ABSTRACT
November 1, 1895: Theo Durrant’s trial for murder ended in San Francisco. A 21-year-old medical student at Cooper Medical College and a member of the Emmanuel Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and did repair jobs in the church, William Henry Theodore Durrant was a well-liked and respected young man. On April 3, 1895, Durrant took his fiancée, Blanche Lamont, into the church, strangled her, dragged her body to the bell tower, and committed necrophilia with her dead body. Nine days later, he lured a young woman into the church, raped and killed her, and then dismembered her body, leaving it in the church library. After the body was discovered, Durrant was promptly arrested by the police-and charged with both murders. In his trial beginning on April 15, 1895, the defense made the only defense it could come up with: Theo Durrant, a man of good character, had no motive to vent his sexual urges through rape and murder. Before sending the jury to deliberate, Judge D.J. Murray told the jury that while a motive is an essential fact in a trial, the apparent lack of a motive may be immaterial. On this date, the jury returned with a verdict of guilty. Under California law, Durrant faced the death penalty. After a series of appeals, which ultimately reached the California Supreme Court, the high court upheld the verdict on March 3, 1897. California’s Supreme Court stated in its ruling that “in every criminal case proof of the moving cause is permissible, and oftentimes is valuable; but it is never essential.” Durrant was hanged on January 7, 1898, at San Quentin Prison.
1950: Two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to force their way into the Blair House in Washington, D.C., in an assassination attempt on President Harry Truman. The two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, arrived in Washington, D.C., the day before from the Bronx in New York City, where they were active in the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. They thought the assassination would call attention to Puerto Rico and advance the cause of Puerto Rican independence. They planned to stage the assault in the Blair House, across the street from the White House, because the
