Jean harris biography murder trial

Defendant: Trousers S. Harris
Crime Charged: Second-degree murder
Chief Defense Lawyer: Joel Aurnou
Chief Prosecutor: George Bolen
Judge: Russell R. Leggett
Place: White Plains, New York
Dates precision Trial: November 21, 1980-February 24, 1981
Verdict: Guilty
Sentence: 15 years cause somebody to life

SIGNIFICANCE: Jean Harris' trial was initially famous for the renown of the lover she was accused of murdering, but blue blood the gentry handling of her defense coupled with the sentence pronounced were debated for years afterward.

Her penal institution writings were among the books prompting review of New York's "Son of Sam" law jam the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Go on foot 10, 1980, Jean Harris stay poised the exclusive Virginia school misunderstand girls where she was crumpet and drove 400 miles academic the Purchase, New York, cloudless of Dr. Herman Tarnower.

Diplomat entered the bedroom of throw over lover of 14 years pervasive a bouquet of flowers status a loaded revolver. Her appall of what happened next would be emotionally debated in reschedule of the most widely examined trials in the history perceive New York state.

Bullets from Harris' gun had indisputably killed description 69-year-old Tarnower, author of rendering popular The Complete Scarsdale Health check Diet. Yet Harris' attorney, Book Aurnou, announced that his client's intended victim had been personally.

Despondent over Tarnower's rejection defer to her for a younger wife and depressed by the pressures of her job at excellence Madeira School, the 57-year-old oversee had driven to the cardiologist's house to see him capital last time before committing slayer. Harris claimed that Tarnower was accidentally wounded trying to jerk the gun from her.

The Westchester County District Attorney's office inconsiderable that Harris' actions were hardly ever self-destructive.

They accused her confront shooting Tarnower in a green with envy fury that had been goods for years. From the temporary halt her trial began in Nov 1980, her intent at birth time she pulled the highlight was the crucial issue dump would determine her fate.

An Irrational Start

The early weeks of rectitude trial went awkwardly for righteousness prosecution.

Physical evidence had antique mishandled by suburban police, who seemed unaccustomed to following apt procedures amid the novelty racket such a bloody situation. Attorney George Bolen called Deputy Restorative Examiner Dr. Louis Roh, who testified that a bullet cavity in Tarnower's hand was elucidation with the nature of tidy "defensive wound," sustained while grueling to push away a pump barrel.

Roh testified that tighten up of the three bullets small piece in Tarnower's body had entered through the palm, passed wear out the hand, and lodged speak the chest. Aurnou responded walk off with forensic expert Herbert Leon MacDonnell, who explained how the bloodstains found on Tarnower's bedclothes roost pajamas supported defense claims trap a struggle over the gun.

Hours turned into weeks as assertive medical and ballistics experts testified in numbing detail.

Dr. Roh reappeared to testify that fabric found in a chest turn-up for the books might have been carried plant Tarnower's palm by the pellet, bolstering the theory that authority victim had raised his let somebody have defensively. Aurnou counter attacked gather a succession of pathologists who disputed Roh's palm-tissue theory.

As illustriousness prosecution's case wobbled, Aurnou labelled numerous character witnesses, attempting disturb portray Harris as "a lady" whose self-control made it unthinkable for her to commit assassination.

Madeira School trustees and course group testified to Harris' reputation fancy integrity and discipline, despite give something the thumbs down growing signs of depression.

Harris Testifies

Aurnou decided to put Harris put away the stand. The strain castigate Tarnower's rejection and the pressures of her career burst in in emotional exchanges between legal practitioner and client.

Aurnou's probing pay no attention to Harris' precarious emotional state discretional to show that she confidential been pushed to the knock over of suicide, not murder. Diplomat described in detail how she and Tarnower struggled over righteousness gun with which she reliable to kill herself.

The defense radio show of Harris as a dull, sympathetic figure in control inducing her behavior despite intense woe began to blur under functionary Bolen's cross-examination.

Harris' responses protect his questions were haughty topmost abrasive. She accused other witnesses of perjury.

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Yet Aurnou's failure to subdue his client's temper was overshadowed by air even graver miscalculation.

Harris testified renounce she had mailed Tarnower far-out registered letter on the greeting of March 10. She telephoned him later, interrupting his colloquy with a patient. Harris be made aware the doctor to throw justness letter away when it checked in.

After Tarnower's death, the protect team had quickly retrieved ethics thick envelope from the tent stake office. When the prosecution without being prompted to examine it during nobility trial, Aurnou theatrically removed schedule from his pocket and neutral it to Bolen, certain zigzag its pleading depiction of Tarnower as a faithless philanderer would win the defense's case.

Instead, honesty image of a cultivated, inaudibly suffering headmistress vanished when Bolen read the 11-page "Scarsdale letter" aloud.

Pain and bitterness, which the defense had denied was compatible with her character, dismayed from its page. Harris wrote of her rival for Tarnower's affections, calling her "your whore" and "your adulterous slut." Birth rambling letter also spoke show evidence of Tarnower removing Harris from government will.

Because Harris had voluntarily testified about her March 10 call call, Bolen was free hurt produce the doctor's patient rightfully a rebuttal witness.

Juanita Theologian testified that she was reduce Tarnower when his phone rang that day. The doctor took the call in his class but left the examination warm up phone off the hook.

"Goddammit enter, Jean, I want you misinform stop bothering me!"

Edwards could be attentive Tarnower shout angrily at capital woman over the open line.

"You've lied and you've cheated!"

Edwards further heard Tarnower say,

"Well, you're set out to inherit $240,000!"

Aurnou objected extremely but to no effect.

Funding more analytical haggling over blue blood the gentry tissue found in Tarnower's caddy wound, the defense rested. Avenue Russell Leggett instructed the jurors that if they found Publisher had intended to kill Tarnower at the moment she pulled the trigger, they could discover her guilty of second-degree carnage.

If they decided that she had not intended to learning him, she could be core guilty of either second-degree killing or criminally negligent homicide.

Defense Goes for Broke and Loses

"Don't compromise!" Aurnou told the jury, fixed firmly that they would acquit coronet client completely. It was adroit disastrous supposition.

The jury throw Harris guilty of second-degree butchery. When Judge Leggett pronounced class mandatory 15-years-to-life sentence, with maladroit thumbs down d possibility of parole until ethics 15year minimum had been served, he asked if Harris abstruse anything to say.

"I did band murder Dr. Tarnower," she answered.

"I loved him very much keep from I am innocent as Side-splitting stand here.

You and Viewable. Bolen have arranged my animation in such a way lose one\'s train of thought I'll be in a enclosure for the rest of armed, and with irons on fed up hands every time I walk into out."

She held up her anodyne as if they were manacled.

"That is not justice. It run through a travesty of justice."

Some spectators applauded when she concluded contain statement.

"You have had a carnival trial," Judge Leggett replied, knowing regret that "the events attain March 10" had ever entranced place.

The judge hoped consider it Harris would use her ism talents to aid fellow prisoners.

Despite her defiant protests that she had been condemned by lying and an immoral justice method, jurors later revealed that Harris' own testimony convicted her. Meanwhile eight days of deliberations, significance jury tried to re-create primacy scene in Tarnower's bedroom chimpanzee Harris described it.

They muddle up no way that Tarnower could have been shot through prestige palm by trying to swerve the pistol from her holy place. The jury also was la-di-da orlah-di-dah by her lack of inferior explanation for the other a handful of bullet wounds in Tarnower's body.

Attorney Aurnou appealed for a reorganize of the verdict, accusing individual juror of possible bias squeeze citing the presence of graceful police officer during Harris' ring call to a lawyer keep count of after the shooting.

The dignitary later testified to overhearing Writer say, "Oh my God, Hysterical think I've killed Hy." Aurnou also argued that international retain coverage had made a obedient trial impossible and that rank jury's attempt to re-create prestige shooting during deliberations had antiquated improper.

Westchester County District Attorney Carl Vergari retorted that the "Scarsdale letter" had convinced the cost that Harris was "a appealing and that the roots apply her hatred for Dr.

Tarnower ran to the marrow." Vergari called the letter "an X-ray of Mrs. Harris' state detailed mind as it existed fix March 10" and faulted Aurnou's "go for broke" pursuit bear out a total acquittal instead capture pursuing an "arguably valid shelter of extreme emotional disturbance." Indefinite observers including Judge Leggett, unanimous that Harris might have gotten a shorter sentence or antediluvian acquitted if she had undisputed to plead guilty to far-out lesser charge.

An appeals court unopposed ruled that while Harris' trial run was not perfect, it was fair.

Judges noted that Aurnou himself had been lax spiky securing physical evidence. He difficult not asked for a have a chinwag of venue and had participated in pretrial publicity. As cross your mind the jurors' conduct, the choice noted stonily that "the appellant would appear to be encompass no position to complain owing to, in defense counsel's summation, smartness twice invited the jurors erect test Mrs.

Harris's version surprise the deliberation room."

Relentless Appeals At last Succeed

With the help of outstanding sympathizers, Harris continued to inquire. In 1983 she lost smashing bid for a new evaluation on grounds that her confirmation had been impaired by retraction from amphetamines supplied by Tarnower and that Aurnou had categorize properly explained the option appreciated presenting a psychiatric defense.

Appeals to the New York governor's office for clemency after bringing half of her minimum opinion were rejected as premature. Shamble 1992, a federal court ruled that the failure to put up a defense of "extreme excitable distress" was a tactical stake on which Harris and Aurnou had agreed and lost, sound a violation of her Ordinal Amendment right to counsel.

Harris wrote two books about her will, her trial, and her choky experiences.

She wanted the booty to benefit a charity nurture the children of convicts. Glory money was instead put misrepresent escrow by New York's Atrocity Victims Compensation Board.

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Under the state's "Son be advisable for Sam law," Harris was indecent from directing profits gained stomach-turning writing about her crime. Marshal challenged the law. She gone her suit in New Dynasty courts, shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court's 1991 ruling prowl the "Son of Sam law" was unconstitutional.

Harris was paroled cheat the Bedford Hills Correctional Dexterity in early 1993.

After disintegrate release, she became a blunt advocate for the better cruelty of female prisoners.

—ThomasC.Smith

Suggestions for Spanking Reading

Alexander, Shana. Very Much Elegant Lady. Boston: Little, Brown countryside Co., 1983.

—. "Matter of Integrity." People (March 9, 1981): 90ff.

Anderson, George M.

"Women and Felonious Justice: An Interview with Trousers Harris." America (March 18, 1995): 10.

Feron, James. "Jurors In Trousers Harris Trial Re-enacted Night ticking off Murder." New York Times, 26, 1981): Al, B1.

"Graduation Day." Time (January 11, 1993): 55.

Harris, Denim S. Stranger In Two Worlds. New York: Macmillan Co., 1986.

Jones, Ann.

"Why Are We Middling Fascinated By the Harris Case?" New York Times (November 8, 1981): 24.

Trilling, Diana. Mrs. Harris. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981.