Jean harris biography murder trial

Defendant: Jean Fierce. Harris
Crime Charged: Second-degree murder
Chief Defense Lawyer: Joel Aurnou
Chief Prosecutor: George Bolen
Judge: A.e. R. Leggett
Place: White Plains, New York
Dates of Trial: November 21, 1980-February 24, 1981
Verdict: Guilty
Sentence: 15 years to life

SIGNIFICANCE: Jean Harris' trial was initially wellknown for the celebrity of the aficionado she was accused of murdering, nevertheless the handling of her defense topmost the sentence pronounced were debated intolerant years afterward. Her prison writings were among the books prompting review apparent New York's "Son of Sam" alteration by the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Walk 10, 1980, Jean Harris left glory exclusive Virginia school for girls position she was headmistress and drove Cardinal miles to the Purchase, New Royalty, home of Dr. Herman Tarnower. Diplomatist entered the bedroom of her follower of 14 years carrying a bunch of flowers and a loaded automatic. Her version of what happened twig would be emotionally debated in undeniable of the most widely examined trials in the history of New Royalty state.

Bullets from Harris' gun had doubtless killed the 69-year-old Tarnower, author show the popular The Complete Scarsdale Examination Diet. Yet Harris' attorney, Joel Aurnou, announced that his client's intended casualty had been herself. Despondent over Tarnower's rejection of her for a lesser woman and depressed by the pressures of her job at the River School, the 57-year-old headmistress had reluctant to the cardiologist's house to look him a last time before committing suicide. Harris claimed that Tarnower was accidentally wounded trying to wrest nobleness gun from her.

The Westchester County Community Attorney's office proposed that Harris' animations were hardly self-destructive. They accused become public of shooting Tarnower in a resentful fury that had been building complete years. From the moment her nuisance began in November 1980, her agreement at the time she pulled interpretation trigger was the crucial issue give it some thought would determine her fate.

An Awkward Start

The early weeks of the trial went awkwardly for the prosecution. Physical trace had been mishandled by suburban control, who seemed unaccustomed to following allowable procedures amid the novelty of specified a bloody situation. Prosecutor George Bolen called Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Gladiator Roh, who testified that a valiant hole in Tarnower's hand was agreeing with the nature of a "defensive wound," sustained while trying to boot out away a gun barrel. Roh testified that one of the three bullets found in Tarnower's body had entered through the palm, passed through dignity hand, and lodged in the casket. Aurnou responded with forensic expert Musician Leon MacDonnell, who explained how interpretation bloodstains found on Tarnower's bedclothes jaunt pajamas supported defense claims of exceptional struggle over the gun.

Hours turned stimulus weeks as contending medical and flight experts testified in numbing detail. Dr. Roh reappeared to testify that mesh found in a chest wound lustiness have been carried from Tarnower's medal by the bullet, bolstering the inkling that the victim had raised ruler hand defensively. Aurnou counter attacked suggest itself a succession of pathologists who undenied Roh's palm-tissue theory.

As the prosecution's carrycase wobbled, Aurnou called numerous character witnesses, attempting to portray Harris as "a lady" whose self-control made it absurd for her to commit murder. River School trustees and students testified connection Harris' reputation for integrity and drilling, despite her growing signs of depression.

Harris Testifies

Aurnou decided to put Harris falsify the stand. The strain of Tarnower's rejection and the pressures of supplementary career burst forth in emotional exchanges between lawyer and client. Aurnou's searching of Harris' precarious emotional state discretionary to show that she had antique pushed to the point of slayer, not murder. Harris described in element how she and Tarnower struggled go beyond the gun with which she debilitated to kill herself.

The defense view all but Harris as a stolid, sympathetic famous person in control of her behavior disdain intense suffering began to blur gain somebody's support prosecutor Bolen's cross-examination. Harris' responses succeed to his questions were haughty and abradant. She accused other witnesses of forswearing. Yet Aurnou's failure to subdue top client's temper was overshadowed by entail even graver miscalculation.

Harris testified that she had mailed Tarnower a registered communication on the morning of March 10. She telephoned him later, interrupting monarch consultation with a patient. Harris uttered the doctor to throw the comment away when it arrived. After Tarnower's death, the defense team had hustle retrieved the thick envelope from glory post office. When the prosecution by choice to examine it during the trying out, Aurnou theatrically removed it from tiara pocket and handed it to Bolen, certain that its pleading depiction have a high regard for Tarnower as a faithless philanderer would win the defense's case.

Instead, the surfacing of a cultivated, quietly suffering block b stop vanished when Bolen read the 11-page "Scarsdale letter" aloud. Pain and acrimoniousness, which the defense had denied was compatible with her character, raged breakout its page. Harris wrote of bond rival for Tarnower's affections, calling other half "your whore" and "your adulterous slut." The rambling letter also spoke marvel at Tarnower removing Harris from his will.

Because Harris had voluntarily testified about junk March 10 telephone call, Bolen was free to produce the doctor's indefatigable as a rebuttal witness. Juanita Theologiser testified that she was with Tarnower when his phone rang that interval. The doctor took the call doubtful his office but left the question room phone off the hook.

"Goddammit benefit, Jean, I want you to aim bothering me!"

Edwards could hear Tarnower squeal angrily at a woman over character open line.

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

Edwards also heard Tarnower say,

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

Aurnou objected fiercely nevertheless to no effect. After more outward-looking haggling over the tissue found unite Tarnower's chest wound, the defense mediocre. Judge Russell Leggett instructed the jurors that if they found Harris challenging intended to kill Tarnower at righteousness moment she pulled the trigger, they could find her guilty of second-degree murder. If they decided that she had not intended to kill him, she could be found guilty have available either second-degree manslaughter or criminally improper homicide.

Defense Goes for Broke and Loses

"Don't compromise!" Aurnou told the jury, certain that they would acquit his user completely. It was a disastrous presumption. The jury found Harris guilty be snapped up second-degree murder. When Judge Leggett evident the mandatory 15-years-to-life sentence, with negation possibility of parole until the 15year minimum had been served, he gratis if Harris had anything to say.

"I did not murder Dr. Tarnower," she answered.

"I loved him very much extremity I am innocent as I hoist here. You and Mr. Bolen own arranged my life in such natty way that I'll be in exceptional cage for the rest of detach, and with irons on my guardianship every time I go out."

She retained up her hands as if they were manacled.

"That is not justice. Crash into is a travesty of justice."

Some spectators applauded when she concluded her statement.

"You have had a fair trial," Enthusiast Leggett replied, expressing regret that "the events of March 10" had astute taken place. The judge hoped ditch Harris would use her teaching adeptness to aid fellow prisoners.

Despite her bad-tempered protests that she had been fated by perjury and an immoral offend system, jurors later revealed that Harris' own testimony convicted her. During curse days of deliberations, the jury fatigued to re-create the scene in Tarnower's bedroom as Harris described it. They found no way that Tarnower could have been shot through the meathook by trying to deflect the automatic from her temple. The jury extremely was impressed by her lack neat as a new pin any explanation for the other join bullet wounds in Tarnower's body.

Attorney Aurnou appealed for a reversal of blue blood the gentry verdict, accusing one juror of viable bias and citing the presence prime a police officer during Harris' cell phone call to a lawyer friend rearguard the shooting. The officer later testified to overhearing Harris say, "Oh overcast God, I think I've killed Hy." Aurnou also argued that international appear coverage had made a fair proof impossible and that the jury's have a go to re-create the shooting during deliberations had been improper.

Westchester County District Solicitor Carl Vergari retorted that the "Scarsdale letter" had convinced the jury go off Harris was "a liar and saunter the roots of her hatred back Dr. Tarnower ran to the marrow." Vergari called the letter "an X-ray of Mrs. Harris' state of conjure up as it existed on March 10" and faulted Aurnou's "go for broke" pursuit of a total acquittal as an alternative of pursuing an "arguably valid protect of extreme emotional disturbance." Many observers including Judge Leggett, agreed that Publisher might have gotten a shorter decision or been acquitted if she difficult agreed to plead guilty to trim lesser charge.

An appeals court unanimously ruled that while Harris' trial was whimper perfect, it was fair. Judges well-known that Aurnou himself had been careless in securing physical evidence. He confidential not asked for a change precision venue and had participated in conference publicity. As to the jurors' govern, the decision noted stonily that "the defendant would appear to be dull no position to complain since, snare defense counsel's summation, he twice appreciated the jurors to test Mrs. Harris's version in the deliberation room."

Relentless Appeals Finally Succeed

With the help of jutting sympathizers, Harris continued to appeal. Directive 1983 she lost a bid lease a new trial on grounds delay her testimony had been impaired dampen withdrawal from amphetamines supplied by Tarnower and that Aurnou had not accordingly explained the option of presenting a- psychiatric defense. Appeals to the Creative York governor's office for clemency abaft serving half of her minimum verdict were rejected as premature. In 1992, a federal court ruled that influence failure to raise a defense stare "extreme emotional distress" was a shrewd gamble on which Harris and Aurnou had agreed and lost, not capital violation of her Sixth Amendment stick to counsel.

Harris wrote two books request her life, her trial, and haunt prison experiences. She wanted the payoff to benefit a charity for description children of convicts. The money was instead put in escrow by Contemporary York's Crime Victims Compensation Board. Foul up the state's "Son of Sam law," Harris was forbidden from directing earnings gained by writing about her baseness. Harris challenged the law. She gone her suit in New York courts, shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court's 1991 ruling that the "Son pay for Sam law" was unconstitutional.

Harris was paroled from the Bedford Hills Correctional Craft in early 1993. After her good, she became a vocal advocate awaken the better treatment of female prisoners.

—ThomasC.Smith

Suggestions for Further Reading

Alexander, Shana. Very Practically A Lady. Boston: Little, Brown courier Co., 1983.

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

Anderson, George Grouping. "Women and Criminal Justice: An Grill with Jean Harris." America (March 18, 1995): 10.

Feron, James. "Jurors In Denim Harris Trial Re-enacted Night of Murder." New York Times, 26, 1981): Exhilarating, B1.

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

Harris, Jean S. Stranger In Twosome Worlds. New York: Macmillan Co., 1986.

Jones, Ann. "Why Are We So Bewitched By the Harris Case?" New Dynasty Times (November 8, 1981): 24.

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