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Boston Massacre
Trial

The government was determined to give the soldiers a fair trial so that there could be no grounds for retaliation from the British and so that moderates would not be alienated from the Patriot cause. These soldiers were poorly paid, so they would often work for townspeople for money. Several lawyers refused to defend Preston due to their Loyalist leanings, so he sent a request to John Adams, pleading for him to work on the case. Adams was already a leading Patriot and was contemplating a run for public office, but he agreed to help in the interest of ensuring a fair trial. Even though a critical part of his strategy was to convince the judge the men should be not be charged because they only killed a black man. He was joined by Josiah Quincy II after Quincy was assured that the Sons of Liberty would not oppose his appointment, and by Loyalist Robert Auchmuty. They were assisted by Sampson Salter Blowers, whose chief duty was to investigate the jury pool, and by Paul Revere, who drew a detailed map of the bodies to be used in the trial. Massachusetts Solicitor General Samuel Quincy and private attorney Robert Treat Paine were hired by the town of Boston to handle the prosecution. Preston was tried separately in late October 1770. He was acquitted after the jury was convinced that he had not ordered the troops to fire.

The trial of the eight soldiers opened on November 27, 1770. Adams told the jury to look beyond the fact that the soldiers were British. He referred to the crowd that had provoked the soldiers as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes, and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish Jack Tarrs" (sailors). He argued that the soldiers had the legal right to fight back against the mob and so were innocent. If they were provoked but not endangered, he argued, they were at most guilty of manslaughter.

The jury agreed with Adams and acquitted six of the soldiers after 2½ hours of deliberation. Two of the soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter because there was overwhelming evidence that they had fired directly into the crowd. The jury's decisions suggest that they believed that the soldiers had felt threatened by the crowd but should have delayed firing. The convicted soldiers were granted reduced sentences by pleading benefit of clergy, which reduced their punishment from a death sentence to branding of the thumb in open court.

Carr's deathbed account of the event is regarded as the most important piece of evidence exonerating the eight defendants of murder charges. He testified that the soldiers were provoked by the crowd and that they were very restrained toward the colonists, compared to their usual tactics against the people of his native country of Ireland. He claimed that the Boston mob began to throw dangerous projectiles, and that the soldiers fired their muskets in self-defense. The testimony of Samuel Hemmingway is reprinted below:


 * Q: Were you Patrick Carr's surgeon?
 * Samuel Hemmingway: I was.
 * Q: Was he [Carr] apprehensive of his danger?
 * SH: He told me… he was a native of Ireland, that he had frequently seen mobs, and soldiers called upon to quell them… he had seen soldiers often fire on the people in Ireland, but had never seen them bear half so much before they fired in his life.
 * Q: When had you the last conversation with him?
 * SH: About four o'clock in the afternoon, preceding the night on which he died, and he then particularly said, he forgave the man whoever he was that shot him, he was satisfied he had no malice, but fired to defend himself.

Justices Edmund Trowbridge and Peter Oliver instructed the jury, and Oliver specifically addressed Carr's testimony: "this Carr was not upon oath, it is true, but you will determine whether a man just stepping into eternity is not to be believed, especially in favor of a set of men by whom he had lost his life". Carr's testimony is one of the earliest recorded uses of the dying declaration exception to the inadmissibility of hearsay evidence in United States legal code.

The four civilians were tried on December 13. The principal prosecution witness was a servant of one of the accused who made claims that were easily rebutted by defense witnesses. They were all acquitted, and the servant was eventually convicted of perjury, whipped, and banished from the province.


 * 1) Peterson, Farah. "Black Lives and the Boston Massacre: JOHN ADAMS'S FAMOUS DEFENSE OF THE BRITISH MAY NOT BE, AS WE'VE ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD IT, THE ULTIMATE EXPRESSION OF PRINCIPLE AND THE RULE OF LAW." The American Scholar, vol. 88, no. 1, Winter 2019, p. 34+. Gale OneFile: Criminal Justice, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A566399661/PPCJ?u=tel_a_pstcc&sid=PPCJ&xid=6d3dc69a . Accessed 11 Mar. 2020.

" A critical part of Adams's strategy was to convince the jury that his clients had only killed a black man and his cronies and that they didn't deserve to hang for it."

2. Sanchez, Tony. “The Story of the Boston Massacre: A Storytelling Opportunity for Character Education.” The Social Studies, vol. 96, no. 6, 2005, pp. 265-269.

"The arrival of the troops only made things worse. Since the redcoats were poorly paid, they hired themselves out as workers, usually at rates lower than those American workers received."