the cost of appearing to collude in a generalized judgement of women as emotionally histrionic and irresponsible.” Harris, Ruth, Murders and Madness: Medicine, Law, and Society in theFin de Siecle (New York, 1989), 227.Google ScholarRussians, too, connected female criminality with gendered norms that lessened female intentionality. See Engelstein, Laura, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia (Ithaca, 1992), 105–6,Google Scholar and Engelstein, , “Gender and the Juridical Subject: Prostitution and Rape Laws in Nineteenth-Century Russian Criminal Codes,” Journal of Modern History 60, no. 3 (September 1988): 458–95;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Frank, Stephen P., “Narratives within Numbers: Women, Crime and Judicial Statistics in Imperial Russia, 1834–1913,” Russian Review 55, no. 4 (October 1996): 541–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For contemporaneous views, see 1. Foinitskii, , “Zhenshchina-pristupnitsa,” Severnyi vestnik, nos. 2–3 (1893): 123–44;Google Scholar and Tarnovskaia, Praskovia, Zhenshchiny-ubiitsy (St. Petersburg, 1902).Google Scholar Certainly testimony from these trials can be used to illustrate notions of gender, but my interest here lies in how the courtroom functioned as a kind of public sphere for the performance of social dramas.

17 I paraphrase Ian Hacking on “the public life of concepts and ways that they gain authority.” Quoted in Horn, David G., Social Bodies: Science, Reproduction, and Italian Modernity (Princeton, 1994), 7.Google Scholar

18 See Murav, Harriet, Russia's Legal Fictions (Ann Arbor, 1998), 71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Murav quotes K K. Arsen'ev, who borrowed the characterization from Ivan Turgenev's reference to serfs.

19 Quoted in Afanasev, Alexander K., “Jurors and Jury Trials in Imperial Russia, 1866–1885”, trans. Sunderland, Willard, inEklof, Ben, Bushnell, John, and Zakharova, Larissa, eds., Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881 (Bloomington, 1994), 215.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 219.

21 Although the randomness of this information prohibits meaningful statistical analysis, every case that I have found for the fifty years of jury trials reflects these demographics.

22 The details from this case are taken from the transcript, as republished in “Delo Aleksandry Rybakovskoi, obviniaemoi v ubiistve,” Russkie sudebnye oratory (Moscow, 1903), 7:273–324.

23 Coincidentally, Zasulich had also studied to become a midwife, one of the few jobs open to women.

24 A writer for the Minisuy of Justice's official newspaper Sudebnyi vestnik, N. Shishkin, also raised the issue of the forensics of the pistony. See Sudebnyi vestnik, no. 249 (19 November 1868).

25 “Delo Aleksandry Rybakovskoi,” 295. In 1871 a juridical student L. E. Vladimirov went abroad to study European juries for two years and reached a similar conclusion. He decried those who doubted the reliability of dying statements because “the nearness of death guarantees the truthfulness of testimony.” Vladimirov, L. E., Sud prisiazhnykh (Khar'kov, 1873), 183.Google Scholar

26 “Delo Aleksandry Rybakovskoi,” 300.

27 On the view that suicide could be considered heroic, see Morrissey, Susan K., Suicide and the Body Politic in Imperial Russia (Cambridge, Eng., 2006), esp. chap. 9.Google Scholar

28 “Delo Aleksandry Rybakovskoi,” 318.

29 Arsen'ev subsequently wrote two books, intended for use in law school, about the importance of proper investigation of cases, although he did not cite this case as a warning: Arsen'ev, K. K., Predanie sudu i dal'neishii khod ugolovnago dela do nachala sudebnago sledstviia (St. Petersburg, 1870)Google Scholar and Arsen'ev, , Sudebnoe sledstvie: Sbornik prakticheskikh zametok (St. Petersburg, 1871).Google Scholar

30 “Delo Aleksandry Rybakovskoi,” 306.

31 Ibid., 321.

32 Article 630 of the criminal code mandated that prosecution and defense enjoy equal rights.

33 Vucinich, Alexander, Science in Russian Culture, 1861–1917 (Stanford, 1970), 24.Google Scholar

34 Quoted in Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825–1855 (Berkeley, 1959), 98.Google Scholar

35 The few exjurors who wrote about dieir experience discussed very positively how they preferred to personalize the cases rather than to follow the strict letter of the law. See N. N. O., “Iz zametok prisiazhnogo zasedatelia,” Istoricheskii vestnik, no. 74 (1898): pt. 1, 185–210 and pt. 2, 639–63; and Dzhanshiev, Grigorii, Sudnadsudomprisiazhnykhpopovodu statei g. Deitrikha i “Grazhdanina” (Moscow, 1896).Google Scholar

36 Daniel Philip Todes, “From Radicalism to Scientific Convention: Biological Psychology in Russia from Sechenov to Pavlov” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1981), 38.

37 For more on Sechenov, see Vucinich, Science in Russian Culture, 19–29; and, Joravsky, David, Russian Psychology: A Critical History (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 57–63, 93–99, 124–36.Google Scholar

38 Todes, “From Radicalism,” 17.

39 Harris, Murders and Madness, 2.

40 Sechenov's central thesis was that “the original cause of every act is exclusively an external sensory stimulation, without which no thought is possible.” Todes, “From Radicalism,” 117.

41 Details for this case come from “Delo Kachka,” 354–95.

42 Konstantine Klioutchkine, “Between Sacrifice and Indulgence: Nikolai Nekrasov as a Model for the Intelligentsia,” Slavic Review 66, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 45–62.

43 Harris, Murders and Madness, 9, points out that this distinction indicated that insanity and morality were no longer considered mutually exclusive.

44 Elisa M. Becker discusses this in “Medicine, Law, and the State: The Emergence of Forensic Psychiatry in Imperial Russia” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2003), esp. chap. 1.

45 Pravila otnositel'no svideteistvovaniia i ispytaniia tekh, koi v pripadkakh sumashestviia uchinili smertoubiistvo, Hi posiagnuli na zhizn' drugogo Hi sobstvennuiu, comp. Med. Sovetom dlia rukovodstva vracham i odobrennyia Gos. Sovietom (St. Petersburg, 1835). Originally compiled in 1827, in 1835 the rules were revised to include suicide.

46 Iangoulova, Lia, “The Osvidetel'stvovanie and Ispytanie of Insanity” in Brintlinger, Angela and Vinitsky, Ilya I., eds., Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture (Toronto, 2007), 56.Google Scholar

47 Article 1454 of the code on punishments, the Ulozhenie o nakazaniiakh ugolovnykh i ispravitel'nykh, sentenced those “guilty of murder with premeditation” to 12 to 15 years of hard labor. Aiticle 1455 lessened the hard labor to “from 8 to 12 years,” if murder was committed in a burst of anger (v zapal'chivosti Hi razdrazhenii).

48 A. Liubavskii collected information about the first trials in which mental illness was an issue in Russkie ugolovnye protsessy, vol. 3, Kausislika dushevnykh boleznei (St. Petersburg, 1867). These differ from the insanity plea because they argue for a momentary loss of reason.

49 Quoted in Todes, “From Radicalism,” 137.

50 Ibid., 264.

51 On the history of Russian psychiatry in the nineteenth century, see Iudin, Tikhon, Ocherki istorii otechestvennoi psikhiatrii (Moscow, 1951);Google Scholar and Julie Vail Brown, “The Professionalization of Russian Psychiatry: 1857–1911” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1981).

52 Becker, “Medicine, Law, and the State,” 324–36, discusses the case.

53 I borrow this turn of phrase from Rodensky, Lisa, The Crime in Mind: Criminal Responsibility and the Victorian Novel (Oxford, 2003).Google Scholar

54 I deal with this development more fully in “Who Cares Who Killed Ivan Ivanovich? Detective Fiction in Late Imperial Russia," Russian History/Histoire Russe 36, no. 3 (2009): 391–406.

55 “Delo Kachka,” 378.

56 Ibid., 380.

57 Ibid., 382.

58 Ibid., 383.

59 Biographical information on Plevako from N. K. Murav'ev's introduction to the two volumes of Plevako's speeches that he edited Plevako, Rechi, ed. N. K. Murav'ev, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1910), l:iii—xvii. See also coverage of Plevako's death and funeral in Novoe vremia, no. 11778 (24 December 1908) and no. 11780 (26 December 1908); and Nathans, Benjamin, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley, 2002), 359–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Antisemitism was written into the Russian legal system in various ways, from limiting the percentage of Jews who could sit on juries, to restricting the number of Jewish lawyers after 1889. See Kucherov, Courts, 273–80.

60 Wiener, 'Judges v. Jurors,” 474.

61 “Delo Kachka,” 388.

62 Ibid., 387.

63 Todes argues that, from the 1870s, “when biological psychology had gained acceptance within academic and medical institutions, speculation regarding free will would seem unnecessary, and even inappropriate to scientific investigation.” He also points out that the notion of “will” became subdivided and relocated in various categories that drew distinctions between philosophical and juridical definitions, as defined in the Brokgaus and Efron encyclopedia. See Todes, “From Radicalism,” 266, 13.

64 “Delo Kachka,” 389.

65 Ibid., 392.

66 Ibid., 393.

67 “Delo Kachka,” 394. With the use of “homeless wanderer,” it can also be argued that Plevako was playing with nationalist ideas expressed by Aleksandr Pushkin and later invoked by Fedor Dostoevskii. See Kohn, Hans, “Dostoevsky's Nationalism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 6, no. 4 (October 1945): 385–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Walicki, Andrzej, A History of Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to Marxism (Stanford, 1979), 523.Google Scholar

68 Todes, “From Radicalism,” 253.

69 “Delo Kachka,” 368.

70 Morrissey, Suicide, 198.

71 Todes, “From Radicalism”, 20.

72 The prominent liberal professor Boris Chicherin published Science and Religion in 1879, directed toward a much different audience but grappling with similar metaphysical issues. Vucinich discusses this in Science in Russian Culture, chap. 8 (“The Philosophical Challenge”).

73 Dostoevskii summed this up in 1877 when he sniffed that defense attorneys “no longer search for truth but for talent.” Quoted in David Keily, “The Brothers Karamazov and the Fate of Russian Truth: Shifts in the Construction and Interpretation of Narrative after the Judicial Reform of 1864” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1996), 74.

74 The disaffected Arsen'ev had resigned from the bar in 1874 and taken up a second career as a polemicist, especially critical of censorship. He had not been a particularly successful litigator. Arsen'ev, K. K., Zametki o russkoi advokature: Teoreticheskie raboty, zashchititel'nye rechi, ocherki (Tula, 2001).Google Scholar

75 Quoted in Kucherov, Courts, 221.

76 Highly detailed information on jury trials was published annually by the Ministry ofjustice, Svod statisticheskikh svedeniipo delam ugolovnym, 1873–1913. Over this period, the patterns show only insignificant variation over time. N. N. O. discusses acquitting twenty-six of thirty-five cases brought before his jury. He noted that some in his group wanted to acquit everyone and bemoaned that “sometimes the prosecutor forgets that the defendant is a human being.” See N. N. O., “Iz zametok,” 203, 192, 202.

77 Demichev, A. A., Istoriia rossiiskogo suda prisiazhnykh (1864–1917 gg.) (Nizhnii Novgorod, 2002), 154.Google Scholar

78 Quoted in Gessen, I. V., Sudebnaia reforma (St. Petersburg, 1905), 164 Google Scholar. Others have credited Ordiodoxy with generating a particularly sympathetic Russian juror. For example, as Vasilii Zenkovskii argues, “the Russian view of criminals … is not one of indifference or castigation, but of hope for the possibility of their moral resurrection and renovation.” Zenkovskii, , “The Spirit of Russian Orthodoxy,” Russian Review 22, no. 1 (January 1963): 49.Google Scholar See also Michael Newcity, “Why Is There No Russian Atticus Finch? Or Even a Russian Rumpole?” Texas Wesleyan Review 12, no. 1 (Fall 2005): 271–302.

79 Grot, N. Ia., O nravstvennoi otvetstvennosti i iuridicheskoi vmeniaemosti (Odessa, 1885), 13–14.Google ScholarOriginally an academic philosopher, Grot moved to psychology because he believed in physiological explanations for all behavior, including moral actions.

80 Wiener, 'Judges v. Jurors, 470. Wiener did not limit this to the trials themselves but expanded his notion to include “the dramas that often continued around them outside and after the trial”. Details from the Palem case are taken from Ol'ga Palem (Ubiistvo studenta Dovnara) (Moscow, 1895). This booklet was published by A. I. and L. F. Snegirev, the couple who also published the popular journal Sudebnye dramy. They produced individual pamphlets of sensational trials, such as this one.

81 I deal with this more fully in my News under Russia's Old Regime: The Development of a Mass-Circulation Press (Princeton, 1991), chaps. 5 and 6.

82 Physician E. F. Bellin became a local celebrity in Khar'kov and “played a visible role in the public life of the city”, speaking at court about everything from hypnotism to toxicology, topics often beyond his professional forte. Shershavkin, S. V., Istoriia otechestvennoi sudebno-meditsinskoi sluzhby (Moscow, 1968), 125.Google Scholar

83 Quoted in the “boulevard” newspaper Peterburgskaia gazeta, no. 333 (3 December J 884).

84 For example, the satirical journal Strekozaput the “psychopath” on the cover of its New Year's issue for 1885, as something introduced during the past year; a three-act comedy from 1886, Ubiitsa-psikhopat (The Psychopathic Killer) played upon this popularity; the parents of a young bride read a book about psychopaths and mistakenly identify their son-in-law as a psychopathic killer; a ditty called “Psychopaths” chanted: In our humanistic century,Our century of progress.People have become noticeably more polite. Doctors, lawyers, even the press. Have forgotten the word idiot. The fellow who doesn't take bribes from everyone,Now they declare that “something's not quite right with him”. It's as if he's a psychopath.

85 Ol'ga Palem, 1–2.

86 Ibid., 38–39.

87 Karabchevskii, N. P., Rechi, 1882–1912, 2d ed. (supplemented with five speeches) (St. Petersburg, 1902), 102.Google Scholar

88 As one coincidental indication of the overlap between public and private in the legal profession, Andreevskii had refused an assignment from the minister of justice in 1878 to prosecute Vera Zasulich. He left the government for a successful private practice.

89 Quoted in Bek, Anna Nikolaevna, The Life of a Russian Woman Doctor: A Siberian Memoir, 1869–1954, trans, and ed.Rassweiler, Anne D., foreword and additional notes by Lindenmeyr, Adele M. (Bloomington, 2004).Google Scholar I thank Adele for bringing this source to my attention.

90 0l'ga Palem, 18.

91 Selivanov, T. M., "Khar'kovskaia tret'ia gimnasia. 25 let nazad," Khar'kovskii sbornik 10 (October 1896): 151.Google Scholar I thank Andrew Ringlee for this citation.

92 As covered by article 612 of the criminal code.

93 0l'ga Palem, 45.

94 Ibid. The question of whether or not crime was gendered, arising from the ideas of Cesare Lombroso, was being debated among jurists and criminologists. See Foinitskii, “Zhenshchina-prestupnitsa.”

95 The contemporaneous rumor mill also linked her to S. Iu. Witte, the current minister of finance who was reputed to have been acquainted with Kandinskii in Odessa when Witte was working there in the 1880s. Ikonnikov-Galitskii, Andzhei, Khroniki peterburgskikh prestuplenii:Blistatel'nyiiprestupnyikriminalnyiPeterburg, 1861–1917 (St. Petersburg, 2007), 140.Google Scholar

96 Karabchevskii, Rechi, 279.

97 Ol'ga Palem, 131.

98 N. N. O. wrote that the juries on which he served would acquit if they found the judge too “one-sided” against the accused. N. N. O., “Iz zametok,” 199–201. James M. Donovan writes about this as a problem in France, too. Donovan, , “Magistrates and Juries in France, 1791–1952”, French Historical Studies 22, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

99 Peterburgskii listok, an editorially sympathetic paper, reported 19 February 1895 (no. 48) that “the public shouted ‘bravo,’ she fell into a dead faint, and the judge ordered the courtroom cleared.”

100 Ironically, Suvorin had employed Arsen'ev to defend him against a censorship charge in 1868, but the publisher had no better success with this lawyer than Rybakovskaia had enjoyed.

101 Quoted in 01'ga Palem, 2 –3 . The editors also rued, however, that Palem lacked “even a shadow of that especially articulate phrasing that sparkled from the psychopath Semenova (the woman about whom Balinskii had testified) in this same courtroom.” Novoe vremia, no. 6815 (18 February 1895).

102 According to article 534 of the criminal code, the court would send a case to trial only after having established that “the investigation is sufficiently complete and was undertaken without violating any forms or practices of jurisprudence.”

103 Novoe vremia noted ironically that this was also probably the first time the two had been in agreement. Novoe vremia, no. 6817 (22 March 1895).

104 Dzhanshiev, Grigorii Avetovich, Sbornik statei (Moscow, 1914), 14.Google Scholar

105 The Senate published information about how it decided the cases appealed to it annually in Resheniya ugolovnago kassatsionnago dejmrtamenta Pravitel. Senata. The Palem Case was no. 17 for 1895.

106 Ibid.

107 Although many lawyers, including such liberals as Karabchevskii, were suspicious, and jealous, of psychiatrists, Koni defended their authority to argue for diminished capacity. See, for example, Koni, A. F., “Osvidetel'stvovanie sumasshedshikh v osobom prisutstvii Gub. pravleniia,”, Zhurnal iuridicheshaia letopis' (January 1891): 1–27 Google Scholar, and Koni, , “Psikhiatricheskaia ekspertiza i deistvuiushchie zakony” Vestnik Evropy, 1910, no. 2: 145–66.Google Scholar

108 Bobrishchev-Pushkin, Empiricheskie zakony, 164.

109 Ibid., 41.

110 The conservative, and antijury, journal Moskovskii vestnik displayed an unusual support for European politics when it noted in 1889 that juries were becoming less popular there. Atwell, John W. Jr., “The Russian Jury”, Slavonic and East European Review 53, no. 130 (January 1975): 97.Google Scholar

111 French, Bryant Morey, “Mark Twain, Laura D. Fair and the New York Criminal Courts”, American Quarterly 16, no. 4 (1964): 550–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

112 In Sparfv. United States, 156 U.S. 51 (1895), the Supreme Court ruled against jurors who had asked (not unlike Palem's) if they could find defendants guilty of man-slaughter rather than murder. Dwyer, William L., In the Hands of the People: The Trial Jury's Origins, Triumplis, Troubles, and Future in American Democracy (New York, 2002), 72.Google Scholar See also Train, Arthur C., “The Jury System-Defects and Proposed Remedies”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 36, no. 1 (July 1910): 175–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

113 Harris, Murders and Madness, 136–37, discusses the contemporaneous debates in France as does Donovan, “Magistrates and Juries”, 379–420. See also Garner, James W., “Criminal Procedure in France,” Yale Law Journal 25, no. 4 (February 1916): 255–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Russian jurist Vsevolod Danevskii wrote about the superiority of the Russian system of restricting the power of the presiding judges in O zakliuchitel'nom slove predsedatelia (St. Petersburg, 1896), 11.

114 Wolfe, Nancy Travis, “Lay Judges in German Criminal Courts: The Modification of an Institution”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 138, no. 4 (December 1994): 498.Google Scholar See also Howard, Burt Estes, “Trial by Jury in Germany”, Political Science Quarterly 19, no. 4 (December 1904): 650–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

115 Nye, Robert A., “Heredity or Milieu: The Foundations of Modern European Criminological Theory”, Isis 67, no. 3 (September 1976): 335–55;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Pick, Daniel, “The Faces of Anarchy: Lombroso and the Politics of Criminal Science in Post-Unification Italy” History Workshop Journal 21, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 60–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

116 Dzhanshiev, Slid, nad sudom, 3–4 .

117 Quoted in Kucherov, Courts, 82.

118 Ibid., 68.

119 Ibid., 83–84. Beilis'sjury, which included seven members of the archreactionary Union of Russian People, did find that a ritual murder had been committed, but it was not unusual for the jurors to agree to a crime while acquitting the accused. Russian juries were not required to vote unanimously; a simple majority could have convicted Beilis.

120 On a related topic, how peasants maneuvered in the legal system, see Burbank, Russian Peasants Go to Court.

121 Two recent books on Bolshevik uses of the court anticipate its future use in the show trials of the 1930s, but antecedents from the prerevohitionary era make plain how widely the courtroom was recognized as a genuinely public arena. Cassiday, Julie A., The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen (DeKalb, 2000);Google Scholar and Wood, Elizabeth A., Performing Justice: Agitation Trials in Early Soviet Russia (Ithaca, 2005).Google Scholar