Overview Course No. 30720

In the 20th and 21st centuries, America has witnessed sensational trials, from the Gilded Age of New York City in the 1900s to the racially charged courtrooms in the segregated South to the culturally complicated landscape of today. What is it about cases like the murder of Emmett Till, the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, the “Killings of the Flower Moon,” and the trial of college-aged Amanda Knox that capture our imagination?

Criminals have many motives for murder—passion, greed, racial hatred, ideology—but when you step inside a courtroom, you discover that verdicts are often delivered for the same reasons. Media smears, bribed witnesses, corrupt investigators, and psychological blind spots have made a spectacle of many murder trials. These stories stay with us long after the judge bangs the gavel.

On Trial for Murder: America’s Most Famous Murder Trials takes you inside the courtrooms and uncovers the stories of 10 of the most well-known trials since the turn of the 20th century. For this riveting foray into criminal law, your guide is Professor Douglas O. Linder, the Elmer Powell Peer Professor of Law at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law and creator of the Famous Trials website.

With the benefit of new evidence and the clarity of hindsight, Professor Linder surveys a century of notorious—sometimes lurid—murder trials with a combination of brilliant storytelling and in-depth analysis, offering important lessons for us today.

Video Lectures

01: Murder at Madison Square Garden

Step back to the Gilded Age in New York City, to a night in 1906 at Madison Square Garden, when millionaire Harry Thaw murdered the man who defiled his wife, starlet Evelyn Nesbit, years earlier. What appears to be a clearcut case of cold-blooded murder devolved into a sensational trial over the novel “insanity defense.”

• Duration: 36 min

02: “Their Cause Is Just”: The Haywood Trial

Your next stop is Western Idaho, where class conflicts between the miners’ union and the government turned deadly when a planted bomb killed former governor Frank Steunenberg. When Pinkerton investigator James McParland extracted a confession from the bomber, the stage was set to put union leader William “Big Bill” Haywood on trial.

• Duration: 31 min

03: Leo Frank and the Mary Phagan Murder

Travel south to Atlanta, where in 1913 Jewish businessman Leo Frank went on trial for allegedly murdering a teenage girl in his factory. Complicating the narrative was an eyewitness who changed his story, as well as investigators plagued by confirmation bias, and Southern racial dynamics that made an honest trial all but impossible.

• Duration: 27 min

04: Sacco and Vanzetti: Anarchists on Trial

Do juries always get it right? Can public opinion sway the results? The infamous Sacco and Vanzetti trial over a deadly robbery brings these questions to the fore. This lecture takes you into the tumultuous 1920s, where issues of social class, race, and xenophobia created a spectacle around the trial of two Italian Americans.

• Duration: 28 min

05: The “Flower Moon” Killings

Not all crimes are solved. The death of numerous Osage tribe members in Oklahoma—known today as the “Killings of the Flower Moon”—continues to captivate our imaginations. Dive into a world of oil money, inheritance, and mass murder with this survey of just one investigation into a sequence of homicides.

• Duration: 27 min

06: Murder in Honolulu: The Massie Affair

A woman alleges that she was assaulted on her way home one night, but the story of a gang assault doesn’t add up. Then, a murder committed out of vengeance. Delve into a three-act story of Tommie Massie, his wife Thalia, and the last chapter in the courtroom career of Clarence Darrow, “America’s greatest defense attorney,” that changed the politics of Hawaii forever.

• Duration: 33 min

07: Murder in Mississippi: The Emmett Till Case

The murder of Emmett Till in 1955 is one of the most famous in American history. In this lecture, uncover what we know about the murder—including recent revelations—and the trial of his killers. See how this brutal crime shocked the nation, galvanized the civil rights movement, and exposed the violent racial prejudice in the South.

• Duration: 29 min

08: Truth and Fiction: The Dr. Sam Sheppard Case

In this survey of the Dr. Sam Shepherd case, explore the relationship between mass media and due process. Shepherd, who was accused of killing his wife, was the victim of media sensationalism and a muddled investigation. Learn the truth about a case that continues to intrigue the public, after it served as an inspiration for Hollywood’s The Fugitive.

• Duration: 34 min

09: Panic in Arkansas: The West Memphis Three

We’ve seen how public hysteria can shape the wheels of justice. Now, turn to the story of “The West Memphis Three,” a trio of teenagers wrongly convicted of brutal child murders during the “satanic panic’ of the 1990s. Find out how coerced confessions and flimsy evidence led to years of wrongful imprisonment.

• Duration: 33 min

10: The Public Trial of Amanda Knox

Round out this course with the trial of an American citizen abroad. In 2007, college-aged Amanda Knox was accused of murdering her roommate in Italy. Her conviction and eventual acquittal shed light on how cultural misunderstanding, media distortions, and systemic failures can have grave repercussions in a high-profile case.

• Duration: 32 min