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Slaughter on a Snowy Morn: The Death Penalty Case That Revolutionised Forensic Science
Slaughter on a Snowy Morn The Death Penalty Case That Revolutionised Forensic Science Author:Colin Evans This title tells the dramatic tale of the New York farmhand condemned to death in 1915, who became the first convicted murderer ever to be freed by forensic science. How an innocent 37-year-old farmhand with the mind of an infant came within minutes of being executed at Sing Sing Prison in New York in 1916, only to be spared at the last moment, ... more »is one of the most fascinating yet little-known stories in criminal history. "Slaughter on a Snowy Morn" is the first full account of the landmark case that turned Charles Stielow, accused killer of a wealthy landowner and his housekeeper, into the American Dreyfus and changed the face of forensic science around the globe. Stielow was convicted on a phoney confession and the crooked 'expert' testimony of a fussy, jumped-up druggist named Albert H. Hamilton. Without the efforts of Grace Humiston, America's most celebrated female lawyer, Stielow would have gone to the electric chair. She saved him, but it was forensic science that gave him back his liberty. The colourful cast list includes New York state Governor Charles Whitman, keen to follow previous job incumbents Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt into the White House, and his nemesis, Sing Sing warden Thomas Mott Osborne, a passionate opponent of the death penalty, convinced of Stielow's innocence. But the story's unsung hero is the obsessively secretive, quietly spoken Charles E. Waite - the great mystery man of American forensic science - whose team of experts tore Hamilton's testimony to shreds, finding that Stielow's pistol had not been fired in years. Incensed by Stielow's ordeal, Waite was driven to found the world's first ballistics laboratory. This is a nail-biting account of wrongful conviction, redemption in an age of bare-knuckle politics, cynical courtroom manoeuvring - and American forensic science's baptism of fire.« less